jimchristie's questions

I just came back to Ubuntu after quite some time. After installing 22.04, I'm running into a weird issue that I can't seem to find a resolution for.

Whenever a display setting changes, I get logged out. It happens when I disable or enable a display, and also when I change the primary display. That in itself isn't a big deal since I'm not changing display settings very often. What is really frustrating though is that I also get logged out when the machine is idle and Ubuntu attempts to put the screens to sleep.

I've tried disabling all extensions, but that hasn't helped. I found an outdated question that suggesting using compiz, but it looks like compiz is no longer in the repos and I'm hesitant to try such an outdated solution.

I recently ordered an Intel NUC 5i5RYH with a Samsung Evo SSD and 2 x 8GB GB Crucial RAM.

I attempted to install Ubuntu 14.04 on it but I had problems with it suspending before I could even finish the installation process. It would just suspend for no apparent reason. I even sat there moving the mouse through the whole process to try to prevent it, but it still suspended.

I read somewhere that 15.04 works better with the NUCs and several reports of Xubuntu working, so I gave that a shot (64 bit version). I did at least manage to get it installed and working, but it still randomly suspends. Sometimes it suspends immediately upon booting, other times I can use it for five or ten minutes before it suspends. It does this even though I have set it to never suspend in the power settings.

One thing I've noticed is that when I was trying to install Chrome, it always suspended when going to google.com/chrome, even though I was able to navigate to several other sites (this one included) without apparent issue. It does this on Chromium and Firefox.

But I don't have to go to that site for it to suspend. It does it eventually no matter what. Even if I'm not logged into the GUI. It will suspend if it sits on the login screen for a while, or if I hit F6 and use the terminal there.

Once it suspends it won't wake back up no matter what I do.

I can confirm that the computer is suspending, as opposed to running along but not sending output to the display, because I also lose SSH access when this happens.

I've tried enabling and disabling secure boot. No change. Before I realized I couldn't shell into it, I thought it might be an issue with the display and installed mesa-vdpau-drivers as described in this question. No change. I read that it can suspend due to overheating, so I tried changing the fan settings to more aggressively cool the CPU. No change.

I'm about ready to call the dang thing defective and send it back. However, I'm really hoping that there's a software fix somewhere. Or short of that, I'd like to know if there's a way I can diagnose the hardware problem. Any help is, of course, much appreciated.

I'm trying to install copy.com's client on Ubuntu 13.10 but when I do, I get the following error message:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"

(CopyAgent:4430): LIBDBUSMENU-GTK-CRITICAL **: watch_submenu: assertion 'GTK_IS_MENU_SHELL(menu)' failed

From there, it initially appears that the Copy client installs correctly. I am prompted to login and their icon shows up in the task bar. However, sync does not work properly. Items placed in my Copy folder on other devices (or through the web interface) sometimes download to this machine, and sometimes don't.

I have investigated the first error message and found this solution, that I should install the libcanberra-gtk-module. But when trying to install it, it is already installed. Just to be sure, I reinstalled it but it seems to have had no effect.

I attempted to investigate the second error message and found that lots of different programs give similar error messages, but all of the solutions I could find seemed to be specific to the program that was under discussion on that particular thread.

Any thoughts on how I could solve this? Or at least what I can try next?

I followed the instructions at this site to get pure Lubuntu. Unfortunately, after doing so my computer will no longer boot into the GUI. I'm able to switch over to a terminal just fine, but the GUI never comes up. The computer boots past the Lubuntu splash screen and then displays:

apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName 
* Starting web server apache2
etc/rc2.d/S99acpi-support: line 7: /usr/share/acpi-support/power-funcs: No such file or directory

It seems to be stuck there. Yesterday, I let the computer run for 24 hours. When I came back, the whole screen was full of code. I didn't catch any of it though.

I attempted to restart from a Live USB, but the computer wouldn't even recognize it. I tried it in every port but I can't get it to show up on the boot menu.

I was able to Ctrl+Alt+F6 to a terminal. I tried:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install --reinstall lubuntu-desktop

I also tried sudo apt-get install -f.

None of this helped. Now it's just back to the aforementioned apache2 error message.

Another oddity: I can reboot the computer from the terminal using sudo reboot but when I attempt sudo shutdown now it pumps out a ton of error messages, switches to single user mode, and waits for a command.

How can I get my GUI back?

Update:

I realized that I was stupidly trying to boot a computer with UEFI using an x86 USB. It boots from a live USB using the 64-bit live USB.

I have seen a number of questions on this site regarding slow wireless problems. Many of them discuss problems relative to specific wireless cards.

Could someone please explain to me how to find out what wireless card I have in order to begin to diagnose the problem?

What other information might I need and how do I find that?

I just tried updating to 13.04 from 12.10. When I restarted, it went to Grub even though there's no other OS on the computer. I clicked on Ubuntu to finish booting and I got a terminal with the error message:

General error mounting filesystems.
A maintenance shell will now be started.
CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and reboot the system.
root@mycomputer:~#

Reboot brings me back to the exact same place.

The only other options on Grub are Advanced options for Ubuntu and a couple of memory test options. I ran one of them and it came out fine.

I have no idea what to do next. Please advise.

EDIT:

Per request, here is the contents of /etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices 
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>  <mount point>   <type>   <options>        <dump>   <pass>
# /was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=5b22f712-cd92-446e-8984-0c31ca17c02c /                ext4     errors=remount
-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=86ea10b7-9309-4860-8ade-059f9d9fa328 none             swap     sw
  0       0

I had Flash Player installed on two different computers running 12.10 along with the HAL module and everything was working just fine.

Until a couple days ago.

Now whenever I try to watch any sort of DRM protected videos, from any site, on any browser, on either computer, I get a message saying something to the effect that I need to update my Flash Player (the exact wording depends on the site I'm trying to view, of course).

I have checked to see if my Flash Player is fully up to date and it is. I have also made sure run apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade on both machines and everything is up to date.

Despite the fact that it looks good, I tried uninstalling Flash Player and reinstalling it to no avail. I also tried reinstalling the HAL module and got the same result.

Any thoughts on what could be causing this and how to fix it?

Thanks in advance.

I'm using Calibre to manage my ebooks and I'm trying to install a plugin that will allow me to manage library books that I get through Adobe Digital Editions via Wine. I've got everything installed, but I need to run an additional script to tie it all together. I get to one step in the instructions that says "you'll need to run the adobekey.pyw script using the python installation in your Wine system."

So how do I run a script using the python installation in Wine?

This is my first time using Wine, so please make your answers as basic as possible.

I'm trying to setup a bootable firewire device. For some reason the startup disk creator keeps crashing. I already have a bootable USB. Can I just copy and paste the files from the USB to the firewire device? Or is there something else that the startup disk creator does?

I have installed Ubuntu 12.10 on my computer that had Windows 8 pre-installed. I used the instructions on this page:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI l After following the instructions through to the end, and having run Boot Repair twice, I am still unable to load Windows 8 from Grub. I am, however, able to load it from BIOS.

Here is the boot info: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1567295/

Any suggestions to fix this would be greatly appreciated. While loading Windows from the BIOS is workable, it is certainly not ideal.

Thanks in advance.

For reasons too long to explain, I reluctantly removed Ubuntu from my computer. After completely removing it and deleting the partition that it was installed onto, I discovered that I still had two Ubuntu entries in the boot order in my BIOS menu. I deleted them by following the instructions in this answer:

https://askubuntu.com/a/63613/54934

As I was doing it, everything appeared to go smoothly. However, upon reboot one of them came back. What's going on here? How do I delete it permanently?

Here is my boot-info URL: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1372806/

I'll gladly provide any other information that may be needed to diagnose the problem.

Thanks.

I'm trying to import my iTunes library into Banshee. Unfortunately, I'm getting a message on a number of tracks that says "Unable to map iTunes URI to local URI."

It seems to be showing up on entire albums rather than random individual tracks.

What does it mean and how do I fix it?

I usually use apt-get update && apt-get upgrade to run my updates and upgrades instead of the GUI because it seems to run more quickly.

However, I've noticed lately that I often get a message that one of my upgrades was held back. I then usually run dist-upgrade to run it through and it works fine. As far as I can tell after reading this question and its answers, dist-upgrade does all the same things and then some.

So, my question is: Why use apt-get upgrade at all? Why not use apt-get dist-upgrade all the time? Why does apt-get upgrade even exist?

I read this question and it's answer about multiple desktop environments and how they might impact system performance and was wondering:

How do I know if I'm using an "application which loads the other DE's modules, libraries etc"?

As the title indicates, the maximize, minimize, and close buttons are either not present or not working on my Lubuntu desktop. In fact, it only seems to be Google Chrome that displays the buttons at all, and only the close button works in Chrome, maximize and minimize don't do anything. When I use regular Ubuntu, they're all there just fine but not on Lubuntu. This all seemed to occur after I hooked my netbook up to an external monitor while using Lubuntu. Not sure if that had anything to do with it or not, but it seemed too big of a coincidence to not mention. Any ideas what the cause and a fix might be?

Thanks in advance.

My automatic backup hasn't worked for a couple of days now. Everything was just peachy and I'm not sure what went wrong. The message just says:

Backup Failed Got status code 500

No further information is given or offered. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I had a smallish (4gb) SD card laying around and I was wondering if it's possible or advisable to use it as swap space. Ideally, I'd like to free up some hard drive space by removing the swap on it and solely using the SD card but if that's not possible/advisable I'd be just fine with having a little extra.