24601's questions

It used to be the case that using Ctrl + ; (semi-colon) (specifically but not limited to) Google Sheets would insert the current date in a cell (assuming the cell format is set to do so) but just recently, I have noted that this shortcut produces an underlined e char and pressing space adds an additional context menu. Pressing Enter removes the character and control to the cell is restored after another keypress or by pressing Esc.

This is not specific to Google Sheets and is thus posted here. It also occurs in terminal with the same behaviour and in other apps across the spectrum.

Nor is it specific to my PC in isolation. I tried this on my 20.04 instance and it performed correctly. I also tried it on another 22.04 instance (with the same keyboard layout but a different keyboard) and experienced the same issue so it appears to be a feature of 22.04.2 with Gnome 42.5 and 5.19.0-41-generic Kernel on both 22.04 instances.

I'd appreciate any guidance on how to resolve this issue. It's not super serious as manually inputting the date in Sheets and using the semi-colon on its own elsewhere works fine but it seems something has changed along the way.

Is there a mechanism for stopping an individual Snap from updating?

Context

There is an ongoing issue with Firefox snap and have decided to replace the snap version with the deb version using the instructions contained in this FOSTips post in so far as it related to Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

The Issue

After following the instructions (with the exception that the "Set PPA Priority" fails since the file mentioned does not exist in 22.04) I noted that, following an update, the Snap version of Firefox was restored to the system and the issue I was having returned accordingly.

The issue concerns an incorrect rendering of the web page from the Dropbox drop down menu. This issue was resolved by installing the deb version of Firefox. It is not clear whether it is an issue with Dropbox (less likely) or the snap version of `Firefox (most likely).

Other Research

I have considered the options set out in this Q&A from AU but these solutions do not mention preventing the automatic re-installation of a package as part of the update process behind the scenes, just in the main a delaying process.

Since I wish to entirely disable updates to this snap (but allow other snaps which perform well to be updated) in isolation is there a specific set of workable commands available to achieve this?

After vanilla installation of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS I have noticed 2 related issues with the icon in the systray.

For clarity, the client was installed from Ubuntu Software, following the usual methodologies for set up.

The first issue is that the icon is not persistent. After a while, the usual "stacked box" icon transforms in to a 3 horizontal dot icon. If left to it's own devices, after a while it returns as it should be but some time later it transforms again. There appears to be no detectable reason for this behaviour.

The second connected issue is that with either icon in place in the systray, selecting the icon with a mouse click (either left or right) the menu presented includes as normal the option to Launch Dropbox Website.

On my 20.04.4 LTS system, that works correctly in that it does indeed launch the home page of my Dropbox account but on 22.04 LTS it attempts to launch file://tmp/dbox/ followed by a long string of letters and numbers which Firefox errors with File not found.

The questions

In the case of the first issue (changing icon) is there a way of rendering the correct icon persistent?

In the case of the second, is there a way of editing the address to which the menu option refers?

Using this guide which is for ubuntu 20.04 (and worked successfully in that version with Gnome version 3.36.8) what are the installation requirements in 22.04 LTS to avoid the following error message?

Although GNOME Shell integration extension is running, native host connector is not detected. Refer documentation for instructions about installing connector

I have taken the step $ sudo apt install chrome-gnome-shell but to no avail.

The version of Gnome in 22.04 LTS is v42.0

Have I missed something vital?

Up to a few days ago when there was an update to Shutter there was an icon in the System Tray

However, since the update, this icon fails to appear even though the setting are correctly configured in Behaviour

Restarting the PC has no effect.

I can select Shutter to appear in the dock as a favourite and launch it from there but the setting to launch at login appears to be ignored whereas in the past it worked perfectly well in the system tray.

Another anomaly is that on my scratch PC with ubuntu MATE 21.04, it works correctly - the icon appears in the top panel (MATE equivalent of systray).

I'd be grateful for any pointers as to what I may have missed. Both versions of Shutter (ubuntu 20.04 and MATE 21.04) are the same

I have checked the settings on both systems and they are the same.

UPDATE:

I reported the issue and it is suggested that this may be associated with libappindicator. Are there some simple steps to achieve this?

After a vanilla installation of Ubuntu 20.10 I installed Dropbox from the Ubuntu Software Center and all seemed well. The Dropbox icon appeared in the system tray.

Problem is, I can't be certain when the icon disappeared but can only surmise it occurred after changing some settings to do with desktop icons to disable the trash and Home desktop icons. These have been disabled in 20.04.2 LTS and the Dropbox Systray icon persists in that version.

I tried reversing those steps without success.

What I Have also tried

The answers in this question are all from older versions but I did try:

Installed package sudo apt-get install libappindicator1
Logged out and then logged back in
issued dropbox stop && dropbox start at the command line in terminal

without success.

Dropbox is working correctly in the background. I can access files from Home > Dropbox and amend a file, resave it and can see that the file has changed so all seems well in respect to syncing.

Whilst recognising that 20.10 is short lifed (EOL July 2020) - it is installed on my development PC - and waiting for the day 21.04 becomes available.

The main issue of course is that there are a number of Dropbox utilities provided from within the Systray icon which are not available elsewhere so the Systray icon is key in this respect.

I would like to know if anyone else has encountered this issue in recent times and information on how it can be resolved in anticipation of continuing issues after upgrading 20.10 to 21.04 when available (and subsequently 22.04LTS)

After asking this question I found a solution.

However after applying the commands which effectively removed snap-store I then get a message indicating an application update to core 16 the snapd runtime environment.

On selecting Update All a message appears Unable to Install Updates: snap has no updates available.

snap install snap-store has made no effect.

What must I do to correct this problem, clear the Update flag and ensure that any installed snaps are automatically updated?

I've recently noticed an issue with Ubuntu Software Center which I have tried to resolve following the answers provided in this similar question without result and this answer in particular which partially worked but didn't persist.

The Issue

After installing 20.04 I opened Ubuntu Software Center and installed a number of apps without any problem - one of which was Stacer which I will use as an example.

In Show Applications the app is clearly present and right clicking on the icon selecting Show Details provides the image above and it works perfectly well.

However, if I open Ubuntu Software Center and type in the search bar stacer it reports that no application is found:

Nor is it listed when selecting the Installed tab.

This is the setup for for Software and Updates.

There are other applications I have previously installed which are also now reported as No Application found such as gLabels, gscan2pdf and others.

Has something changed since I initially installed 20.04.1 and more importantly, how can I restore good order to the Ubuntu Software Center?

I did a vanilla installation of 20.04.1 LTS on a PC using a wired connection (no on board WiFi) to a Netgear Gigabit switch for LAN access using an RJ45 Cat6 data cable (checked for correct integrity) which in turn is connected to a 4G router for internet access. This is the only operating system on this PC.

I also have a Synology NAS connected to the same switch mounted in fstab which works perfectly fine. The NAS share (GnV_Common) is shown on the desktop using GNOME Extension Desktop Icons NG (DING).

This arrangement has worked fine and without issue in Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS (the only difference being that the appearance of the NAS Share on the desktop is handled differently in 18.04)

I mention the NAS arrangement because, curiously, when the internet drops out, the NAS share disappears from the desktop too (Network Manager related perhaps).

There is no apparent trigger for this behaviour I can establish.

On a few occasions, I have noticed that there is no internet access on the 20.04.1 box but yet the Network Manager indicates that it is connected (image from last incident), and the Network Manager icon on the System Tray remains constant:

The issue was not repeated on the 18.04.5 box which continued to access the network and the internet.

My research has taken me (through many questions only related to WiFi issues) to this answer to a similar question

https://askubuntu.com/a/2905/307670

In this regard, the managed=false flag is set. For comparison purposes, I also checked NetworkManager.conf file in the 18.04.5 LTS box and it is set the same way so I'm not convinced the issues are the same.

The only way I have found to restore things to normality is to restart, after which the PC performs correctly and the network share is restored and persists until the next incident. I have not found any possible trigger for this issue; it sometimes happens overnight when the PC is not in use and the latest incident was after the PC had not been used for a couple of hours but had performed well up to that point. There is no occasion I have found where this occurs during a period of use.

I'm reluctant to change the managed=false flag unnecessarily since there is no firm evidence yet that this is the issue. It does not occur on 18.04 LTS with the same setting and I am not confident this is the issue causing this phenomenon.

If the issue was more widespread, I would have expected it to have been flagged by now like the WiFi dropping issue so, is this just something unanswered in isolation on this PC, has the issue already been addressed elsewhere which I have missed or could the GNOME extension adding the share to the desktop be involved some way?

I'd be grateful for any pointers as to what possibly could be causing this unusual issue.

EDIT:

Yes, using CAT6 cable.

contents of sudo lshw -C network

*-network                 
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
       logical name: enp5s0
       version: 15
       serial: 00:e0:4a:68:33:44
       size: 1Gbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=5.8.0-38-generic duplex=full firmware=rtl8168h-2_0.0.2 02/26/15 ip=192.168.1.169 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=1Gbit/s
       resources: irq:19 ioport:d000(size=256) memory:fbc04000-fbc04fff memory:fbc00000-fbc03fff

I have 4 fixed Workspaces (set by Tweaks).

FireFox is running in workspace 1 (by default, set by Tweaks - Startup Applications).

If in (say) workspace 3 and I right click Firefox Web Browser icon in the dock and select Open a New Window, it will open the new window in workspace 1 overlaying the already open FF in that workspace.

Is there a discrete setting I have missed which allows the new window to open in the workspace from which it was selected?

On 18.04 LTS a mounted internal disk (other than the boot disk) and a mounted share included in fstab appear on the desktop without further intervention.

This appears not to be the case with 20.04.1. The drives are perfectly selectable from within nautilus and are mounted in /media/.

Is this the new norm or have I missed a trick somewhere along the way? This is a vanilla installation of 20.04.1 from scratch on a new PC.

I have upgraded Dropbox (Personal) to Dropbox (Personal Plus) which provides 2TB of (paid) cloud storage.

Clearly, with that amount of potential storage, syncing to the local drive will be an issue but Dropbox provides a solution with Smart Sync.

The current version of Dropbox from the Ubuntu Software Center installed is:

confirmed by Synaptic (although the app itself suggests v102.4.431 on 18.04 LTS) but this version does not provide the option to make use of Smart Sync, only Selective Sync. The difference between the two options is simply that with Selective, files/folders are not shown in the local synced Dropbox folder but with Smart Sync, a (best described as) token is placed in the local folder from which the file in the cloud can be opened making the whole process seamless.

In synaptic it shows that Python 3 version is available:

Will this version provide Smart Sync or is there another way of implementing this feature?

Further research shows that there is a downloadable .deb for Ubuntu from Dropbox but it is not clear from the description whether this is a more up to date version than the one already installed (which will provide the functionability required). Is there wisdom in installing this deb package using this resource and what will happen to the existing installation?

Note: these packages install an open-source helper application. The version of this application does not change as frequently as the main Dropbox application. These packages will always install the latest version of Dropbox for Linux.

After running GtkOrphan it provides a list of 8 packages suggested for removal.

Are there likely to be any undesirable consequences in removing any of these using the tools provided within the utility?

Output from running dpkg -l | grep ^rc:

rc  linux-image-4.18.0-15-generic                 4.18.0-15.16~18.04.1                         amd64        Signed kernel image generic
rc  linux-modules-4.18.0-15-generic               4.18.0-15.16~18.04.1                         amd64        Linux kernel extra modules for version 4.18.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP
rc  linux-modules-extra-4.18.0-15-generic         4.18.0-15.16~18.04.1                         amd64        Linux kernel extra modules for version 4.18.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP

Running aptitude from the terminal with no parameters produces:

I'm having problems getting a new HP Color Laserjet model M281fdw to install.

This is to replace an HP Deskjet color printer which worked perfectly on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with hplip version 3.16.3

I'm aware from comments that a newer version of hplip (3.18.5) is available which covers this new printer but what disadvantages exist in following the suggestion that the deb version of hplip is replaced by the binary hplip version instead and in the same context, what action is required to go back to the deb version when hplip is (eventually) updated to provide a version > 3.18.5. Does the binary version have to be removed before re-installing the deb version?

Using Rhythmbox for music through the speakers on my monitor.

Problem is when the screen turns off (for reason of inactivity as set in System Settings > Brightness and Lock > [turn screen off when inactive for:]) the sound goes with it.

Is there a discrete setting somewhere which defeats this and leaves the sound intact but still turns the screen off?

After upgrading to Firefox version 58.0 this morning, a refresh of any tab causes Firefox to grey out (including Firefox sessions open in another work space).

Is there a way to correct this perhaps by going back to the previous working version before version 58.0 and how is this achieved?

Having research similar problems from a couple of years ago where the problem appeared to be associated with low ram, my PC has 4Gb, is 64 bit with intel® Celeron(R) CPU 847 @ 1.10GHz × 2 so I don't consider those previous questions/answers as relevant to this issue which has only occurred after the update this morning.

This morning I selected a routine update to the system following which the system has crashed completely. The best I can achieve now is the grub prompt.

Is there a way to reverse this state of affairs?

This morning, via email from Dropbox, I received notification that the version of Dropbox I am running on Ubuntu 14.04LTS will be retired next week and to update to the latest version. The email takes you to this page on their website:

Dropbox was initially installed using the Ubuntu Software Centre.

For the inexperienced user, is it best/easier to remove the package from within the USC and then re-install or is there a more elegant way of obtaining the update, for example using sudo apt-get update dropbox ?

If the Num Lock key active light is lit, on closing down the PC using the top bar menu option Shut Down...the light on the keyboard remains lit.

If the Num Lock key is depressed before closing down (the light extinguishes) and then closed down, all is well with the world.

The keyboard is a pretty much standard (if ancient) Logitech Internet Pro Keyboard which has worked fine on prior owned PC's running Windoze XP.

The PC is totally dedicated to Ubuntu and was installed from scratch on first use fairly recently.

No lights remain on the PC after close down. There is a not easily accessible switch underneath the machine which removes all power from the PSU.

The system specs:

Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit 3.7 GB RAM Intel Celeron (R) 847 @ 1.1 GHz x 2 Intel Sandybridge Mobile 730+GB HDD

It's no big deal, but just curious as to why this might be the case.

In the last few days I have noticed an oddity with the Dropbox folder in the Home directory.

I cannot be certain whether it is Ubuntu or Dropbox influenced hence the question here in case someone else has experienced it or can offer advice.

a file .dropbox (openable with geddit) which contains some lines of text:-

(dp1
Vtag
p2
S'dropbox'
p3
sVns
p4
L113047945L
s.

and a folder .dropbox.cache which itself contains another folder prefetch_cache which doesn't contain anything appears in the Dropbox folder which is used to sync with dropbox.

When closing down my PC last night (as the previous night) these files/folders were removed by me from the >Home>Dropbox folder. This morning, on switching on the PC, I checked the >Home>Dropbox folder to see that the files had returned. They are date/time stamped the time I switched my Ubuntu machine on.

I then checked my Dropbox account on the web by launching the dropbox website from the dropbox icon at the top of the screen and bizarrely these files/folders are not shown to be present - effectively invisible to dropbox itself.

Yesterday, following researchon this site, I opened a terminal and typed:

`rm -R ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache/*`

This does not seem to have have had a desirable effect as evidenced by the same problem appearing this morning.

This is not affecting my installation in any other way, just a curious annoyance deserving of some attention to get to the bottom of it.

All suggestions gratefully received.