John Mee's questions

I want to allow a user script to remount a drive as "ro" or "rw".

By using the user option in the fstab, I can successfully mount and unmount the drive as a user but the -o remount,rw fails.

Is it not possible for the user to use the remount option?!?

/etc/fstab reads...

UUID=789f-4b3a-b0b2-c05955d7c5ad /mnt/nasbackup auto rw,user,noexec 0 2

but...

john@johnbox /mnt> mount UUID=789f-4b3a-b0b2-c05955d7c5ad
john@johnbox /mnt> mount | grep nvme
/dev/nvme0n1 on /mnt/nasbackup type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,stripe=4,user=john)
john@johnbox /mnt> mount -o remount,ro UUID=789f-4b3a-b0b2-c05955d7c5ad
mount: /mnt/nasbackup: must be superuser to use mount.
       dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
john@johnbox /mnt [32]> umount UUID=789f-4b3a-b0b2-c05955d7c5ad
john@johnbox /mnt> 

When it goes to sleep, sound working, when it wakes from sleep the sound doesn't work. So I go into gnome settings > sound and the output device has been reset to 'dummy output'. Instead of HDMI output [nvidia card driver 430.50].

Simply changing the output device in settings, back to HDMI, does not fix things.

Issuing the command pulseaudio -k does fix things. The dummy output option disappears and the HDMI option is restored. This is played out, entirely reproducible, every time the machine wakes.

Perhaps related... For a week, I had to use some external speakers via the line-out, immediately before this all started. Although all I did was plug them in, and everything worked automagically. They've since been returned.

Alternatively, one is tempted to blame it on something in the ubuntu 19.10 update? Although that might be unfair, the timing does fit.

Anyways, the question is, what is the permanent fix so that I do not have to issue a kill order on pulseaudio on every wake?

As I understand it, Ubuntu Snap encapsulates and manages versions and dependencies. So if I'm using a python application which is installed as a classic snap, how do I pip install additional packages for the application to use inside the snap, without polluting my non-snap environment?

In this instance I want to add some packages to the 'atom' editor which have a bunch of python package dependencies.

Often I go looking for something and resort to running find / -name ... But when there are multiple network drives mounted it can take forever.

There doesn't appear to be any parameter to restrict it to a physical disc/volume. Is there any way to do this?

I've assumed /etc/default was a handy place to save the post-install/default state of configuration files so that when some poor sysadmin arrives at a new system she can quickly determine what has been customised on that instance.

But having just had a look around in there it seems I am mistaken? So apologies if this is a dumb question...

1. What's supposed to be in the /etc/default directory?
2. Where would it be appropriate, or is there a convention, for saving the default state of config files?