mloman's questions

I run Ubuntu on a 32GB USB3.0 stick. (I use shared computers, and don't wish to touch the computer's hard-drive)

I have been using Ubuntu 17.04 with kernel 4.10 on a Dell e5570 since it came out.

When I install Ubuntu 16.04 or 17.10 onto the USB stick (as 17.04 stopped receiving updates), and run it on the Dell e5570, it failed to boot. Each time it fails in a different way.

1. It makes it to the login screen, I sign in, and it goes to black screen.
2. I make it to the login screen, and as I move the cursor, it goes to black screen.
3. It hangs on the Ubuntu logo
4. While booting, it give an EXT4 error
5. While booting, its gives a kernel panic error

I thought it was the USB stick I was installing Ubuntu on, or the usb starter disk, but different sticks have the same result.

Also, I don't think its a hard-drive error since the same USB installed Ubuntu that fails on an e5770 loads fine on a Dell E5440 (I'm using this now).

The only thing I can think of is that the linux kernel after 4.10 is not compatible with the Dell E5570. This is of some concern, as this is the main shared computer some universities have adopted. There are thousands of this model at my university (upgraded from the previous E5440), and hence anyone who wants to use Ubuntu on these machines is not going to be able to.

Has anyone heard anything about this, and is there a workaround for it ?

The laptops at my work are all shared, so I regularly switch between different laptops of the same model. I run Ubuntu on an external USB drive, so that I can use Ubuntu without installing or altering my work's computers in any way. I also run the same Ubuntu harddrive on my computer at home.

My work however has introduced new laptops, and I'm having trouble loading Ubuntu on the new system. I suspected that it may have to do with the CPU firmware. Using the old laptops, I did a fresh install of Ubuntu onto my USB drive, and installed intel microcodes via "sudo apt-get install intel-microcode".

Will the intel microcode update the firmware specific to the computer that I was using at the time of installation, and will this cause problems when I load my Ubuntu external drive on other different computers that have different CPUs?

I find on netstat that mpd is listening on port 6600.

I play all my media files on VLC. I don't remember installing this, and its not in my startup applications.

Is mpd even needed?

For a little while now, a strange connection has been showing up on my netstat made by the command:

/usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-http --spawner :1.1 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/2 

By the time I notice it, the connection is always at the closed state. Every time I trace the IP address, it usually says that no website is registered.

I am unsure what activated this. It could be one of my browsers (Chrome and Firefox). I'm getting a little worried about this.

Could someone clue me in to what this could possibly be, and how to prevent the connection.

I'm going to set up a couple of general use computers on one of my lab's work benches.

There's a whole bunch of PPA repositories and applications from the Ubuntu repositories that I'd like to install after an initial Ubuntu installation.

Is it possible to write up a script that will install all those apps and PPAs in one go, requiring me only to double click the executable script and type in the admin password?

I imagine it would be fairly straight forward. Could someone point me to a quick tutorial or perhaps even provide a template script of some sort so I can add in the PPA names and apt-get install packages?

Thanks.

I'm not sure what has happened, but I've all of a sudden lost write access to any of my NTFS external drives.

I installed a few games and apps from the software center, and now I can't make new folders or copy and paste files to anything that is NTFS. Everything is now read only, and I've tried so many things to fix it, but it seems hopeless.

Just to check if it wasn't the drives themselves, I made a little ntfs formatted truecrypt volume, and a fat formatted volume. And yes, it seems that Ubuntu is blocking me from writing anything to NTFS.

What happened here?

Whats a way I can simply get write access to my NTFS drives, so I can just backup all my stuff.

I'll probably reinstall Ubuntu. Please help.

UPDATE (and thanks everyone for their quick replies)

The problem has been solved.

Prior to noticing that I had lost NTFS write permission, I had installed GParted from the software center, and there was an extension called ntfsprogs that came with it.

During my search for a solution to the problem, I uninstalled GParted (as that was one of the apps I installed just before the problem). But that did not solve the problem.

I came across an app called 'NTFS Configuration Tool'. When I installed this, it said that the ntfsprogs extension needed to be removed (so I guess uninstalling GPARTED, didn't remove the ntfsprog extension).

I launched the NTFS Configuration Tool and now I have write access to NTFS drives. Unfortunately, I didn't check if I had write permission prior to launching the NTFS Configuration Tool, so I'm not sure whether the NTFS Configuration Tool, or the un-installation of ntfsprog gave me back NTFS write permission.

Hopefully if another newbee encounters this problem, they'll come across this page and know what to do.

I installed The classic menu indicator that can be installed from ppa:diesch/testing (some really cool packages there btw).

Now I want to edit the main menu, reorganize some of the applications, make my own catergories etc.

Will installing alacarte allow me to edit this menu as I used to be able to in Gnome 2?

Also, as per this question, how can these cool little indicators be moved across the the unity panel?

I refuse to install gnome-panel or gnome-session packages anymore since there appears to be too many conflicts with these and the new unity interface.

I only want http, https and DNS to be open.

I'm having troubles with setting up port ranges in the UFW GUI. How do I input configs into the feilds?

Basically, something along the lines of this, but in GUFW, as I'm trying to convert my Windows paranoid bro who hates the command line.

iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 80 --sport 32768:61000 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I OUTPUT -p udp --dport 53 --sport 32768:61000 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 443 --sport 32768:61000 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A OUTPUT -o lo -j ACCEPT
iptables -I OUTPUT -p icmp -j DROP

iptables -I INPUT -p icmp -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -p udp -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --syn -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT

iptables -I INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

And there has to be a logging system easily accessible to see any supposed intrusions.

I copied my entire music, video and epub library from my external harddrive (NTFS) to a folder in my home directory (ext4)

It was a total of about 100 Gigabytes.

I noticed that over time, the copying rate slowed.

When I did this in reverse prior to installing the new Ubuntu, the rate slowed down to 3.7 Mb per second.

In both situations, after the copying finished, which took a few hours, all functions of the computer were laggy. Windows lagged in loading up. Menus lagged when clicking on them.

The CPU graph in my indicator applet was extremely high. After reboot, it all returned to normal.

Is there some memory leak occurring when writing or reading the hard disk? What's going on here?

I'm setting rules for ufw using the Gufw.

In the preconfigured tab, there are applications which I can set to allow internet access.

How can I add more applications to that list?

If a PPA in your sources list has a package of the same name in the Ubuntu Software Center, which one shows up in the software center. Likewise, which package is downloaded via apt-get install ?

I recently installed keynav from the software center.

As per this question, I wanted to change the configuration of keynav so that I could use the arrow keys instead of using a mouse to navigate the mouse cursor.

However, keynav did not place the ~/.keynavrc file into my home directory (I have hidden files shown). Is anyone here familiar with this program, and how can I reconfigure the keynav keys?

The alt + right click combination does not work for editing gnome-panel in the unity interface, but I eventually found that holding alt and clicking both mouse buttons at the same time worked to bring up the panel's properties menu.

It occasionally works when I hold alt and press both mouse buttons on any panel applets. Most of the time I am stuck with the added applets.

I was able to delete the top gnome-panel. But when I changed the bottom panel's properties to be on the right side of the screen, it completely disappeared, and there was no way to get it back, even when I logged in with gnome-classic.

(So far, I have had to dump gnome-panel as an option for an extra Ubuntu 11.10 panel, as there appear to be too many conflicts between the gnome panel and the new unity interface.)

Are there any configurations that can be altered to make the editing of the gnome-panel easier? Such as in Gconf-editor or Dconf-editor?

I've added a couple of applets to the Ubuntu Unity top panel. How can I move them from the right side to the left side?

For example, in this Video, the person seems to have moved the Unity Panel applet "classic-menu-indicator" to the left side of the screen.

I assume dconf-editor will be involved. How can this be done for any added panel applet?

I know that SWAP is used when putting a computer into hibernation.

But is SWAP used when the computer is suspended?

Some computers in this network have allocated LAN IP addresses, although other computers (the visitors) can sometimes steal the allocated IP addresses. Recently, suspended computers are losing their ability to connect.

When I suspend my computer, are all Internet connections disconnected?

How do I find out how many people use a particular PPA.

I see on a particular PPA ;

Package build summary
A total of 108 builds have been dispatched for this PPA.
Completed builds
108 successful
0 failed

Does that mean only 108 people have added this PPA to their sources list and installed the package?

I installed the indicator-multiload 0.2-0ubuntu1 from the software center. (It's very similar to the gnome panel indicator showing memory and CPU graphs)

When I click on the Unity panel which shows the little memory graph, it says ;

Mem :1.451 GB Cache: 2.581. This is also represented in the color graph.

However, when I load the System Monitor, SWAP is at a flat 0.

Is this normal, or could there be a bug in either the System Monitor or Panel Indicator?

Personally, I mostly trust downloading programs from the software center, and usually stay clear of PPAs.

Do programs go through a process of going from a ppa to becoming part of the universe repository in the software center?

In the software center, it says

Canonical does not provide updates for System Load Indicator. Some updates may be provided by the Ubuntu community. for some programs.

So if a bug is fixed for that program, do I have to wait until the next Ubuntu version, or will the bug be patched next time I run my Ubuntu update manager?

This may be related to the question (not sure if I should edit the original question)

I noticed, some PPAs have related projects.

For example

https://launchpad.net/~indicator-multiload

https://launchpad.net/indicator-multiload

They are both maintained by the same people.

Would the first one be a bleeding edge version of the application, where as the second one is related to the package that you can download from the software center?