Alexis Wilke's questions

I've installed a new Ubuntu 22.04 server with Gnome on a VirtualBox system and the size of the screen is reset to 800x600 on each reboot (both in the login screen and once logged in).

I change the screen resolution to say 1920x1600 and that works great. I can use the system for days without an issue.

The next time I reboot, though, that larger resolution is lost. It will be reset back to the 800x600.

Am I doing something wrong?

Note 1: I can see that the ~/.config/monitors.xml is there and properly defined:

<monitors version="2">
  <configuration>
    <logicalmonitor>
      <x>0</x>
      <y>0</y>
      <scale>2</scale>
      <primary>yes</primary>
      <monitor>
        <monitorspec>
          <connector>Virtual-1</connector>
          <vendor>unknown</vendor>
          <product>unknown</product>
          <serial>unknown</serial>
        </monitorspec>
        <mode>
          <width>1920</width>
          <height>1200</height>
          <rate>59.884601593017578</rate>
        </mode>
      </monitor>
    </logicalmonitor>
  </configuration>
</monitors>

Note 2: As mentioned in a few places, I can copy the monitors.xml file to /var/lib/gdm3/.config/. and the Login screen works as expected. But once logged in, that resolution is lost again.

sudo cp ~/.config/monitors.xml /var/lib/gdm3/.config/.

Note 3: I have other versions of Ubuntu (18.04, 20.04) with similar setups and the resolution sticks just fine.

Note 4: I have a single "monitor".

Updates:

When I run xrandr --verbose, I see modes such as this one:

1920x1440 (0x53b) 233.500MHz -HSync +VSync *current +preferred
    h: width  1920 start 2064 end 2264 total 2608 skew    0 clock  89.53KHz
    v: height 1440 start 1443 end 1447 total 1493           clock  59.97Hz

I transformed that into a script like so:

xrandr --newmode "1920x1440_59.97"   233.50  1920 2064 2264 2608  1440 1443 1447 1493 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode XWAYLAND0 1920x1440_59.97
xrandr --output XWAYLAND0 --mode 1920x1440_59.97

But the first and last xrandr generate errors:

$ sh xrandr1.sh
X Error of failed request:  BadName (named color or font does not exist)
  Major opcode of failed request:  139 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  16 (RRCreateMode)
  Serial number of failed request:  20
  Current serial number in output stream:  20
X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
  Major opcode of failed request:  139 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode of failed request:  7 (RRSetScreenSize)
  Serial number of failed request:  22
  Current serial number in output stream:  23

Now I've seen some people having issues with XWAYLAND0. Maybe that's what I'm running into...

Some logs found in the /var/log/syslog file:

Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 colord[2535]: failed to get edid data: EDID length is too small
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 dbus-daemon[1214]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.ColorManager'
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 systemd[1]: Started Manage, Install and Generate Color Profiles.
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 xbrlapi.desktop[2550]: openConnection: connect: No such file or directory
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 xbrlapi.desktop[2550]: cannot connect to braille devices daemon brltty at :0
Sep 15 23:31:47 ubuntu22 /usr/libexec/gdm-wayland-session[2196]: dbus-daemon[2196]: [session uid=130 pid=2196] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.ScreenSaver'
Sep 15 23:31:48 ubuntu22 gsd-color[2356]: failed to get edid: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 15 23:31:48 ubuntu22 gsd-color[2356]: unable to get EDID for xrandr-Virtual-1: unable to get EDID for output
Sep 17 01:10:40 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[2665]: XWAYLAND: mode 1024x600 is not available
Sep 17 01:16:20 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[2665]: message repeated 2 times: [ XWAYLAND: mode 1024x600 is not available]

The last one seems to indicate that by default the system expects a display named Virtual-1. Unfortunately, my display seems to be named XWAYLAND0 instead.

In that regard, I also found these:

Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[2303]: Registering session with GDM
Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-shell[1764]: Connection to xwayland lost
Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-session[1742]: gnome-session-binary[1742]: WARNING: Lost name on bus: org.gnome.SessionManager
Sep 16 02:36:12 ubuntu22 gnome-session-binary[1742]: WARNING: Lost name on bus: org.gnome.SessionManager

For that one, I can find a bug on launchpad.

I tried to turn off wayland but that did not help...

[daemon]
# Uncomment the line below to force the login screen to use Xorg
WaylandEnable=false

...in that the screen still comes up with the wrong resolution on a reboot. However, the xrandr command now works. If you'd like to make it work with Wayland, you may be able to use the gnome-randr.py script. Note that I did a reboot after changing the WaylandEnable=false (I think it goes without saying).

I'm creating a package which includes some default settings for users. Things that generally appear under ~/.<some-name> or ~/.config/<app>/<some>.conf and similar files.

In most cases, these files are installed in the skeleton directory (/etc/skel) but those are going to be installed only in new users home directories. I'd like existing users to also get the files at the time the package gets installed.

What does the Debian standard say about that?

For a concrete example, I have a .lessfilter script that I'd like to add to my personal package so that way it gets installed on all of my machines.

So in my alex-tools.install file I have:

scripts/.lessfilter   /etc/skel

I know I can create an alex-tools.postinst script like so (not yet tested, use with care):

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# Finish up the installation

#DEBHELPER#

# Source debconf library.
. /usr/share/debconf/confmodule

if [ "$1" = "configure" ]
then
    # Install files in user folders
    #
    for u in /root /home/*
    do
        if ! test -f "${u}/.lessfilter"
        then
            cp /etc/skel/.lessfilter "${u}/.lessfilter"
            chmod 700 "${u}/.lessfilter"
            chown "${u}" "${u}/.lessfilter"
        fi
    done
fi

But I'm thinking that this may not be considered "legal" in Debian and there may be a cleaner way to implement such?

Is there something about this in the Debian references?

I see some project offering their ...-dbgsym.deb packages on launchpad (see ALSA).

My projects, however, do not seem to generate those packages.

When I create packages on my machine, I do see those packages.

Could it be that it is turned off in my project?

Could there be an issue where the compiled version is pure release and thus the libraries anyway do not include any symbols and as a result not dbgsym package is created?

I am working on the Snap! C++ project which manages many packages with a complex set of dependencies (see picture below).

So as a result I need the build of package A to be complete before I can run the build of package B. I'd like to at least semi-automate the build process and for that I would need to know, programmatically, that package A is done building. I can then verify that the build worked (that I know how to do) and if so, I can send the sources of package B and get that build started.

I found pages about the Launchpad API and I downloaded the python scripts that they offer to access the server. However, I'm not that good in python and I'm not too sure what API call I need to use. I found this huge page with what I would assume are all the calls, but I was not able to find a simple example of how to get the current build status for a specific project. Maybe getBuildQueueSizes? But looking at the launchpadlib Python project files, I could not find any such name in the code. So I'm not too sure how that works.

Would you have sample code you would share with us that does at least that much? Or a place where there would be an example on the Launchpad.net website?

At this point, my script connects... what do I do next?

# See API here
# https://launchpad.net/+apidoc/devel.html

from launchpadlib.launchpad import Launchpad
from os.path import expanduser

home = expanduser('~')
cachedir = home + '/.launchpadlib/cache/'
launchpad = Launchpad.login_anonymously('snapcpp', 'production', cachedir, version='devel')

If possible too, just a URI would be great. From what I can see here and there, it would be possible to simply emit an HTTP GET to a URI and get a JSON in return with all the necessary info. What I don't see is what that URI would be. I tried several from what I've see in the docs (with super heavy examples... NOT):

https://api.launchpad.net/devel/snapcpp?ws.op=getBuildRecords&source_name=libtld

This one tells me that getBuildRecords is not a command. In most cases, though, I get a 400 or 404. The project URL works, but all the links shown in the JSON do not help:

https://api.launchpad.net/devel/snapcpp

Testing some more, I found out I could search some builds with:

https://api.launchpad.net/devel/ubuntu/bionic?ws.op=getBuildRecords&source_name=lib

But if I try to use my project names as the source_name=... parameter (a.k.a. "libtld" or "snapcpp"), it returns an empty list. This last URL also works with just /ubuntu?... or with an architecture /ubuntu/bionic/amd64?.... But that doesn't help.

I think this may be a bug so I reported on Launchpad.

I've been using gjslint to verify that my JavaScript code is valid before sending it to my servers. Very practical.

In older versions (16.04, 18.04), it was found in the closure-linter package.

In newer versions (20.04), it was moved to the closure-compiler package (the closure-linter was removed/renamed).

In 21.04, it seems to be gone. I have closure-compiler installed and I can see gjs and gjs-console, but no gjslint.

Is there a way to use gjs as a linter only? Or is the linter hidden somewhere else?

Note: I ran apt-file find gjslint and it came up empty handed.

I installed Linux Ubuntu 18.04 on one of my old laptop (Latitude E6430).

It works beautifully and is even much faster than Win7 which was on there before.

However, when I log in X-Windows, I get a message saying that a display profile could not be loaded:

DisplayCAL Profile Loader 3.5

P7FFH-140WD1 @ 0, 0, 1600x900: Display profile couldn't be loaded.

The message can be discarded and I can even mark it as "do not show again". So I suppose it's just a warning. That being said, I'm wondering what that message means since the display looks as expected (correct sizes, perfect colors, nothing to complain about).

One of my customers just upgraded his Thunderbird installation to go to the latest version which at this time is 78.4.0. Since then he can't access my Postfix mail server to view his messages. However, it works perfectly in all other cases.

When looking at the logs that courier generates, I can see a LOGIN immediately followed by a LOGOUT. When I try to setup a new Thunderbird under Ubuntu 18.04 (i.e. version 68) it works like a charm. Absolutely no problem.

I've read about the TLS version 1.2 being mandatory. I tested with Check TLS and it clearly says TLS 1.2 (see picture). So I'm not too sure what else would have changed that it doesn't want to properly connect. Also no errors are reported on either side, which is the strangest part. At least one side should know what's going on...

Any idea what else could be wrong? Would Thunderbird check whether the TLS is mandatory and if not generate an error and quit?

I am running in this problem once in a while where I click on an icon in my dock and instead of just going to the app. it opens the menu and leaves that menu open forever. Closing or restarting the app. doesn't help. The menu gets updated dynamically as required, but it still stays opened.

Trying to click on any of the menu items fails because the clicks "go through" (so the mouse clicks are not sent to the menu which I think is the main reason why it fails).

Here is an example when it occurred to me with Firefox:

Note: I started with a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 install (no upgrade from older versions). So that would not be it, although I may have something installed that causes the side effect. It only started to happen recently, though (Oct 2020).

P.S. Clicking on other icons works just fine. Their menu shows up and gets hidden as expected. So doing so is not going to help to hide the one menu that's stuck open.

P.S. 2 -- when there is no window behind that menu, clicking a menu item gets the mouse stuck to where I have to use a lot of keyboard tricks to get it release back. So it's super annoying. I'd like to learn of a way to fix it without having to reboot!

P.S. 3 -- I run this command:

sudo systemctl restart display-manager

And that menu is still open!?

P.S. 4 -- The Log Out option fails, it looks like it gets stuck (i.e. it probably waits on some lock which is a deadlock) so I have to forcibly reboot. I would imagine that a lock is not going to be fixed with any random hack. Oh well...

P.S. 5 -- I also reported this as a bug on launchpad.

Once in a while, firefox starts using 100% of one of my CPUs. The fact is that I may have 50 tabs opened. Looking at the output of htop I can see that one particular tab is generating the problem. Most others are either at 0% or at least under 5%, but one will be over 100%.

So with htop I know which tab process, but how could I translate that PID into a tab name or URL? Is there an easy way? Or maybe a plugin I could install in Firefox which would be similar to htop but show the info on a per tab basis (opposed to Linux processes as in htop).

To find the process with htop:

1. I hit F4 and enter "firefox" so only firefox processes and threads appear.
2. I hit F5 to see the list of threads
3. I ignore the main process which is a total of all the others and search for the one process which specifically has 100% CPU usage

I looked at the parameters on the command line, all the parameters look the same for all the different processes so that part doesn't help at all.

(Click on the picture to enlarge, easier to read!)

P.S. I'm under Ubuntu 18.04 using the default Gnome environment, although I have had such problems on all versions, so that should have nothing to do however the solution may only work on newer systems, which would be fine too.

I just got a new monitor, a Samsung U32J59x which is a 4K monitor (3840x2160). My video board is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060.

In the morning or after the monitor goes to sleep, when I wake the monitor up, I can see horizontal lines like shown in the following video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQtqZ-cw16M

Usually they are purple, I've seen them cyan too.

I've also seen the lines appear depending on which window is in the front (i.e. in some cases having window A in the front prevented the lines, having window B in the front and the lines appeared).

I tested the same computer & video board with a 4K TV (a specter) and never saw such problems. Also with my old monitor (an HD, so only 1920x1080) I never saw such a problem.

I tried to change the cable thinking maybe the old cable I had could be a problem. Since it works just fine after "it warms up" (some 20 seconds, see the video) then it works just fine and I never see those lines. So I would imagine that the board is fine and there are not interference along the cable.

Is there something I can do to fix the problem? Could the monitor have problems? (I can have it replaced)

I just installed and started to use 18.04 (finally! I got a computer that supports it especially...)

When I open certain windows, such as Thunderbird and Virtualbox, they at times open child windows and those appear on top of the parent window completely obstructing it. So... I'd like to move the child window out of the way and ... that means the parent window along. In other words, the window in the background remains obstructed. Who thought of this beautiful feature?! (Yes. Sarcasm.)

I'm wondering whether this is something I can turn off. Maybe a parameter in the gconf-editor?

Whenever I move my mouse, the window where the mouse is gets the focus. That's the only true way of a good windowing system!

Only the default theme takes like 0.5 to 1 second to switch between windows. I can see some animations with the stupid shadow and colors changing. Is there a way to suppress that animation and even the shadow?

I'm thinking that maybe I need to try other themes to resolve the issue. In that case, do you know of a theme which would not have those bells and whistles?

I'm managing a large PPA with about 100 packages found in about 20 projects.

https://launchpad.net/~snapcpp/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Whenever I want to rebuild a project, I send it and wait for it to be built, then send the next one.

There is a priority (a very specific order) for me to build each package since most packages depend on others. I have an SVG file that my build system generates showing me the priority (and changes pretty often these days):

What I'm wondering is whether I could send all the packages at once making sure that they get sent in the right order. Will launchpad build them one after the other? (i.e. if they were to decide to build them in parallel then it wouldn't work.)

It's fairly rare these days, but once in a while I bump into a video that has only one-sided sound (only the left channel or only the right channel.) Is there a way for me to change my audio setup so that one side gets played on both sides?

Note that I do not want to download the video, fix it, and play it then. I'd like to just tweak my settings for that one video so the left channel plays on both sides: left and right; or the right channel plays on both sides: left and right.

Changing the balance doesn't help since there is nothing on the other side, it's not a balance problem.

Say I have two packages, A and B, that offer a service each, a and b.

b depends on a. In other words, if service a is currently active (running), then I can start and stop b no problem. However, if a is not active, b should not start, at least not without first trying to start a. Similarly, if I want to stop a, then I expect b to be taken down first, then a. This all works great with systemd.

I applied a fix to package A.

What is the proper behavior of the package when I run dpkg --install A?

It seems pretty evident that A may know nothing of B. So, if the prerm script of A runs:

systemctl stop a

It will take b down along with it.

Then the new version of A gets installed and in the postinst I restart a with:

systemctl start a

Is that the expected procedure to upgrade a package such as A? Will systemd somehow always remember to restart b automatically? What if I had many more dependencies?

I have been trying to setup my NVidia card to support a multiseat installation for 2 days now and I feel like I am not making any progress.

First I tried to follow the Ubuntu instructions found here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MultiseatTeam/Instructions

These are not too bad, only the NVidia drivers do not offer a way to select one seat per output connector since it only defines one device in the list of devices:

udevadm info --export-db

That gives me the following entry for the NVidia video board:

P: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
E: DEVPATH=/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0
E: DRIVER=nvidia
E: ID_MODEL_FROM_DATABASE=GF108GL [Quadro 600]
E: ID_PCI_CLASS_FROM_DATABASE=Display controller
E: ID_PCI_INTERFACE_FROM_DATABASE=VGA controller
E: ID_PCI_SUBCLASS_FROM_DATABASE=VGA compatible controller
E: ID_VENDOR_FROM_DATABASE=NVIDIA Corporation
E: MODALIAS=pci:v000010DEd00000DF8sv000010DEsd00000835bc03sc00i00
E: PCI_CLASS=30000
E: PCI_ID=10DE:0DF8
E: PCI_SLOT_NAME=0000:01:00.0
E: PCI_SUBSYS_ID=10DE:0835
E: SUBSYSTEM=pci
E: USEC_INITIALIZED=85345

There are other entries for the audio, but no other entries for the video. So it is not possible to create two "video seats" (actually, I never saw anything more than "seat0" with loginctl list-seats in the list of seats, even though I tagged the second mouse and keyboard as "seat-1"... From the the freedesktop website, it sounds like adding any tag named "seat-???" is enough to create a seat that loginctl list-seats would end up showing. It did not work for me, even after rebooting.)

One interesting aspect to this entry, it does not include a seat tag as we see in some other entries:

E: TAGS=:seat:

So I am pretty sure that the neat setup offered by Ubuntu page I linked above won't work at all with NVidia unless you have 2 or more video boards.

Later I tried the old way which means creating an xorg.conf setup with 2 screens. NVidia offers a way to do the setup automatically, which is great (i.e. the nvidia-settings tool can be used to save a valid xorg.conf.) That works in the sense that we do get two independent screens, but I have not found a way to place a login screen on the second screen (Screen 1). I tried to start X twice as shown in various places, but when starting X for screen 1 the NVidia driver tells me that certain resources are not available (locked by screen 0).

[Seat0]
xserver-command=/usr/bin/X :0
[Seat1]
xserver-command=/usr/bin/X :1

I'm not so sure lightdm would try to start both X servers, so I tried by hand from an ssh session and it works okay when starting the first X instance. The second generates errors and quits because it could not initialize the driver (which makes sense since both would be trying to use the same hardware resources.) The full command line I used is:

/usr/bin/X -config /etc/X11/xorg.conf -isolateDevice PCI:1:0:0 :0 \
          -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -sharevts -keeptty

And use :1 for the other one.

So I'm thinking that the straight forward screen 0 and 1 setup is what I need to use and just make sure Screen 1 is reserved for a different user. Anyone would know how to get that to work?

There is a version of the xorg.conf that I tried with thus far, but I have not found a way to get the second log in screen yet...

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 331.20  (buildd@roseapple)  Mon Feb  3 15:07:22 UTC 2014

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "seat0"
    Screen         "Screen0" 0 0
    #Screen      1  "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    #Option         "Xinerama" "0"
    # Avoid having X add all the devices to all the layouts
    Option         "AutoAddDevices" "False"
    Option         "AutoEnableDevices" "False"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "seat1"
    Screen       0 "Screen1" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    #Option         "Xinerama" "0"
    # Avoid having X add all the devices to all the layouts
    Option         "AutoAddDevices" "False"
    Option         "AutoEnableDevices" "False"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    #Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux" -- default setup
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse1"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mouse1"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
    # /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard1"
    Driver         "kbd"
    # /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/event7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Sony SDM-S73"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 65.0
    VertRefresh     57.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Samsung SyncMaster"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 81.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro 600"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro 600"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DVI-I-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0; DVI-I-0: 1280x1024 +0+0; DVI-I-0: 1024x768 +0+0; DVI-I-0: 800x600 +0+0; DVI-I-0: 640x480 +0+0"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Device1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I have had an HP LaserJet 2550L for a long time now. Since I upgraded to 13.10, I cannot print in black and white anymore.

Before, the driver would give me an option in the Print dialog. Although I had to remember and change the setup each time I would print, since I rarely print color documents, it wasn't that bad.

However, no such option appears in the newer version. Downgrading is always a very annoying feature update!

So I looked around and found that I had to go to preferences, printers, right click on my LaserJet 2550L and select Properties.

In there, I can click on Job Options and on that screen I see defaults, including the print-color-mode which is set to Color.

Clicking on the dropdown, I can select monochrome and then click either Apply or Save. In case of Apply you immediately see the problem, it does NOT save the change (it reverts right back to Color.) If you hit Save and come back, same thing, it's still on Color and not monochrome as just saved.

In what file is that data getting saved?

I found this file: /etc/cups/ppd/hp_color_LaserJet_2550.ppd

But changing the DefaultColorSpace to Gray in that file has no effect. The list of valid values for that field are defined here:

http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.7/postscript-driver.html

If I knew the file to which it is trying to save, I could try to edit that file instead...

P.S. I also tried to run the Python script as root and although it does not ask me for my password, it still doesn't keep my changes.

sudo /usr/bin/python /usr/share/system-config-printer/system-config-printer.py

Somehow my SSH never wants to ask me for a password.

So I setup a VPS on some random server somewhere in the world and I want to connect to it with ssh.

I can setup a key, but when I do this:

ssh -l some-user IP

I get the error:

Received disconnect from ##.##.##.##: 2: Too many authentication failures for some-user

When I look at the details, I can see that password is one of the options:

debug1: Offering RSA public key: some-user@computer
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password

Yet SSH never asks me for the password. It tries 5 times with what I suspect is the publickey method and then fails. Why wouldn't ssh try with the password?!

Just in case, my ssh_config file has:

PasswordAuthentication yes

Full log

ssh -v -l root ##.##.##.##
OpenSSH_6.1p1 Debian-4, OpenSSL 1.0.1c 10 May 2012
debug1: Reading configuration data /home/someuser/.ssh/config
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 19: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to ##.##.##.## [##.##.##.##] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /home/someuser/.ssh/id_rsa type 1
debug1: Checking blacklist file /usr/share/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048
debug1: Checking blacklist file /etc/ssh/blacklist.RSA-2048
debug1: identity file /home/someuser/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/someuser/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/someuser/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file /home/someuser/.ssh/id_ecdsa type -1
debug1: identity file /home/someuser/.ssh/id_ecdsa-cert type -1
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.2p2 Ubuntu-6
debug1: match: OpenSSH_6.2p2 Ubuntu-6 pat OpenSSH*
debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_6.1p1 Debian-4
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received
debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none
debug1: sending SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_INIT
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_ECDH_REPLY
debug1: Server host key: ECDSA XX:XX:...:XX:XX
debug1: Host '##.##.##.##' is known and matches the ECDSA host key.
debug1: Found key in /home/someuser/.ssh/known_hosts:38
debug1: ssh_ecdsa_verify: signature correct
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent
debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS
debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received
debug1: Roaming not allowed by server
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent
debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/someuser/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Offering RSA public key: someuser@computer
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Offering RSA public key: someuser@computer
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Offering DSA public key: someuser@computer
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Offering RSA public key: someuser@computer
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Offering RSA public key: someuser@computer
Received disconnect from ##.##.##.##: 2: Too many authentication failures for root

I am wondering whether there is a command line tool that one can use to download a package from a source (standard Ubuntu or PPA sources)?

I know that packages I just installed are found in /var/cache/apt/archives and I thus can check out the package from there.

However, if I installed the package a long time ago, I don't want to reinstall it, just check a few things in the source package, how can I get easily a hold of it without having to search for it on the Internet?

[update and update II: see my awkward and proper solutions at the end of the question, based on one of the answers]

I have an extremely slow DNS lookup when my resolv.conf file includes the 127.0.0.1 IP address, actually, many names do not get resolved at all as it (most certainly) times out.

I found one question with what looks like a valid answer here:

Extremely slow DNS lookup

except that I can see the the dnsmasq tool is running for the IP range 192.168.122.2 to 192.168.122.254. This looks like the IPs used by VirtualBox and qemu, so I would imagine that if I turn off dnsmasq, accessing the Internet from a virtual system will fail!

Would there be another reason for the slowness and/or timeout? (note that the problem is more prominent with specific systems such as the user pictures on all stackoverflow websites, including askubuntu, when the problem occurs.)

At this point I remove the IP from the resolv.conf file and that bypasses the issue while I'm browsing, but I don't think that's the best solution (and of course that IP is reinstalled there on each reboot!) I'd like a more permanent solution to this problem that still allows me to run the virtual systems as expected.

P.S. I do not run the Network Manager.

Contents of /etc/network/interfaces

Note that I had the problem before adding the 2nd IP on eth1 (i.e. eth1:0).

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
    address 162.226.130.121
    netmask 255.255.255.248
    network 162.226.130.120
    broadcast 162.226.130.127
    gateway 162.226.130.126

auto eth1:0
iface eth1:0 inet static
    name Local network
    address 192.168.1.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.1.0
    broadcast 192.168.1.255
    gateway 192.168.1.254

# bridge for virtual box
auto br0
iface br0 inet static
    address 192.168.2.1
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    network 192.168.2.0
    broadcast 192.168.2.255
    bridge_ports    eth3
    bridge_stp      off
    bridge_maxwait  0
    bridge_fd       0

Contents of the /etc/resolv.conf (which is still a soft link as expected) after a boot:

# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 127.0.0.1
search m2osw.com
nameserver 192.168.122.1
nameserver 206.13.31.12
nameserver 206.13.28.12

Update:

I do not write an answer myself because I very much used another answer here to resolve my issue, although it is really not what I wanted to do, it is the easiest solution at this point. The bug referenced by the resolvconf author below, found here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bind9/+bug/933723

clearly states that if you want to use bind9, you WILL get the namespace 127.0.0.1 in your resolv.conf file. No choice. (RESOLVCONF=no does not seem to do anything, although I may have a surprise after a reboot which I will do very soon!)

As a side note: If I point the /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/tail softlink to /dev/null (as mentioned below) then I get a resolv.conf that looks like this:

# Dynamic resolv.conf(5) file for glibc resolver(3) generated by resolvconf(8)
#     DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE BY HAND -- YOUR CHANGES WILL BE OVERWRITTEN
nameserver 127.0.0.1

In other words, I still get the 127.0.0.1 which is the culprit at this point. But also I completely lose the other two nameservers, even though they are clearly specified in my eth1 interface. This being said, looking in the /run/resolvconf/interface/ directory, I see an eth1.net and lo.named files. The lo.named is copied to the resolv.conf, but not the eth1.net. I have no clue how those files get created and then copied to resolv.conf but that is the dynamism used by resolvconf...

Anyway, there are two solutions mentioned in the bug:

(1) Delete the /etc/resolv.conf soft link and replace it with a plain file with exactly what you want. This may work for you, but I thought that keeping the default dynamic file would be best.

(2) Change your bind9 settings so BIND can respond to those local DNS requests. The interesting thing with that is that names will now be cached on your computer. So it is not all bad. This being said, I was not too interested in opening my nameserver to all domain names... But this works and I do not have to destroy the dynamic resolv.conf.

Just in case, here is an example setup for the bind to make that work:

options {
    [...]
    forwarders {
          // Google DNSes
          8.8.8.8;
          8.8.4.4;
    };
    [...]
};

Update II:

Okay! The reboot got rid of the lo.named file in the /run/resolvconf/interface directory. That must be because bind knows to create it if RESOLVCONF=yes, but it does not delete it if RESOLVCONF=no. However, a reboot takes care of that because the /run directory is a RAM disk.

Without that file in the way, the /etc/resolv.conf is setup with exactly what I'd expect which is the list of nameservers as defined in my eth1 definition found in /etc/network/interface as shown earlier.

So... it's a big mess because there are many factors and in some cases a reboot is required!