Andre's questions

I've a strange problem on one of my machines in one user's profile: all newly opened windows open in the top left corner of the screen and are located underneath the Unity Launcher. It's not possible to grab their window bar, because it is underneath the desktop's top bar. It's not possible to close the windows, because the controls (X - ■) are underneath the Launcher. Each time, I've to hold ALT to be able to grab and move the window to a different location on the desktop.

What could be the cause?

How can I fix it?

Many thanks for help!

I am administrating multiple machines on which I am admin and the users have not admin-rights. The machines are configured to pull and install updates automatically. A new kernel will require a reboot. On Ubuntu Precise this was made visible to the user through the color change of the shutdown-menu in the upper right corner (it turned red). Now, on Ubuntu Trusty, there is not color change anymore. Also, the Update Manager will not pop up for regular users reminding them of an outstanding reboot.

How can a regular user know that a reboot is required?

I would like to keep a trail of 7 days in ZoneMinder. Therfore I would like to set the record mode to: "record" (to be recording all the time). How can I get ZoneMinder to store no more than 7 days?

Thanks!

I hope anyone remembers that UbuntuOne introduced some years ago a feature which allows to integrate a button into a website to directly load files into the visitors UbuntuOne. U1 had set up a demo at this time where it was possible to have sent some music files to my U1. But I can't remember where this was, and after searching the web for a long time, I almost believe I am hallucinating - and this feature never existed. Is this feature no longer available? Why can't I find information about it on the web anymore. Maybe I just had a dream?

As I do not use Libre.fm, I'd like to remove it from the sidepane in Rhythmbox (Ubuntu Precise). I did it some time ago on of my machines. But now I cannot recall how I did it. :-( I could not find a plugin to deactivate, or a package to uninstall.

this question regarding the LTS Enablement Stack has actually two parts:

1. I installed Linux 3.5.0-x on Precise 64bit via sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-quantal xserver-xorg-lts-quantal . As it turns out, VirtualBox does not work yet on the new kernel (EDIT: This is fixed now.). Therefore I want to remove it from the system. As expected removing the meta-packages via sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-quantal xserver-xorg-lts-quantal is not enough. What packages do I need to remove manually? For the kernel I would do (as of now): sudo apt-get remove linux-image-3.5.0-25-generic . However, regarding xserver-org I am lost. How can I switch back to the original xserver?
2. I installed a system with the 12.04.2 installation media. There I have also the 3.5.0-x kernel, because that's the default for this point release. How can I downgrade to the kernel (and xserver?) to the 3.2.0-x series?

Thank you!

I have a bunch of HQ recordings as FLAC with 24bit resolution. They take too much space on my Android device, and Ogg achieves transparent sound (particularly when on the go with noise around me) at much lower bit rates. (I do not want to start a discussion about what differences people might think they can hear at this point.) To convert FLACs to Ogg, I can just do

oggenc -q 6 *.flac 

because oggenc can directly read in FLAC - which is great. Since I am not a sound engineer, I was wondering if I am cocking-up here. AFAIK Ogg works with 16bit. Anything to take care of when going from 24 to 16bit?

Besides the bit resolution, is resampling from 96 kHz (or more) to 44.1 (or 48 kHz) problematic? On software side this is pretty easy to achieve, just with:

oggenc -q 6 --resample 44100 *.flac 

Practically the outcome is fine. The OGGs sound great. However, the theoretical considerations keep my mind busy. Is the conversion from 24 to 16 bit and the resampling from 96+ kHz to 44100 kHz a problem from the point of sound mastering?

Thanks!

Possible Duplicate:
How do you edit the “Preferred Format” settings in Rhythmbox?

I want to read a CD to my music library. I want to use OggVorbis for compression. I want to set the quality level to 6 (or 0.6). In previous versions I could manipulate the GStreamer pipeline manually:

audio/x-raw-float,rate=44100,channels=2 ! vorbisenc name=enc quality=0.6 ! oggmux 

(I have seen that there is an easy to use slider for the quality in Ubuntu 12.10.)

How can I set the quality level for Ogg (and MP3) when "extracting a CD to library" on Ubuntu 12.04?

Thanks!

Cannot click on Settings in Rhythmbox and SoundJuicer on Ubuntu 12.04:

I have browsed several answers... but none seems to address my question.

As reported in bug #1067876 the options to "safely remove" an external drive is gone.

No problem! Umount is sufficient for me. However, I cannot recognize WHEN it is safe to pull the USB plug out since the icon for the storage device does not disappear, and no notification is displayed. How can I know if it is safe to unplug the device? How can I explain to my mother when it is safe to do so? So I am looking for an easy solution (as it is present in 12.04).

I would like to learn how to package an application to a PPA which available in source code and GPL licensed. I would like to learn how to do it myself. Is there a way to find Ubunteros in my area to meet (San Francisco - San Jose)?

I have noticed that some of my machines do not switch off (since the upgrade to Precise) when I choose "Shutdown..." from the menu in the upper right corner of Unity. If the system is powered down or not is a kind of random. However, whenever I use the Terminal to sudo shutdown -h now it will switch off the machine reliably. After having read this answer, I wonder what command Unity issues to initiate the shutdown (and power off) of the system?

When I want to open an application via Dash, I just hit Super, type the first letters, and hit Enter. For instance: Super, "drop", Enter to start Dropbox. However, if I want to start an application again, Dash remembers it, but I cannot start it by hitting ENTER although "drop" is still in there, and Dropbox is in the first position. Why?

How can I (without using the mouse) start an application again?

UPDATE:

better example (hopefully):

1. Super ... type "ged" ... Enter to start Gedit
2. close Gedit
3. Super ... and now? "ged" is remembered, Gedit is still in pole position ready to be started. However, hitting Enter does not work.

How can I start an application again? - Without using the mouse or retyping?

If I have to retype, it makes no sense that Dash remembers the application and my typed letters. I assume there is a way to open the application again by just: Super + Enter (or something similar). Thanks!

I would like to start virtual machines in headless mode. The advantage: I can logoff from the desktop, and the machine will continue to run. However, starting the virtual machine blocks the Terminal from closing. Is there a clever solution to have everything like a service in the background? If I do 'sudo service ntp start' it will start, and then I can close the Terminal. I could do the following, but I'm not happy with it:

• nohup VBoxHeadless -s "MyGuest" &
• log in from a login shell (tty1-6) which is equipped with Byobu, start the VM, and instead of logging out I could detach with F6.

Better way of doing it?

I would like to make use of Btrfs' transparent compression on an external drive.

1. Which tool is best for formatting the drive? Disk Utility or GParted?
2. How do I activate the compression? During formatting or when I mount the drive? I guess at mount time. I'm using usbmount to automatically mount newly attached devices, because nobody is logged in on the desktop. Would I have to set general default options somewhere in a system configuration file to get Btrfs mounted with compression, or would I specify this via FS_MOUNTOPTIONS in /etc/usbmount/usbmount.conf and how?

Thanks!

I have huge data sets to deal with, and so my 1TB drive is filling up quickly. However, the data is highly compressible when using LZMA (7zip, bzip2). The only file system with transparent compression I've discovered so far is Btrfs, which is not assumed stable yet. Is there a reliable solution for piping the data through a compression and do a bind-mount to a compressed image file?

Any idea is welcome!

I do not want to patch any file system driver though.

Thanks!

I'm using rdiff-backup since a long time to pull backups over SSH to the backup-server. Recently rdiff-backup crashed with Errno 36. So I deleted the file which had the long name in the source. However, I can't get rdiff-backup to work again. I keep getting the following notice:

Previous backup seems to have failed, regressing destination now. Regressing to Tue Sep 11 02:07:50 2012 Exception '[Errno 36] File name too long: '....

The file name pointed out here is in the destination. I've checked the path, and there is no such file. So, the file is not in the source, nor in the destination, but I keep getting this error. I though it might be possible to get completely rid of the last failed backup info, to start from the last working one. That is actually what rdiff-backup is saying. But it keeps on falling over this file which does not exist anymore.

Any ideas?

Is there a database where it gets the info about this file from, and where I can remove it?

Thanks!

A Thinkpad X220 (Core-i5, SandyBridge, Intel GMA) running Precise 64-bit has rebooted hard twice in the last four days. I was doing nothing more than writing an email. No warning. It just went black, and the next thing I saw was the Lenovo boot screen.

Where should I look to find the cause? I fear that this immediate reboot does not leave time for logs to be written...

Thanks!

When drawing an arrow in LibreOffice DRAW (or IMPRESS) I can change the width of the line, but not the arrowhead itself. How can I change the width of the arrow head?

pymol is started through a wrapper script. Once it runs I get two questionmarks in the Launcher. Pymol itself has an icon in the dash. But as 'pymol' is only the wrapper this icon is not used when the other two instances are running. I've had a look at the script at /usr/bin/pymol but could not figure out how to continue. I guess I have to create .desktop files for each launched window then, but I don't know their name. Among the running process I can only see "python2.6". I think creating a .desktop-file for python2.6 would not really help if I want to use different icons for each window.

Any idea?

Pymol: http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/pymol

(Python games only showing python icon, but not game icon: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/777417 )

The standard audio-format for music in Rhythmbox is Ogg. For some reason none of my music encoded as OggVorbis shows up in the Ubuntu One Mobile Music application on my Android phone. The MP3s do show up. It looks like the Ubuntu One servers are not indexing Ogg-files, although it is THE open format for music with superior quality to MP3 and Ubuntu's Rhythmbox encoded my CDs to that format. Solution?