Marky's questions

I am using KDE on a laptop with Ubuntu 12.04. In the office I am using an additional monitor for work. When I leave the office, I take my laptop with me.

My issue is that KDE cannot remember my dual-monitor setup the next day.

On Ubuntu Unity this is not an issue. It always remembers the configuration.

Has anybody here found a way to get around this issue? I need it to be persistent so that I don't have to do this each day.

Thanks. :)

EDIT:

Ubuntu - 12.04.3

KDE - 4.12.0

I am using the kubuntu-ppa/backports for Precise.

Note: KDE has System Settings > Display And Monitor > Size And Orientation to handle multiple monitor setup.

I am trying to get rid of some of the indicator icons on the Lightdm login screen (or maybe just get rid of everything). No luck so far.

The file I am editing is @ /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.canonical.unity-greeter.gschema.xml on Ubuntu 12.04.3.

After making the changes, I compile with sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/ command.

When I test with lightdm --test-mode it seems that Lightdm is going on an endless loop.

Anybody here has successfully removed the indicators before? I just want the power indicator, or perhaps if it's possible, totally remove all indicators.

Thanks!

Edit: By power I meant the shutdown/restart indicator, which is rightfully called session indicator.

I have this weird issue on my laptop right now. The keyboard is not functioning 100%. This means, I can type my login details to get into Ubuntu. I can type something on Dash. But other than this (on the desktop), no output from the keyboard when using all the other apps - as in I start to type and nothing comes out.

The surprising thing is that when I shift to Guest session, the keyboard functions normally.

When I shift to another TTY, like Alt+F5, keyboard works normally.

This is the first time I've encountered this so far in my use of Linux. Keyboards normally never fail on any of the desktop environments I've used over the years.

Any ideas what's happening? Could be the config files on my home is too messy already. I've upgraded this from 11.10 to 13.04, then now 13.10 without a re-install. Works fine so far, until now that I can't do much without a keyboard.

Thanks in advance!

P.S. Mouse and touchpad works fine.

I would like to know what program is responsible for writing messages to the console during the start, logout and shutdown process. What I'm referring to is that black console that comes out and spews forth ugly messages on the screen. Is it init?

Under normal circumstances the console messages will not show on start. However it is almost always there on shutdown. On several occasions it also shows when I try to logout of a current session.

Thanks! :)

I have Steam running on Ubuntu and loaded using 'optirun'. Will it follow that games that are started through Steam will also be using the Nvidia discrete card? It doesn't seem to look that way.

What commands can be used to tell that it's running on Nvidia?

Okay I'm really lost on this one. After installing AMD Catalyst driver 12.1 on my laptop, it worked after a few tweaks. I was jumping with joy prematurely because the driver finally worked, only to find out later after a reboot that the proprietary driver went nuts yet again (same with the earlier AMD graphics drivers last year I've tried).

As usual when using fglrx I get a black screen instead of GDM, and if I do manage to get to a desktop I get the error from AMDCCCLE control panel that it cannot initialize because the device or driver is not found (something like that). So going back, Ctrl+Alt+F* keys are useless. After a couple reboots with the same result, I continued to recovery mode and deleted all fglrx related installs. I proceeded to reinstall a few packages as suggested on this page - http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_Natty_Installation_Guide#Removing_Catalyst.2Ffglrx.

Note that I've done this several times without issues but the flgrx drivers. Whenever I reverted I always got everything back to normal. This time is not the same. Keyboard and touchpad are not working. The wireless mouse will work after I plug in the receiver when the boot reaches GDM, or I unplug-plug it. This is not a hardware issue. On Windows 7 and Live Ubuntu all 3 devices work properly without me doing anything.

I am looking at top and noticed that after I managed to get my USB2.0-CRW (Realtek chip and it's built into my laptop), its kernel module keeps on showing up. top says it's using 0.0 memory but 1% CPU, and priority is 20.

Is there some way to get this to stop polling and use, probably interrupts? I remember I read that this used to be a problem with optical drives on Linux. It would keep on polling after every few seconds. Just wondering if this is as simple as a command or a file to modify, perhaps a recompile of the driver/module, but if it needs rewriting the code, then I think there is not much that can be done.

Thanks.

*oh BTW: 2.6.38-13-generic kernel on Natty Narwhal, RTS5139

Is there such a tool?

My desktop as of late is taking longer to load than usual. I'd say it takes more than 20 seconds from GDM login until I see the desktop. Aside from disabling all app-indicators and testing it manually one by one, what else should be done? The only indicator I remember activating lately was bluetooth and I have already disabled it from Startup Applications. No improvement.

I know of bootchart, but I don't really have a problem with boot. It is only after I login that the issue occurs. I'm on Natty Narwhal.

*Updating this thread.... The issue seems to have fixed itself and I did not even do anything. It is really weird. I guess this is how Gnome works (and talk about not recognizing your theme and reverting to Windows 95-like look. How about that?). I have been a long time KDE user and I never encountered issues like this one. The KDE then may have booted into the desktop longer (from KDM) but at least I know it was consistent.

Is there a way to hide the Grub2 menu so that it does not show by default and boots off the pre-selected OS immediately unless another key, like F8 in Windows, is pressed after BIOS to intercept the boot?

It appears that starting with 11.04 Plymouth starts so late in the boot process. Sometimes I only have a split second to see it before it transitions to the login screen. This is the same for 11.10.

Compared to 10.04 and 10.10, Plymouth starts only a couple seconds or so after Grub and is very visible within the entire boot process.

Is there something that can be done to have Plymouth run earlier? I have experienced this on 3 different machines and on 2 of these machines, I've been running Ubuntu since 10.04. So it's not just my notebook's hardware that is causing this.

*One a side note, the boot process is one of the ugliest parts of modern Linux. Ubuntu is not excluded. After almost a decade, (I forget but was bootsplash the first?) this still has only been partly solved. For a couple of seconds ugly text is still seen when shutting down. On several ocassions, the same ugly text is seen when logging out of a session. It's never as smooth as you want it to be.

Splash themes are great, don't get me wrong. It's just the transitions that are way off and you get glimpses of what's underneath. I'm used to this but for those new to Ubuntu and coming from Windows. It is a turn off.* pardon the rant. :)

Are there ways to keep this at a minimum or to limit it to only when necessary?

This is from powertop.

I suppose with Firefox there is not much that can be done unless history/cookies/cache/etc are set to never be saved.

The program 'firefox-bin' is writing to file 'webappsstore.sqlite' on /dev/sda6.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.

What is this? I don't have a Web App Store addon of any kind.

The program 'firefox-bin' is writing to file 'cookies.sqlite' on /dev/sda6.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.

The program firefox-bin' is writing to file 'places.sqlite-wal' on /dev/sda6.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.

What about the other apps?

The program 'flush-8:0' is writing to file '_CACHE_003_' on /dev/sda6.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.

The program 'dconf-service' is writing to file 'user.62VC1V' on /dev/sda6.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.

The program 'unity-panel-ser' is writing to file 'user' on /dev/sda6.
This prevents the disk from going to powersave mode.

This is weird. My laptop which is newer and faster by over twice as much than my desktop, and 64-bit nonetheless VS 32-bit, seems to boot slow compared to the latter. What is even more weird is that the laptop appears to load the DE slower because it attempts to ready everything in one go. As a result, after logging in, it is stuck for how many seconds with just the GDM background (the default Ubuntu wallpaper) before it loads the desktop. Imagine a KDE splash screen after login without the splash! Not very pretty.

I know having a lot of indicators can be one main cause, but I almost have the same indicators on my laptop and desktop, the latter just ahead by one more indicator. I'm not saying desktop is faster on this (loading the DE) but the impression is faster because the difference is that after logging in on the desktop it will very shortly load Unity interface then load the indicators one by one. The progress can be seen on the top right portion as the indicators appear.

This is how I want it ideally. Is there a way to recreate this? Some settings under compiz, GDM/Gnome or Unity, or whatever I have to tweak to get this behaviour?

Thank you! :)

*note: As indicated above, I am on Natty with Unity

I'm getting a warning from this executable along with /usr/bin/mail. Apparently, the latter is a symbolic link to /etc/alternatives/mail which in turn is a symbolic link to the former. Is it part of the official Ubuntu package?

And what of these, anybody familiar?

[11:22:59]   Checking /dev for suspicious file types         [ Warning ]
[11:22:59] Warning: Suspicious file types found in /dev:
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3395357841: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-209100905: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1946326073: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-398300649: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1247248499: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-919341478: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-3492730495: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-2387631939: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/mono.1905: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-2124227282: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-626708369: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-135679340: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-2263796104: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-2124025764: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-226259018: data
[11:22:59]          /dev/shm/pulse-shm-1077030235: data
[11:23:00]   Checking for hidden files and directories       [ Warning ]
[11:23:00] Warning: Hidden directory found: /etc/.java
[11:23:00] Warning: Hidden directory found: /dev/.udev
[11:23:00] Warning: Hidden directory found: /dev/.initramfs

On Ubuntu some apps call /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1 when it needs to execute "privileged processes". This is inconsistent with gksu force grab behavior where the whole screen is disabled unless user cancels.

Is there any way the former could be made to have a force grab to make it more consistent with gksu?

With the release of Natty Narwhal, the Ubuntu homepage is sporting a new look - the one with a Dell laptop. I'm interested to know what Dell laptop model is that? It looks really nice but I can't find it on Dell website. I found a similar looking Vostro but not the same exact model. If anyone has any idea what it is, please post a link. And sorry if questions like this one are not allowed here. This does not seem to be a technical question more of sales. :D

Hibernate is working fine. A bit slow when resuming from a hibernate but I can bear with it just so that I have all open applications on the desktop as I left it. Then again the "slowness" might be because of the 4GB RAM, although I'm assuming only what is used gets swapped and not the entire memory.

Has anyone been able to make Ubuntu show a splash screen or some kind of indicator/progress bar to show while hibernating or while resuming? I remember with SuSE on my HP Compaq Presario notebook it had messages appear during and after. Better than nothing, I guess.

I just browsed a site a while ago that was flagged as an "attack site" or has malware, but Firefox didn't warn before I went into it. Only when I opened a new tab with another page from the site did it block the page.

How do I check for vulnerabilities on my system since I think there are no anti-malware available for Ubuntu? If there are, please do tell.

Thanks!

Ok, so my disk is dying. I have read this - Best way to clone an installation (copying to identical hardware) - but don't really need to copy the whole partition. My data is safe.

1) What I need is to save my application/desktop settings for the user (I only have one - ME), and that of the system, since redoing the whole thing can become such a headache and I can't remember all of the modifications I've made.

2) Make an exact copy of all .deb files installed and mimic/download what is not there yet. Because the base install is gonna take care of it, I only have to download/upgrade the rest but not everything. This sounds a little vague. It will only copy the info of what .deb files were installed not the actual .deb files

Is there an app like this? Thanks!

My Ubuntu has been acting weird lately. Yesterday, it wouldn't boot normally, so I had to do a 'recovery mode' boot. It said I had to do an fsck manually, which I did using a live CD. After this, I was already able to boot to the desktop but everything is so sluggish. Apps would turn gray for seconds. Sometimes other apps wont start at all. In other instances it it saying that the filesystem is in read-only mode.

This is part of what I've been getting:

Oct 26 21:23:56  kernel: [ 1900.960506] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Oct 26 21:23:56  kernel: [ 1900.960533] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 63206544
Oct 26 21:23:56  kernel: [ 1900.960541] Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 7900562
Oct 26 21:24:00  kernel: [ 1904.146683]          res 51/40:00:90:74:c4/00:00:00:00:00/03 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:00  kernel: [ 1904.146692] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:24:03  kernel: [ 1907.351844]          res 51/40:00:90:74:c4/00:00:00:00:00/03 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:03  kernel: [ 1907.351853] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:24:06  kernel: [ 1910.482152]          res 51/40:00:90:74:c4/00:00:00:00:00/03 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:06  kernel: [ 1910.482161] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:24:09  kernel: [ 1913.604742]          res 51/40:00:90:74:c4/00:00:00:00:00/03 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:09  kernel: [ 1913.604751] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:24:12  kernel: [ 1916.792646]          res 51/40:00:90:74:c4/00:00:00:00:00/03 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:12  kernel: [ 1916.792656] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:24:15  kernel: [ 1919.922855]          res 51/40:00:90:74:c4/00:00:00:00:00/03 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:15  kernel: [ 1919.922864] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:24:16  kernel: [ 1920.056506] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Oct 26 21:24:16  kernel: [ 1920.056533] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 63206544
Oct 26 21:24:16  kernel: [ 1920.056540] Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 7900562
Oct 26 21:24:55  kernel: [ 1959.134566]          res 51/40:00:e0:28:44/00:00:00:00:00/04 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:24:55  kernel: [ 1959.134575] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:25:05  kernel: [ 1969.674292]          res 51/40:00:b2:4c:44/00:00:00:00:00/04 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:25:05  kernel: [ 1969.674301] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:25:08  kernel: [ 1972.887782]          res 51/40:00:b2:4c:44/00:00:00:00:00/04 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:25:08  kernel: [ 1972.887791] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:25:12  kernel: [ 1976.059674]          res 51/40:00:b2:4c:44/00:00:00:00:00/04 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:25:12  kernel: [ 1976.059683] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
Oct 26 21:25:15  kernel: [ 1979.206592]          res 51/40:00:b2:4c:44/00:00:00:00:00/04 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Oct 26 21:25:15  kernel: [ 1979.206601] ata1.00: error: { UNC }

Is there any other way of removing the "Set Up Mail" and other entries from the message indicator short of uninstalling Evolution? I prefer to use GMail directly through the browser. It's beginning to annoy me since I keep on clicking it by accident then that window pops out.