Shawn's questions

I have just installed Ubuntu 12.04 on an HP Laptop with Nvidia Graphics hardware. This machine used to run Ubuntu 10.10 and I have to use an external monitor as the internal screen on the laptop is broken and cannot be read. Using the LiveCD to install 12.04 and erase the previous 10.10 installation, all worked fine while installing from the live CD and the external monitor was detected and could be used. After finishing the install, and rebooting, the laptop will not recognize the external monitor and since the internal screen is unusable I cannot configure displays as one normally would. I think I may be able to alter my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to use the external monitor instead of the default device, but I am unsure of what to change in the file. My /etc/X11/xorg.conf file looks like this:

Section "Device"
        Identifier         "Default Device"
        Option "NoLogo"            "True"
EndSection

I just reinstalled Ubuntu on one of my laptops, an HP Pavillion with Nvidia graphics. This was a fresh install replacing 10.10 with the new 12.04. I use an external monitor plugged in via VGA because the screen on the laptop is broken so badly that it cannot be read. All went fine during installation, but upon reboot the fresh install does not recognize the external monitor. Naturally I am able to log in by just hitting the Enter key and inputting my password and hitting enter again. I tried this, hoping it would see the external monitor after login. It did not. I can tell it logged in properly because the broken laptop screen changed colors. I'm sure I could edit a config file or something but this is difficult to do on a laptop without a working screen. As I write this, I am reinstalling with the "download updates" option selected in hopes that this may fix the issue. I would rather just be able to change monitors with a keyboard shortcut but I don't think this is possible. I did not have any such problems with the old 10.10 installation. Any help resolving this issue is appreciated.

My question is very specific. In the screenshot here of my GParted, you can see Fedora 16 installed on /dev/sda4 and Ubuntu (with the mount point "/") on /dev/sda6. Partition /dev/sda5 is taking up 48 GiB of space and there seems to be nothing on it but a lost+found folder. I want to remove this partition and expand both my Fedora and Ubuntu partitions to use the resulting unallocated space. This is a fresh install of both operatng systems and there is no data on the computer to lose. Is it safe to remove the /dev/sda5 partition and resize the other two using GParted from a live CD?

I checked out the questions with similar titles and didn't find anything that I thought would help. I am attempting to convert a video into an avi, preferably xvid. The video file's Video and Audio Properties are as follows:

Video
Dimensions: 1280x544
Codec H.264/AVC
Framerate: 24 frames per second
Bitrate: 774 kpbs

Audio
Codec: MPEG-4 AAC audio
Channels: Stereo
Sample Rate: 48000 Hz
Bitrate: 32 kpbs

I have tried numerous times to convert this into an Xvid codec AVI but I have had no luck successfully getting the audio to sync properly. I am using Openshot to attempt conversion, using the libxvid codec and AVI format, but I am unsure of the proper audio settings I should use. What settings should I use to convert this video with Openshot? If it is not possible with Openshot, or if there is a better application to use, I would be grateful to know that as well.

I dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10 on my new ASUS K53E laptop, and have been doing so happily for a couple of weeks now. Today I was playing a game in Windows 7, then closed the game and restarted my computer. I should mention that it was plugged into (and exclusively using) an external monitor at the time. Again, I have been doing this without problems for days. When the computer rebooted and the Grub 2 menu came up, I selected my Ubuntu partition and it began loading. Then suddenly,the screen started to flicker between a black screen with the mouse cursor and a black screen with lots of white text, but it flashes too fast for me to read. I have disconnected the external monitor (and indeed everything but the power cord and ethernet line) and attempted to reboot but the same thing happens. When I boot into Ubuntu Recovery Mode and run fsck from the graphic menu, here is the output:

fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
[  130.370228 Adding 3964924k swap on /dev/sda6.  Priority:-1 extensions:1 across:
3964924k
/dev/sda5: Superblock last mount time is in the future.
        (by less than a day, probably due to the hardware clock being incorrectly set) FIXED.
/dev/sda5: ***** REBOOT LINUX *****
/dev/sda5: 274504/12124160 files (0.3% non-contiguous), 4230068/48492032 blocks
mountall: fsck / [477] terminated with status 3
mountall: System must be rebooted: /
Finished, please press ENTER

I also tried the remount command to "Remount / read/write and mount all other file systems" as listed in the menu and received the following information:

fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
[  130.370228 Adding 3964924k swap on /dev/sda6.  Priority:-1 extensions:1 across:
3964924k
/dev/sda5: Superblock last mount time is in the future.
        (by less than a day, probably due to the hardware clock being incorrectly set) FIXED.
/dev/sda5: clean, 274507/12124160 files, 4230363/48492032 blocks
[   22.401032 EXT4-fs (sda5): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro
Finished, please press ENTER

Pressing enter takes me back to the Recovery Menu screen. I have run the dpkg command from here to repair any broken packages but it reports there are none. I used the grub command to update grub bootloader but that didn't do anything either. When I use the resume command to resume normal boot, lots of text flashes on the screen and I am able to catch a brief glimpse of something that reads like this:

Starting load of fallback graphics device [FAIL]

That may not be worded verbatim, but the terms "load" "fallback" "graphics" and "FAIL" are definitely all there. All text is in white except for FAIL which is in red/orange.

It should be noted that I can boot into Windows 7 with no problems, and when booting from an Ubuntu 11.10 Live CD and mounting my Ubuntu partition, I cannot copy any of my files to an external drive because they are owned by "Group 1000."

How do I get my Ubuntu partition working again?

I am running Ubuntu 11.10 and I own a Netgear N600 Wireless Dual Band Router with a USB port built into it. Naturally, the router came with instructions on how to mount and view this drive with both Windows and Mac, but nothing about Linux. I have an WD Elements 1 TB external HDD that I would like to plug into the router and share across my home network. However, when I plug it in, absolutely nothing happens on my desktop.

I checked on two different machines and nothing seems to indicate that the drive has been mounted (or is even seen at all) on either machine. I am fully aware that it may not be possible to do this with a Linux system, but I was hoping someone might have a suggestion.

I have always used Weather Indicator (indicator-weather) for all my weather-related needs on Ubuntu, since 10.04. I now use 11.10 and have indicator-weather installed from the Ubuntu repositories. I recently moved from New Orleans, Louisiana to a town called Central just outside of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I tried to removed my New Orleans location and add my new one using the programs Preferences dialog. It allows me to remove my current location, and even allows me to select "Central, Louisiana, United States" by entering "Central, LA" and hitting the "search" button. But when I do that, the application hangs and goes gray and never ever updates. This is driving me crazy. I cannot seem to find how to manually change my location in any config file, although I don't know much about this app and I am not sure where it stores this info. Things I have tried so far include:

1. Change Location as mentioned above
2. Use the more common "Baton Rouge" location choices using the same steps mentioned above.
3. I have uninstalled the application AND also uninstalled the dependency python-pywapi using both the sudo apt-get remove AND the sudo apt-get purge commands and reinstalling the application.
4. I did everything mentioned in #3 and then restarted my system before re-installing.

Interestingly, after doing all of the above and then reinstalling the program, the first time I run it I am STILL greeted with my old Location settings instead of being prompted to choose an new location! I would also like to add that my wife is running Ubuntu 10.10 and she was able to change her location data with no trouble whatsoever.

The short version of this question would be: how do I change my Location in Weather Indicator on Ubuntu 11.10? Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I would also accept a solution that lets me re-install the application in a brand-new state so I could just add my Location instead of adding a second one or removing the first one, etc.

I have some .pdf files that I would like to convert to my preferred reading format of .cbr or .cbz or, if this isn't directly possible, I need to extract all pages from the .pdf as images and then compress them into my format of choice. I have only been able to save pages one at a time with Document Viewer. Obviously, I'd like to do it a little quicker. I have tried pdfsam, pdf shuffler, and pdfmod all with no luck. I am using Ubuntu 11.10.

Synergy is an app that allows two or more computers to share a keyboard and mouse. I have both Synergy and QuickSynergy (the GUI for synergy) installed from the repositories on two computers. One, my "main" box, is running Ubuntu 11.10. Sitting above it on a shelf is an older laptop running Lubuntu 11.10. I have watched a couple of youtube videos which attept to walk one through the setup process but so far I have not found one that can help me. I have the required applications installed on both machines and they are connected via my wireless router. I need to know exactly what to input (and where) on each machine in order to sync my mouse, keyboard, and clipboard between the two.

I found a script online which lets me confirm that Unity will work just fine with my computer (I think I found it on OMGU! if anyone needs the link I'll add it) but when I try to log in using Gnome-Shell the system hangs badly, even when doing things as simple as trying to browse my applications. Is it possible that I would have problems running Gnome-Shell even though Unity 3D works fine?

I'm experiencing an issue when using the "Safely Remove" option to remove my 1TB external HDD from the Unity Launcher. Not every time, but occasionally my screen will go black and display LARGE amounts of text information (which I obviously cannot screen cap). The jist of the info displayed is that unmounting or 'safely removing' the drive causes a kernel panic. Is there a Command Line command to remove mounted drives, or at least one that would show me some sort of error output when the drive is removed? I'm trying to narrow down the cause. I could be imagining this, but it seems to happen most often when I have other programs running when I remove the drive (i.e. Firefox, Transmission). Please note that my external drive is not in use when I attempt to remove it and it is not being used either by Firefox or Transmission at these times. Any help would be appreciated.

My wife has been using Windows Vista on her computer, and it has finally borked bad enough that she is willing to try Ubuntu. The system is pretty much unbootable as far as I can tell, and I need to download and burn an ISO image of the 64-bit version of Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) for her. Can I do this from my 32-bit machine?

This used to be easy to do with a .gtkrc-2.0 in Ubuntu 11.04 and previous releases. I am using a third-party theme (Elements) and I really like it, but the Nautilus sidebar is ugly and dark and I want it to match the rest of the theme a little better.

Possible Duplicate:
Nautilus on Ubuntu 11.10 keeps crashing

When I run gksu nautilus from the terminal, after entering my password, nautilus opens to the root folder as usual, but then crashes when I try to navigate within the file system and I get this error in terminal:

(nautilus:7160): DEBUG: Syncdaemon not running, waiting for it to start in NameOwnerChanged

Any Ideas? I am running a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 Oeniric Ocelot.

I also receive this error:

(nautilus:7947): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_client_get: assertion `GCONF_IS_CLIENT (client)' failed

I want to create a quicklist for Ubuntu Tweak on my Unity launcher, but I'm having trouble getting started. Can anyone help?