Elder Geek's questions

This error originally occurred during an apt upgrade but I managed to reproduce it with update grub

sudo update-grub
[sudo] password for me: 
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-72-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-72-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-60-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-60-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-20-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-20-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
error: syntax error.
error: Incorrect command.
error: syntax error.
Syntax error at line 145
Syntax errors are detected in generated GRUB config file.
Ensure that there are no errors in /etc/default/grub
and /etc/grub.d/* files or please file a bug report with
/boot/grub/grub.cfg.new file attached.

I perused /etc/default/grub and /etc/grub.d/* files and didn't find any obvious errors.

During my search for information I found https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/209152/syntax-error-in-grub-cfg-on-update-grub-grub-2-memtest86 but the excellent troubleshooting steps there didn't result in a solution for me. Sadly I failed to backup /boot/grub/grub.cfg.new prior to resolving the problem so I cannot provide a copy, all I recall is that the error was reported on line 145 and there were not any issues that I could see with the if - fi code block in the area of that line.

This morning I noticed an update to ubuntu-wsl (version 1.361.3) in my updates on Ubuntu 16.04. Specifically What purpose (if any) does this package serve on a standard Ubuntu installation? As it's described as "Utilities for integrating Ubuntu well into the WSL environment" I'm guessing none. All I've been able to find on it is "The ubuntu-wsl metapackage will allow adding new packages for WSL installations only when more integration utilities become available." as mentioned in this bug report but as I'm running standard Ubuntu (Xenial) it seems a useless package for my environment. I don't recall installing it but I guess I must have or I wouldn't be seeing.

Changes for ubuntu-standard versions:
Installed version: 1.361.2
Available version: 1.361.3

Attempts to create a gallery fail silently.

I noticed that attempts to take a screenshot result in an error saying this should not happen, please file a bug report but I'm not certain the 2 issues are connected.

I found something in the forums that indicated that removing gstreamer1.0-vaapi would resolve the problem but that approach resulted in no change whatsoever in behavior so I re-installed it.

totem-video-thumbnailer inputvideo outputpng will happily create a single screenshot.

I had the same issue with several assorted resolutions of H265 encoded Matroska files and also a 1280x720 H264 MP4. (the only non H265 footage I had available)

I tested totem 3.18.1 under Ubuntu 16.04 and it does not appear to have the create gallery issue as that works fine on both of the files I tested it on (the aforementioned 1280x720 H264 MP4 as well as an 885x480 H265 file. (It fails to take a screenshot (silently) but the gallery creation is my main concern)

In a terminal on launch totem 3.26.0 says

(totem:13101): Gtk-WARNING **: 19:42:33.598: Drawing a gadget with negative dimensions. Did you forget to allocate a size? (node slider owner GtkScale)

Attempting to create a gallery results in:

Gtk-Message: 19:46:56.986: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.

regardless of which of the aforementioned versions I use so I think that the Gtk-Message can safely be ignored.

apt list --installed |grep libgstreamer results in

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

libgstreamer-gl1.0-0/bionic-updates,now 1.14.1-1ubuntu1~ubuntu18.04.1 amd64 [installed]
libgstreamer-plugins-bad1.0-0/bionic-updates,now 1.14.1-1ubuntu1~ubuntu18.04.1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libgstreamer-plugins-base1.0-0/bionic-updates,now 1.14.1-1ubuntu1~ubuntu18.04.1 amd64 [installed]
libgstreamer-plugins-good1.0-0/bionic-updates,now 1.14.1-1ubuntu1~ubuntu18.04.1 amd64 [installed]
libgstreamer1.0-0/bionic-updates,now 1.14.1-1~ubuntu18.04.1 amd64 [installed]

reinstalling totem had no effect.

If there's any more useful information I can provide, please ask.

In 16.04 with Unity I have (gedit - Version 3.18.3) Which has the preference menu shown below:

As you can see, there are a number of useful options here, the one I miss the most is Display line numbers. This is unavailable on 18.04 with Gnome (gedit - Version 3.28.1) much to my annoyance as seen below.

My system is considerably slow and I have no idea why and no idea what information I can provide to help determine the cause. What basic trouble shooting can I do to obtain and provide useful information about what the problem might be?

I ended up here with a very similar error to Fontconfig error: cannot load default config file launching the latest google-chrome-stable (Version 65.0.3325.181 (Official Build) (64-bit)) from the command line with the intent of locking it to the launch bar. The aforementioned which I received when updating today.

The exact output received is as follows:

$ google-chrome-stable

Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/fonts.conf", line 146: blank doesn't take any effect anymore. please remove it from your fonts.conf
ATTENTION: default value of option force_s3tc_enable overridden by environment.
[4946:4946:0321/143522.945617:ERROR:gpu_process_transport_factory.cc(1019)] Lost UI shared context.
[1:10:0321/143522.993869:ERROR:command_buffer_proxy_impl.cc(114)] ContextResult::kFatalFailure: Shared memory handle is not valid
[4946:4985:0321/143528.000996:ERROR:upload_data_presenter.cc(73)] Not implemented reached in virtual void extensions::RawDataPresenter::FeedNext(const net::UploadElementReader &)
[4946:4985:0321/143528.189366:ERROR:upload_data_presenter.cc(73)] Not implemented reached in virtual void extensions::RawDataPresenter::FeedNext(const net::UploadElementReader &)
[4946:4985:0321/143528.302925:ERROR:upload_data_presenter.cc(73)] Not implemented reached in virtual void extensions::RawDataPresenter::FeedNext(const net::UploadElementReader &)
[4946:4985:0321/143528.761029:ERROR:upload_data_presenter.cc(73)] Not implemented reached in virtual void extensions::RawDataPresenter::FeedNext(const net::UploadElementReader &)
Fontconfig error: line 152: mismatched tag
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file
[4946:4985:0321/143809.554796:ERROR:upload_data_presenter.cc(73)] Not implemented reached in virtual void extensions::RawDataPresenter::FeedNext(const net::UploadElementReader &)

I think there may be a firmware bug relating to ACPI in a laptop. How can I check that my ACPI tables are sane?

When my system running Ubuntu 14.04 is under a heavy load (for instance a long video encode) nautilus fails to start. I've seen this similar question: Nautilus occasionally stops working

But although the error when launched in terminal is identical, Could not register the application: Timeout was reached it doesn't appear to apply in this case.

I tried all the answers in the aforementioned similar question.

Results are as follows

me@zippy-64bit:~$ killall nautilus
me@zippy-64bit:~$ nautilus -q
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

me@zippy-64bit:~$ killall nautilus
me@zippy-64bit:~$ nautilus
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

I ran a nautilus self-check with the following results:

me@zippy-64bit:~$ nautilus -c
running nautilus_self_check_file_utilities
running nautilus_self_check_file_operations
running nautilus_self_check_directory
running nautilus_self_check_file
running nautilus_self_check_canvas_container
running nautilus_self_check_file_utilities
running nautilus_self_check_file_operations
running nautilus_self_check_directory
running nautilus_self_check_file
running nautilus_self_check_canvas_container

gvfs-mount shows no remote mounts as seen below.

me@zippy-64bit:~$ gvfs-mount -l
Drive(0): TOSHIBA THNSNH128GBST
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
  Volume(0): 13 GB Volume
    Type: GProxyVolume (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(1): WDC WD2003FZEX-00Z4SA0
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(2): WDC WD3001FAEX-00MJRA0
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
Drive(3): Optiarc DVD RW AD-7280S
  Type: GProxyDrive (GProxyVolumeMonitorUDisks2)
me@zippy-64bit:~$ man nautilus
me@zippy-64bit:~$ nautilus
Could not register the application: Timeout was reached

gksu nautilus launches instantly perhaps due to a super user task being launched at higher priority.

I'd like to determine if extending the timeout under these conditions would allow nautilus to open. Is there a way I can accomplish this or any other effective workaround? Ideally I'd like to accomplish this without interrupting the encoding job currently running.

I attempted to install Ubuntu 17.04 after verifying I have a good ISO in a Virtualbox (v.4.3.36) VM running on a Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS host today (intending to install over top of a Semplice64 VM installation I still had lying around) Much to my surprise I received the warning shown below:

Apparently I need at least as much space as I have. That would seem ok on the surface, however my options are quit and back. and I don't even get the option for manual partitioning.

Digging a bit deeper, The directory shows a VDI disk of 8.6 GB in size which appears to agree with what I see above. Why don't I get the option to install?

I have a 3D video that I believe was recorded with a GoPro 360 setup. I would like to be able to share the content with those who don't have VR headgear so I need a way to view it on a 2D screen. How can I accomplish this with Ubuntu? (I'm using 16.04 Xenial if that makes a difference)

I've seen a number of 2-pass encode examples and they often use the -an switch on the first pass. This seems to be because on the first pass only video data is sampled for the log file used by the second pass to create a more efficient encoding. I noticed this switch again when answering this question and I'm wondering if there is any effect whatsoever in using this switch on the first pass of a 2 pass encode.

I tried using the Unity Lens File search for *.* and filtering by Last Modified=All, Type=Videos, and Size=All, but found nothing, although I know there are some .3gp files in my Pictures folder. I know that I have numerous video files on another drive mounted on the file system as well.

I compiled a list of likely extensions and I tried numerous iterations of the find command, utilizing these with:

find ./ -name "*.ext" -o (etc, etc, ad nauseum)

with no luck whatsoever.

What is the solution?

This card had been working flawlessly for several years on Ubuntu 12.04, 14.04, and recently 16.04 but after a recent update it started dropping connection for no apparent reason. Distance from router is about 20 feet through a couple of walls and nothing environmentally has changed. I ran the wireless script from @chili555 answer here.

this is the resulting pastebin report.

I would like to standardize my video collection on a specific video codec (for instance the x265 High Efficiency Video Codec). I know I can obtain the codec in use from a single file using for instance 'mediainfo filename | grep "Codec ID"' Which will output the video codec followed by the audio codec for each file like:

Codec ID                                 : V_VP8
Codec ID                                 : A_VORBIS

I've reviewed man find but I can't seem to figure out how to accomplish this. Any ideas?

I'm testing out converting some videos to HEVC encoding utilizing ffmpeg and libx265 and I've discovered that the the input width must be divisible by 8 in order to successfully re-encode. I would like to determine whether a re-encode will be successful without attempting the encode and then examining the output. Ideally I'd like to do this in a bash script. My skills are somewhat limited in this regard and much of what I have come up with thus far is far less than elegant.

For example I know that I can do the math with bc as in:

 echo 'scale=2;576/8' | bc
72.00

and I can obtain the width via

width=$(mediainfo $filename | grep "Width" | sed 's/[^0-9]*//g')

but the former doesn't exactly answer the question is the width divisible by 8 and the latter is ugly and uses too many pipes which research indicates is less then efficient.

I've got the ffmpeg command line for re-encoding sorted to my satisfaction using:

ffmpeg -i "$f" -c:a copy -c:v libx265 -preset "$preset" -crf 25 "$target"

and I intend to scale the video to a width divisible by 8 if it isn't already but I'm looking for better solutions than I've come up with thus far for determining if scaling is required and how to determine the closest width divisible by 8 to scale to.

I have a system with an I3-3220 which based on Intel's info has 2 cores capable of 4 threads each (or total). However I noticed while watching htop with an avconv encode running that there were 16 logical threads assigned. I searched and read numerous posts both here and on U&L and based on what I read I tried

sudo dmidecode |egrep "Socket Designation: Proc|((Thread|Core) Count)"

which resulted in:

Core Count: 2
Thread Count: 2

So 4 logical cpus total.

But lscpu gives me:

Architecture:          i686
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 58
Stepping:              9
CPU MHz:               3300.000
BogoMIPS:              6606.60
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              3072K

So 8 logical cpus total.

But sudo lshw -C cpu returns:

  *-cpu:0
       description: CPU
       product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
       vendor: Intel Corp.
       physical id: 43
       bus info: cpu@0
       version: 6.10.9
       serial: 0003-06A9-0000-0000-0000-0000
       slot: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
       size: 3300MHz
       capacity: 3300MHz
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 100MHz
       capabilities: x86-64 boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx rdtscp constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave avx f16c lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms cpufreq
       configuration: cores=2 enabledcores=1 id=0 threads=2
     *-logicalcpu:0
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.1
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:1
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.2
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:2
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.3
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:3
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.4
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:4
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.5
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:5
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.6
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:6
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.7
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:7
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.8
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:8
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.9
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:9
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.a
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:10
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.b
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:11
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.c
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:12
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.d
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:13
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.e
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:14
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.f
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:15
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.10
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: logical
  *-cpu:1
       physical id: 1
       bus info: cpu@1
       version: 6.10.9
       serial: 0003-06A9-0000-0000-0000-0000
       size: 3GHz
       capacity: 3GHz
       capabilities: vmx ht cpufreq
       configuration: id=0
     *-logicalcpu:0
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.1
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:1
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.2
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:2
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.3
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:3
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.4
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:4
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.5
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:5
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.6
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:6
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.7
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:7
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.8
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:8
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.9
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:9
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.a
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:10
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.b
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:11
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.c
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:12
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.d
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:13
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.e
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:14
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.f
          capabilities: logical
     *-logicalcpu:15
          description: Logical CPU
          physical id: 0.10
          capabilities: logical

Which appears to indicate 16 logical cpus at bus info: cpu@0 + 16 more at bus info: cpu@1 and that only 1 core is enabled. To further confuse the issue cat /proc/cpuinfo returns:

processor   : 0
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 58
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
stepping    : 9
microcode   : 0x10
cpu MHz     : 2800.000
cache size  : 3072 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fdiv_bug    : no
f00f_bug    : no
coma_bug    : no
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave avx f16c lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips    : 6606.60
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 1
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 58
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
stepping    : 9
microcode   : 0x10
cpu MHz     : 2400.000
cache size  : 3072 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 1
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 2
initial apicid  : 2
fdiv_bug    : no
f00f_bug    : no
coma_bug    : no
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave avx f16c lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips    : 6606.60
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 2
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 58
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
stepping    : 9
microcode   : 0x10
cpu MHz     : 2600.000
cache size  : 3072 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 1
initial apicid  : 1
fdiv_bug    : no
f00f_bug    : no
coma_bug    : no
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave avx f16c lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips    : 6606.60
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 3
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 58
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3220 CPU @ 3.30GHz
stepping    : 9
microcode   : 0x10
cpu MHz     : 3300.000
cache size  : 3072 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 4
core id     : 1
cpu cores   : 2
apicid      : 3
initial apicid  : 3
fdiv_bug    : no
f00f_bug    : no
coma_bug    : no
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt tsc_deadline_timer xsave avx f16c lahf_lm arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dtherm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase smep erms
bogomips    : 6606.60
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

Which appears to me to be indicating CPUs 0-3 with 4 siblings each so 16 logical CPU's

Why do these results seem to vary so much and which is to be trusted?

Bonus question: If I do indeed only have 1 of 2 cores enabled how do I enable the second one?

I recently compiled and installed diffutils-3.3 as I needed the --no-dereference switch that is unavailable in the included version of diff. After configure, make, make check, make clean, and install the new version 3.3 of diff was installed in /usr/local/bin.

Running diff --version resulted in the same 3.2 as before installation.

commands and their output follow:

$ which diff
/usr/local/bin/diff

$ whereis -b diff
diff: /usr/bin/diff /usr/bin/X11/diff /usr/local/bin/diff

$ echo $PATH
/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

Using full paths, I can confirm that diff version 3.3 is in /usr/local/bin and version 3.2 is in /usr/bin.

Looking at the path, I would expect that since /usr/local/bin appears first, that particular diff should be executed when I call diff without a path. Clearly this is not the case. My question is why and what can I do to obtain the desired result?

Note: Ubuntu 12.04.5

$ uname -a
Linux me-AOD270 3.2.0-80-generic #116-Ubuntu SMP Mon Mar 23 17:11:32 UTC 2015 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

How can I check the SMART status of a drive under 14.04 and beyond? I've seen Checking HD SMART status on a fresh install but it doesn't seem to apply under 14.04 and later.

Firefox fails to update due to corrupted download (deb)

Preparing to unpack .../firefox_32.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_i386.deb ...
Unpacking firefox (32.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) over (31.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) ...
dpkg-deb (subprocess): decompressing archive member: lzma error:
 compressed data is corrupt
dpkg-deb: error: subprocess <decompress> returned error exit status 2
dpkg: error processing archive
 /var/cache/apt/archives/firefox_32.0+build1-0ubuntu0.14.04.1_i386.deb (--unpack):
 cannot copy extracted data for './usr/lib/firefox/libxul.so' to '/usr/lib/firefox/libxul.so.dpkg-new': 
 unexpected end of file or stream
Please restart all running instances of firefox, or you will experience problems.

I'm currently testing 14.04 and while there are many things I like about it, the udisks bugs are upsetting. I'm currently running 12.04 on all production systems due to these problems which if I'm not mistaken began with 12.10 and have been present ever since.

When I try to use Benchmarking from within disks on an unmounted partition on sda, I get the following error:

Error seeking to offset 2560872448 (g-io-error-quark, 13)

Supporting data (too long to include here):

http://pastebin.com/7YmaEmtJ