Bananeweizen's questions

On my machine whenever I work with Eclipse (on Suns JDK), the java process does not terminate after I exit Eclipse. Therefore after working on several projects over the day, I sometimes need to kill all those Java processes manually to free my RAM again.

This bugs me for about 2 years now, while all these parts have gone through different versions:

• Ubuntu
• Eclipse (and all the installed plugins)
• Suns JDK

I've even tried to attach a VM debugger to the Java processes to see what's going on, but had no success.

Although it would be nice to find the reason for the problem, I'm meanwhile more interested in a workaround to automatically kill those processes once a day. I imagine a script to kill the Java processes, but to make some exceptions depending on the command line parameters of the Java process (e.g. I have Subsonic and the Playstation Media Server running all the time).

What are your ideas to automatically (and selectively) kill the Java processes?

I do know there are questions and good answers, what to do if Ubuntu just hangs (like this one: What should I do when Ubuntu freezes?). My problem is that such a hang occurs so seldom for me, that I don't remember most of the answers at that time and I have no second machine to ask the Internet while my main system hangs.

I always remember how to open the console using some Ctrl-Alt-Fx combination. So is there a possibility to have some lines of "intro text" in that console, which tell me directly after switching to the console how to kill hanging processes and how to properly reboot? Think of it as a "reminder to self".

DOS had the ability to change the prompt in a console to arbitrary output. Maybe something similar can be done here to get me remember at least the basics?

Whenever I open a PDF file in Ubuntu, the document viewer shows that file zoomed so that the page width fits to the screen width (and the lower part of the document is not visible). Due to the large monitor I would really prefer to have it show the full document with a smaller zoom instead (I think that might be called "fit to page size" in English).

I found no preference in the document viewer to change its startup behaviour. Is there any preference for that which I missed? Are there alternative PDF viewers which can be configured to fulfill my needs or which have this setting as default?

Thanks for any suggestion.

Some weeks ago I configured a dual boot laptop to run Xubuntu 10.4 on the third partition of my disk (i.e. I had to set the installation location manually). Everything was fine until I had installed the bunch of automatic updates (including a new kernel), which were discovered after Wifi was finally working. After rebooting, Grub didn't boot into Xubuntu anymore (which it did several times before), but just showed a prompt. I managed to get the system repaired using a live CD and a good hour of Internet reading.

For some weeks everything was fine, including automatic updates. Yesterday I got a new kernel through automatic updates. And guess what? The laptop refused to boot afterwards.

To me it looks like every kernel update makes my system unbootable. How can I prevent this besides the obvious "Don't install updates"? Is there anything else I should inspect or monitor on that system? Or are my conclusions about the kernel update completely wrong and I should look for something else causing these symptomes?

EDIT: Some more details as asked in the comments: I didn't start Windows between the update and the crash, so for me it seems to be related to Xubuntu only. Grub is Grub2 (version 1.98something). /boot/grub/grub.cfg looks like this:

#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by /usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then
  load_env
fi
set default="0"
if [ ${prev_saved_entry} ]; then
  set saved_entry=${prev_saved_entry}
  save_env saved_entry
  set prev_saved_entry=
  save_env prev_saved_entry
  set boot_once=true
fi

function savedefault {
  if [ -z ${boot_once} ]; then
    saved_entry=${chosen}
    save_env saved_entry
  fi
}

function recordfail {
  set recordfail=1
  if [ -n ${have_grubenv} ]; then if [ -z ${boot_once} ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi
}
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,5)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
if loadfont /usr/share/grub/unicode.pf2 ; then
  set gfxmode=640x480
  insmod gfxterm
  insmod vbe
  if terminal_output gfxterm ; then true ; else
    # For backward compatibility with versions of terminal.mod that don't
    # understand terminal_output
    terminal gfxterm
  fi
fi
insmod ext2
set root='(hd0,5)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
set locale_dir=($root)/boot/grub/locale
set lang=de
insmod gettext
if [ ${recordfail} = 1 ]; then
  set timeout=-1
else
  set timeout=10
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###
set menu_color_normal=white/black
set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray
### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 2.6.32-24-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
    linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-24-generic root=UUID=c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5 ro   quiet splash
    initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic
}
menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 2.6.32-24-generic (Wiederherstellungsmodus)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
    echo    'Linux 2.6.32-24-generic wird geladen …'
    linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-24-generic root=UUID=c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5 ro single 
    echo    'Initiale Ramdisk wird geladen …'
    initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-24-generic
}
menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 2.6.32-21-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
    linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5 ro   quiet splash
    initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
}
menuentry 'Ubuntu, mit Linux 2.6.32-21-generic (Wiederherstellungsmodus)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
    echo    'Linux 2.6.32-21-generic wird geladen …'
    linux   /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5 ro single 
    echo    'Initiale Ramdisk wird geladen …'
    initrd  /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
}
### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ###
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" {
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
    linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin
}
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" {
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,5)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set c1550ae8-66af-414c-874d-15cb43176ba5
    linux16 /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8
}
### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP Professional (on /dev/sda1)" {
    insmod ntfs
    set root='(hd0,1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 883cb1b73cb1a09c
    drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
    chainloader +1
}
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

I have Wine installed and several Windows applications installed there run fine, if I start them using the right mouse menu "Open with Wine program loader". But if I try starting an .exe file by just double clicking instead, the archive manager tries to open the executable.

How do I fix that?

And something like a bonus question as a former Windows user: Can this be done easily for a single file I currently see in the file manager (similar to the "Open with..." context menu in Windows) and for many file types together (like in Windows, using the menu "Folder settings" in the Explorer)?