mikewilliamson's questions

As the title suggests, I upgraded my Dell XPS 15 laptop to 14.10 and now the brightness is stuck at the lowest level. The fn+F4/F5 displays the brightness notifications but the brightness level of the screen does not change.

Things I have tried that did not help:

Switching from Nvidia drivers to Nouveau did not help.

xrandr does increase the gamma a tiny bit:

 xrandr --output "LVDS1" --brightness "1"

Many questions suggest either adding or subtracting acpi_backlight to your /etc/default/grub file, which did not help either:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi_backlight=vendor splash"

I also tried writing directly to the brightness file:

echo 4000 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

There seem to be many questions of this type:

Automatic screen brightness on Ubuntu 14.10 not working right, manual controls not working at all

Can't control laptop screen brightness after upgrading to 14.10

Hot keys brightness issues with Ubuntu 14.10 in Acer Aspire 5755

Toshiba u840: Hotkeys don't work after upgrading to 14.10

Unable to change screen brightness with hotkeys on Ubuntu 14.10

Upgraded to 14.10, brightness control quit working - Intel HD 4400

Which package should I be looking at to file a bug? What information would help?

Does anyone have a solution I should try that is not listed above?

Update: Booting from a live USB (I think it was 13.04) reset the brightness to the maximum. Booting back the 14.10 the screen stayed bright, but the brightness controls still don't do anything. Feels like progress. :)

I created a live usb using usb-creator-gtk. I installed Ubuntu with it and all was good with the world. Now I am trying to use the same memory stick and create a live USB for 14.04 and I get the following error when trying to erase the disk.

org.freedesktop.DBus.Python.gi._glib.GError: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/dbus/service.py", line 707, in _message_cb
  retval = candidate_method(self, *args, **keywords)
  File "/usr/share/usb-creator/usb-creator-helper", line 239, in Format
  block.call_format_sync('dos', GLib.Variant('a{sv}', {'erase': GLib.Variant('s',   '')}), None)
gi._glib.GError: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.Failed: Error erasing device: Unknown or unsupported erase type `'

How can I fix this so I can create a new live USB?

I could watch DVD's in 13.04 but now that I have upgraded to 13.10 DVDs don't seem to be playable. In Totem video player I get:

An error occurred

The movie could not be read.

I seem to remember a /dev/dvd device file or /dev/dvdrw... VLC defaults to try to read from that as well, so I don't think I am imagining that. Anyway those are gone and all that remains that visibly pertains to my optical drive is /dev/cdrom.

I have DECSS and the usual stuff installed and playback used to work.

Some further information:

mike@sleepycat:~☺  totem --play dvd:///dev/cdrom
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.13 for DVD access
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 4.2.0
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.13 for DVD access
libdvdnav: DVD Title: Bronson
libdvdnav: DVD Serial Number: 3b977969
libdvdnav: DVD Title (Alternative): Bronson
libdvdnav: Unable to find map file '/home/mike/.dvdnav/Bronson.map'
libdvdnav: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00fe0000. Regions: 1

libdvdread: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
libdvdread: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x0000012f
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB at 0x00000177
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB at 0x0000017c
libdvdread: Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB (0x0000017c)!!
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_0.VOB at 0x001aa417
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_1.VOB at 0x001aa41b
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_0.VOB at 0x001dd024
libdvdread: Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_0.VOB (0x001dd024)
libdvdread: Elapsed time 4
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_1.VOB at 0x001ea6f0
libdvdread: Error cracking CSS key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_1.VOB (0x001ea6f0)!!
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Found 3 VTS's
libdvdread: Elapsed time 4

Anyone have some thoughts on debugging this?

I just brought home my brand new XPS 15 L521X. I booted to Ubuntu 12.10 using a memory stick to check that the wifi and everything is working (it is). I am wanting to wipe the drive and install Ubuntu, and I don't really care about secure boot.

The only description of the hard drive on the site was "Up to 750GB SATA hard drive (7200RPM)" so I was a little surprised with what is actually in there:

And now the good surprise... an SSD! The 8 gig partition is EFI.

My instinct is to get rid of all the crazy little partitions on /dev/sda and probably use it for my home folder. The SSD on /dev/sdb I was thinking I would use for / so the OS would boot quickly.

My questions:

Is there enough space on the ~29 Gig /dev/sdb drive for the OS?

Is deleting the EFI partition a mistake? Does it mess up firmware upgrades?

Is there any reason to keep any of those OEM partitions if I am never going to use Windows?

I am trying to use live-build to create a remix of ubuntu 12.04. My goal is a bootable liveusb that can install the base ubuntu system plus my custom packages. I am using live-build with the following config options:

 lb config --mode ubuntu --distribution precise --hostname livecd --username livecduser --archive-areas "main contrib" --binary-images iso-hybrid --architecture amd64 --debian-installer live

For some reason it fails with the following error:

Building dependency tree... Done
E: Unable to locate package console-common
P: Begin unmounting filesystems...

Strangely:

apt-cache search console-common
console-common - basic infrastructure for text console configuration

Anyone have thoughts or guidance on why this is failing?

I have a series of machines that I am building for work that have usb card readers. When I boot them I get a long series of messages:

...
[ 2347.768419] hub 1-6:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 6
[ 2347.968178] usb 1-6.6: new full-speed USB device number 10 using ehci_hcd
[ 2352.552020] usb 1-6.6: device not accepting address 10, error -32
[ 2352.568421] hub 1-6:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 6
[ 2352.768179] usb 1-6.6: new full-speed USB device number 12 using ehci_hcd
[ 2357.352033] usb 1-6.6: device not accepting address 12, error -32
...

On some older machines this only takes a few attempts before the card reader finally accepts an address, while on newer machines it can take many minutes. Changing hardware is not an option and plugging the usb card reader into a different port is only an option for the older manchines. This was a problem under 11.04 and I am now running the 12.04 beta and its still happening.

Is there something I can do in the software (a udev rule perhaps?) that would fix this?

Any advice appreciated. I'm happy to provide more details if you need them.

We use Ubuntu at work and I will need to make the same configuration changes to many systems so I am packaging these. One of the configuration changes I need to make is setting lightdm to autologin. For me to package this change it seems I will need to clobber the existing /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf and replace it with the my customized lightdm.conf. This seems like a bad idea.

How can I do this in a way that is won't cause breakage and is inline with how the rest of the community is working?

I am trying to figure out how to deploy a set of Firefox defaults (some changeable some not) to a series of Ubuntu Desktops. The machines are running Natty and Firefox 6. I would like to install this set of defaults as a .deb package ideally.

I thought I would start small and set the default homepage using one of the config files but so far I can't get firefox to acknowledge any of my changes regardless of where I put them. My basic test has been this:

pref('browser.startup.page', "http://askubuntu.com");

And so far I have put that line in:

/etc/firefox/syspref.js
/usr/lib/firefox-6.0/defaults/pref/vendor.js
~/.mozilla/firefox/whatever.default/prefs.js
~/.mozilla/firefox/whatever.default/user.js
/usr/share/xul-ext/ubufox/defaults/preferences/000system.js

I quit Firefox, make the change in the file and then log out and log in and start FF again. Every one of these has been unsuccessful.

Keeping in mind that the default homepage is only the first of about a dozen settings I need to customize, how can I get Firefox to use the settings I am adding?

I want the resolution of my console to match my screen resolution(1440x900). 1024x768 works fine but for some reason when I put 1440x900 when I switch to ttyX the command prompt is almost right off the bottom of the screen! The Ubuntu splash screen goes off the edge of the screen during boot as well.

Here is my /etc/default/grub

  4 GRUB_DEFAULT=0
  5 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
  6 GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
  7 GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
  8 GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
  9 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
 10 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
 11 GRUB_GFXMODE=1440x900
 12 GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

How do I get my CLI resolution to be 1440x900?

I keep a windows partition on my laptop for the occaisional bit of Photoshop work. A while ago I noticed that Windows had disappeared from my grub boot menu and when I try to mount the windows partion, my system hangs for a bit and then I get this:

Unable to mount 105 GB Filesystem
Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error
Failed to calculate free MFT records: Input/output error
NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a
SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows
then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very
important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate
it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g.
/dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation
for more details.

It seems that chkdsk is a windows command but since I can't boot into windows (since its the windows partition that is the problem) I'm not sure what to do. Here is the output of fdisk to give you the lay of the land:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x98000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1       10199    81923436   83  Linux
/dev/sda2   *       10200       22947   102398310    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3           22948       29164    49938052+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           29165       30401     9936202+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           29165       30401     9936171   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Any guidance would be appreciated!