My 1000MBit Ethernet doesn't show any traffic count anymore since reinstalling with 14.04. With 12.10 everything was fine. Neither in ifconfig nor gnome-system-monitor shows any traffic. But the Network is working fine. The wireless network is counting traffic as it should (but it's disabled now)

$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx  
          inet Adresse:192.168.0.xxx  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          inet6-Adresse: xxxx::xxxx:xx:xxxx:xxxx/64 Gültigkeitsbereich:Verbindung
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metrik:1
          RX-Pakete:0 Fehler:0 Verloren:0 Überläufe:0 Fenster:0
          TX-Pakete:0 Fehler:0 Verloren:0 Überläufe:0 Träger:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:1000 
          RX-Bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX-Bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:16 

lo        Link encap:Lokale Schleife  
          inet Adresse:127.0.0.1  Maske:255.0.0.0
          inet6-Adresse: ::1/128 Gültigkeitsbereich:Maschine
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metrik:1
          RX-Pakete:87586256 Fehler:0 Verloren:0 Überläufe:0 Fenster:0
          TX-Pakete:87586256 Fehler:0 Verloren:0 Überläufe:0 Träger:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:0 
          RX-Bytes:14139377083 (14.1 GB)  TX-Bytes:14139377083 (14.1 GB)

$ lspci | grep Ethernet
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 08)
05:01.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR5212/AR5213 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

I know there is already a similar question about this topic. But that question was only about how to get the shutdown dialog in general. I need to get back the countdown of the old shutdown dialog (Ubuntu <= 12.10) which shutdown the system after 60sec.

geobuntu suggested this dbus call in his answer:

dbus-send --print-reply --dest="org.gnome.Shell" /org/gnome/SessionManager/EndSessionDialog org.gnome.SessionManager.EndSessionDialog.Open uint32:2 uint32:0 uint32:60 array:objpath:/org/gnome/SessionManager/EndSessionDialog

qdbus indicate that third argument is max_wait which should (in my opinion) set and start the countdown:

~$ qdbus org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/SessionManager/EndSessionDialog
[...]
method void org.gnome.SessionManager.EndSessionDialog.Open(uint type, uint arg_1, uint max_wait, QList<QDBusObjectPath> inhibitors)

But it doesn't. I already tried various values for type and arg_1 without luck.

EDIT: Actually the countdown is more 'nice to have'. What I really need is that the system WILL shutdown without any extra user action. It should work without sudo (including any no-password sudoers).

I would prefer dbus calls cause I already have a nice list of dbus calls which will shutdown all DE's except Unity >= 13.04

EDIT2: I had a look into Unity source. I don't know C++ but for me it looks like arg1 and timeout_length are not handled in source (can someone with C++ knowledge please confirm this?). Maybe this will be added in later releases.

EDIT3: I reported this as bug #1256703 on Launchpad.

I'm writing an extension to a python program that will need to store passwords and need to access them during non interactive cronjobs (during the user is not logged in).

My first approach was to use seahorse to store the password. But seahorse is not accessible when the user is not logged in, is it?

I'm trying to set up some Backgrounds and wrote a custom xml for that (later on I want to make a custom slideshow of these). The images should span over my dual monitor.

$ cat /home/user/.local/share/gnome-background-properties/wallpapers.xml 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE wallpapers SYSTEM "gnome-wp-list.dtd">
<wallpapers>
  <wallpaper>
    <name>Test1</name>
    <filename>/home/user/Bilder/test1.jpg</filename>
    <options>span</options>
    <pcolor>#000000</pcolor>
    <scolor>#000000</scolor>
    <shade_type>solid</shade_type>
  </wallpaper>
</wallpapers>

With options set to 'span' Control-Center does only show a black thumbnail. Starting Control-Center from terminal brings up an error:

$ gnome-control-center background
(gnome-control-center:7019): background-cc-panel-WARNING **: Unhandled value 'span' for enum 'GDesktopBackgroundStyle'

If I set options to 'zoom' everything works fine.

I've setup an encrypted homedir according to this EncryptedHomeDirectoryHowto.

To gain ssh access I've added auth required pam_encfs.so to /etc/pam.d/sshd

$ cat /etc/pam.d/sshd | egrep -v ^#
auth       required     pam_env.so # [1]
auth       required     pam_env.so envfile=/etc/default/locale
auth       required     pam_encfs.so
@include   common-auth
account    required     pam_nologin.so
@include   common-account
@include   common-session
session    optional     pam_motd.so # [1]
session    optional     pam_mail.so standard noenv # [1]
session    required     pam_limits.so

It does work for a short time after login but after 5-10min the homedir will be unmounted. If I'm logged in locally everything is working fine. Even ssh from an other machine.

It seems like unmount is done everytime cron is starting:

/var/log/auth

Feb 22 19:01:01 xxxxx sshd[12746]: Accepted password for USER from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx port 39769 ssh2
Feb 22 19:01:01 xxxxx sshd[12746]: pam_unix(sshd:session): session opened for user USER by (uid=0)
Feb 22 19:05:01 xxxxx CRON[13248]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Feb 22 19:05:01 xxxxx CRON[13248]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root

I'm running 'rsync -a -i /foo /bar'. Every now and then I would like to know what exactly rsync is doing at the moment without having the -v output all the time. Is it possible to increase the verbosity of running processes e.g. by sending a kill signal?