Seyed Mohammad's questions

From this morning I'm witnessing unfamiliar ads apearing in different pages while using Firefox which they say "Ads by DNSUnlocker".

I searched for it and it seems this is a known adware infecting Windows PCs and there are several steps to get rid of it (source-1, source-2).

Since I'm on Ubuntu I believe I must've been infected by browsing to a malicious URL, or installing an untrusted Firefox add-on, or maybe this adware also has a Linux version!

Anyway, how can I get rid of it? I checked my Firefox add-ons and there was nothing unfamiliar. One of the steps in the Windows solution is to RESET Firefox and Chrome settings!

I really don't want to reset my settings since I need them and redoing all the preferences is not easy. I need some help to disinfect my system and preferably, find the root cause of it.

UPDATE:

I closed Firefox, and opened Chromium and the ads didn't show up in the same websites I visited in Firefox. Then I opened Firefox again and unfortunately the ads were back again. So it seems the problem is specific to Firefox.

Also it might be worth mentioning that in both Firefox and Chromium I've had the 'Adblock Plus' add-on activated for years and it works great, but since yesterday I'm witnessing these strange ads poping up in some webpages.

UPDATE-2:

I opened Firefox in safe-mode (all add-ons and custom settings disabled) to see if the ads will go away, but unfortunately the ads also apear in safe mode! I guess this means that even reseting Firefox won't fix the problem!

What other explanation could this have? Before this safe-mode test, I was almost certain that the problem was with Firefox being infected, but after this I don't know what's going on! Could my system be infected with a Linux-compatible malware?!

Now I'm really pissed-off! Any help?

I frequently encounter text files (such as subtitle files in my native language, Persian) with character encoding problems. These files are created on Windows, and saved with an unsuitable encoding (seems to be ANSI), which looks gibberish and unreadable, like this:

In Windows, one can fix this easily using Notepad++ to convert the encoding to UTF-8, like below:

And the correct readable result is like this:

I've searched a lot for a similar solution on GNU/Linux, but unfortunately the suggested solutions (e.g this question) don't work. Most of all, I've seen people suggest iconv and recode but I have had no luck with these tools. I've tested many commands, including the followings, and all have failed:

$ recode ISO-8859-15..UTF8 file.txt
$ iconv -f ISO8859-15 -t UTF-8 file.txt > out.txt
$ iconv -f WINDOWS-1252 -t UTF-8 file.txt > out.txt 

None of these worked!

I'm using Ubuntu-14.04 and I'm looking for a simple solution (either GUI or CLI) that works just as Notepad++ does.

One important aspect of being "simple" is that the user is not required to determine the source encoding; rather the source encoding should be automatically detected by the tool and only the target encoding should be provided by the user. But nevertheless, I will also be glad to know about a working solution that requires the source encoding to be provided.

If someone needs a test-case to examine different solutions, the above example is accessible via this link.

As many have heard/read the news, a module of the state-sponsored trojan malware named "Turla" was recently discovered which infects Linux hosts: (News from ArsTechnica) (News from OMG-Ubuntu) (Technical Report by Kaspersky)

In the ArsTechnica article, it is mentioned that:

Administrators who want to check for Turla-infected Linux systems can check outgoing traffic for connections to news-bbc.podzone[.]org or 80.248.65.183, ... Admins can also build a signature using a tool called YARA that detects the strings "TREX_PID=%u" and "Remote VS is empty !"

This short explanation doesn't really help me to figure out how I should check if my system is infected or not!

So can someone give a clear step-by-step explanation?

UPDATE: Although there seems to be no absolute method for detecting the infection, but a clear and step-by-step explanation using convenient tools for network monitoring to detect connections to the above-mentioned addresses (e.g. vnstat, netstat, ...) and steps using convenient tools for blocking connection to and from the above-mentioned addresses (e.g. ufw, iptables, ...) is greatly appreciated and DESIRED!

My clock shows wrong time for GMT!

My local time is correct (Tehran, IRAN = GMT +3:30), but as it's clear from the above screenshot, GMT (Greenwich) is 1 hour behind according to Google!

The UTC and Pacific times are correct (checked with Google).

Note that "Time & Date" settings are set to "Automatically from the Internet".

Any ideas to fix this?

I installed Qreator using apt-get on Xubuntu-14.04:

$ sudo apt-get install qreator

But the application fails to start!

When I try to run it via Terminal, the following error messages are printed and the program aborts:

$ qreator

** (qreator:3859): WARNING **: Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-Gh2FPHrMr2: Connection refused
No handlers could be found for logger "qreator_lib"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/qreator", line 47, in <module>
    qreator.main()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/__init__.py", line 63, in main
    window = QreatorWindow.QreatorWindow()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator_lib/Window.py", line 48, in __new__
    new_object.finish_initializing(builder)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/QreatorWindow.py", line 79, in finish_initializing
    self.init_qr_types()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/QreatorWindow.py", line 135, in init_qr_types
    self.qr_types = [d(self.update_qr_code) for d in QRCodeType.dataformats]
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/qrcodes/QRCodeType.py", line 71, in __init__
    self.create_widget()  # pylint: disable=E1101
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/qrcodes/QRCodeLocation.py", line 29, in create_widget
    self.widget = QRCodeLocationGtk(self.qr_code_update_func)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/qrcodes/QRCodeLocationGtk.py", line 49, in __init__
    latitude, longitude = get_current_location()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/qreator/qrcodes/QRCodeLocationGtk.py", line 109, in get_current_location
    '/org/freedesktop/Geoclue/Providers/Hostip')
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 241, in get_object
    follow_name_owner_changes=follow_name_owner_changes)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/proxies.py", line 248, in __init__
    self._named_service = conn.activate_name_owner(bus_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 180, in activate_name_owner
    self.start_service_by_name(bus_name)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/bus.py", line 278, in start_service_by_name
    'su', (bus_name, flags)))
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/dbus/connection.py", line 651, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Geoclue.Providers.Hostip was not provided by any .service files

How can I fix this ?

I've been a happy user of ChmSee since the awesome 10.10 to view and read my CHM ebooks. Today I tried to install chmsee on my Xubuntu machine, but both apt-get and the Software Center were unable to find the package!

I searched for the package and shockingly it seems that ChmSee is no longer available as of Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty.

Is this true? Why would anyone want to remove such a perfectly usable and functional application?

UPDATE: Since the chmsee package is long gone from the official repos of 14.04-Trusty, what matters more is how can a user of 14.04 install and have this awesome application back.

So I'm updating the question to also ask for a nice way to install and use chmsee on Ubuntu-14.04 Trusty. From 'nice' I mean a way with very few effort and least harm to the system. I don't like adding entire new repositories just to install one app!

I've recently installed Xubuntu-14.04 on my VAIO-P netbook with Intel GMA-500 graphics chipset. I had several problems (as expected because of GMA-500/Poulsbo) and fortunately I was able to resolve most of them.

The last remaining problem to achieve an ideal experience is video playback quality: videos play choppy and laggy. I've tried several video players, including the default Parole, GNOME Videos (Totem) and VLC. The first two are the same and have choppy-laggy playbacks. VLC can do nothing and just hangs!

I'm testing with medium quality (480p) MP4 videos, which should be able to play fine. In Windows-7, even HD (720p) videos can be somewhat played (though not very smooth) but there is no problem with 360p or even 480p videos.

Note: I've been installing and using Ubuntu/Xubuntu on this machine since 10.10 and this is not a new problem with 14.04. In the past the problem was simply because there was no fine performing driver for GMA-500/Poulsbo graphics. But from 13.04 on-wards, many problems are gone or can be resolved easily, as I have done so myself.

So I was wondering if there is a solution for this?

Note-2: I don't know if this is related information but I also had choppy audio playback (both for videos and audio files), and I was able to resolve it using the solution suggested here, which was adding tsched=0 to the following line in /etc/pulse/default.pa:

load-module module-udev-detect

This solved the audio playback problem both for audio and video files. Now, the only remaining problem is the choppy video playback.

UPDATE: Surprisingly, Totem is now playing videos fine! I don't know what caused it to work because I didn't work on the issue since yesterday and suddenly it's working today! Although Parole is still unable to play smoothly and it's exactly as before: choppy and laggy.

I'll be using Totem (GNOME Videos) for now, but still I appreciate if anyone can help me understand what solved the problem on Totem, and how to solve it on Parole to.

I have Xubuntu-12.04 LTS on my Sony VAIO P with Intel GMA-500 graphics for more than a year. I have solved some issues using the fixes suggested in the Poulsbo-wiki but unfortunately some issues still remain ... most importantly: I'm unable to use external displays for presentations!

The kernel version of my installation is 3.2. I've read and heard that most problems regarding the Intel GMA-500 graphics cards are solved with the 3.4 Linux kernel and newer versions. Also, I've read about the "LTS Hardware Enablement Stack" for 12.04, which provides back-ports of the stable-kernels + X-stacks of 12.10 Quantal (Linux-Kernel-3.5) and 13.04 Raring (Linux-Kernel-3.8) for 12.04 LTS. It seems that even the new-kernel + X-stack of 13.10 Saucy will also be made available for 12.04 LTS, but at the current time, I only see the kernel in repos, and not the X-stack.

More detailed info: LTS Hardware Enablement Stack

So my question is :
Is it recommended for me to install this "LTS Hardware Enablement Stack" in hope of resolving my issues with Intel GMA-500 graphics ?! If yes, which one is more recommended (Quantal or Raring) ?!

What is zeitgeist-fts?!
It's always in the 3 top positions of memory usage (competing with Firefox and Compiz) . After a fresh boot it uses about 30 MB, but after some hours or a day, it goes above 300 MB and stays there !

The file of this process is located at /usr/lib/zeitgeist/zeitgeist-fts. I don't know what this thing does, but if it doesn't break any functionality, I would be really happy to remove it, because memory capacity is very precious to me.

Edit: I'm using Unity desktop on Ubuntu-12.04.2 LTS.

Short Description:

My host OS is Ubuntu-12.04 and using VirtualBox I have set up a VM of Oracle Linux 6.4 (based on RHEL) with Apache httpd web server. I need to access the web pages served by the VM from my host Ubuntu.

Additional Details:

Here are the configurations:

• The 1st network adapter of the VM is configured as NAT, since I need it to use the host's Internet connection. See image below:

  NAT configuration of 1st adapter:

• I have enabled a 2nd adapter as Host-only, so I can access the VM from the host (ssh or scp to guest VM from host, etc). This is working fine. The IP of the guest VM is manually set to 10.10.10.15 and I can successfully ping, ssh and scp to the guest VM without any problem. See below:

  Host-only configuration of 2nd adapter:

Inside the VM, I have set up Apache successfully and it's working for localhost but when I try to access the page from the host, by entering 10.10.10.15 in Chromium or Firefox, it fails to connect! :(

I have also tried to add an entry inside /etc/hosts as follows, but entering test-website.net inside Chromium or Firefox still gives the same error! :(

10.10.10.15    test-website.net

One more thing to note is about SELinux. As you might know, SELinux is enabled by default on RHEL-based distros such as CentOS and Oracle-Linux. To make sure that SELinux is not messing up my work, I have configured it to permissive mode in /etc/selinux/config and confirming the effect after reboot using sestatus:

SELinux status:                 enabled
SELinuxfs mount:                /selinux
Current mode:                   permissive
Mode from config file:          permissive
Policy version:                 26
Policy from config file:        targeted

This may sound like a duplicate of the following questions, but the answers in these questions suggest to set up a Host-only adapter for the guest and configure /etc/hosts in the host, which I have already tested and didn't work for me:

• Question #1
• Question #2

Any help?!

I want to setup a VM server and by my previous experience, the first thing that came to my mind was the "VMware ESXi" hypervisor. To use ESXi you need the client application, called "vSphere" to connect and manage your VMs remotely. Unfortunately vSphere is only published for Microsoft Windows and has no Linux version.

So my question is, what alternatives do I have instead of VMware ESXi that provides similar functionality and supports Linux? Are there any free/open-source hypervisors similar to ESX, where they have client applications for both Linux and Windows?

I've also heard from a few people that there is a product based on KVM by RedHat, but I don't have any info on it.

I'm using Xubuntu, since GNOME and Unity are too heavy for my netbook.

I want to disable 'gnome-keyring' prompts.

I tried sudo apt-get remove gnome-keyring which results:

The following packages will be REMOVED:
    gnome-keyring oneconf python-ubuntu-sso-client software-center 
                  ubuntu-sso-client ubuntu-sso-client-gtk xubuntu-desktop
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

and of course I didn't confirm that!
Because it will remove the whole xubuntu-desktop and software-center !!

Can someone help?

I want to change the destination of an existing symbolic link, without removing the link or the old destination.

I have previously created a symbolic link to a directory such as follows :

$ cd /usr/lib/jvm/

$ ls -lh
drwxr-xr-x 8 uucp  143 4.0K Sep 10 20:22  jdk1.7.0_04
drwxr-xr-x 8 uucp  143 4.0K Aug 29 05:42  jdk1.7.0_07

$ sudo ln -s jdk1.7.0_04 oracle-jdk-7

$ ls -lh
drwxr-xr-x 8 uucp  143 4.0K Sep 10 20:22  jdk1.7.0_04
drwxr-xr-x 8 uucp  143 4.0K Aug 29 05:42  jdk1.7.0_07
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   12 May 11 11:27  oracle-jdk-7 -> jdk1.7.0_04/

Now I want to change this, to link to the other directory :

$ sudo ln --force -s jdk1.7.0_07 oracle-jdk-7

But it doesn't work without any errors :

$ ls -lh
drwxr-xr-x 8 uucp  143 4.0K Sep 10 20:36  jdk1.7.0_04
drwxr-xr-x 8 uucp  143 4.0K Aug 29 05:42  jdk1.7.0_07
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   12 May 11 11:27  oracle-jdk-7 -> jdk1.7.0_04/

Any help ?

When I connect my 3G USB Modem to my laptop with 12.04, nothing shows up in Network-Manager. This modem is working in 11.10 and the modem is shown in Network-Manager but not in 12.04 !!

Here are the outputs of lsusb and usb-devices on two machines , one with 11.10 and the other with 12.04 :

Ubuntu-11.10 :

$ lsusb
    Bus 002 Device 009: ID 1c9e:6061  

$ usb-devices
    T:  Bus=02 Lev=02 Prnt=02 Port=03 Cnt=01 Dev#=  9 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
    D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
    P:  Vendor=1c9e ProdID=6061 Rev=00.00
    S:  Manufacturer=3G USB Modem        ￴￴
    S:  SerialNumber=000000000002
    C:  #Ifs= 4 Cfg#= 1 Atr=a0 MxPwr=500mA
    I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=option
    I:  If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=option
    I:  If#= 2 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=option
    I:  If#= 3 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=usb-storage

Ubuntu-12.04 :

$ lsusb
    Bus 002 Device 003: ID 1c9e:6061 OMEGA TECHNOLOGY WL-72B 3.5G MODEM

$ usb-devices
    T:  Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#=  3 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
    D:  Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
    P:  Vendor=1c9e ProdID=6061 Rev=00.00
    S:  Manufacturer=Qualcomm, Incorporated
    S:  Product=USB MMC Storage
    S:  SerialNumber=000000000002
    C:  #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr=100mA
    I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=06 Prot=50 Driver=(none)

As the output of the above commands show, the device is detected as a modem in 11.10 but in 12.04 it is detected as a USB storage (the device is both a 3G Modem and a SD-card USB adapter).

Any help ?!

I have a Sony VAIO netbook with Intel GMA-500 Poulsbo Graphics and I'm trying to boot the latest Ubuntu-12.04 Beta-2 using a bootable USB.

According to this Ubuntu-Wiki, support for Intel GMA-500 Poulsbo graphics is promising in Precise-Beta2 and should work out of the box. Of course the wiki talks about a problem when booting from USB and states that restarting X using: sudo service lightdm restart will bring a functional graphical desktop, but nothing happens for me!

Any help is highly appreciated.

I have a Sony VAIO P netbook and for several issues (graphics driver, audio driver and power management), I want to install an older version of the Linux kernel on Ubuntu 11.10 (actually its Xubuntu) that seems to be much more suitable.

So I searched for Ubuntu kernels and found this link which includes all versions of the Linux kernel distributed by Ubuntu. I am looking for a version before 2.6.38 (to escape the known power management issue) and of course solve my many driver problems!

1. I guess my best bet is 2.6.37 but there are several 2.6.37.x-x kernels! Can someone point me to the right choice?

2. In each folder (for example: this one) there are several DEB packages. Which packages should I install? (Note: I have a 32-bit system)

3. What is the installation process? sudo dpkg -i *.deb ? Is this fine or additional steps are required?

Thanks.