James Mitch's questions

In short: Please provide me with a up-to-date best practice solution to mount my Truecrypt volumes at boot with secure password prompt! I may accept a answer that has nothing to do with Truecrypt and just shows me how the get some prompt at a boot stage, most likely a Truecrypt command will work at that point as well!

This command can be used to test it.

read -n1 -r -p "Press any key to continue..." key

I wish to not discuss any Truecrypt or drive related matters, or anything else think you might think are related or could help. I like to get a prompt at boot nothing else.

Is this maybe possible with upstart script? Or do they run in in background as well?

What I tried already:

1. rc.local - get ignored for whatever reason
2. KDE start script set to "before login" with my autologin in KDE it get executed in background during KDE load (harddisk symbol) and stops there I see nothing can't do anything but rename the script to get into KDE
3. .profile - gets ignored (or runs silently in background as well)
4. KDE start script set to "login" is to late it get executed when the GUI is fully loaded, by backup services (crashplan and dejapub) are already running and don't have the the disk mounted thats setup for backups what leads to things I want to avoid.

I want to fix permissions on another disk with chown. Set the permissions to a user which does not exist on the system which is currently running.

Does that work without adding the user?

The folder

/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/

contains lots of files.

01autoremove
10periodic
15update-stamp
20archive
20dbus
20packagekit
50unattended-upgrades
70debconf
99synaptic
99update-notifier

What are those 01, 10, ..., 99 numbers all about?

Do they imply "read 01 first, read 99 last and let 99 overrule settings made in earlier numbers"?

Let's for example say there is only one setting in 50unattended-upgrades, where I want to overrule the default setting with my own preference.

I could edit 50unattended-upgrades directly, but then it becomes messy if the maintainer updates that file - I have to merge the changes.

Could I also create 51unattended-upgrades with just the single value I prefer and therefore overrule the default in 50unattended-upgrades?

There is

apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confnew"

and

apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confold"

and many more.

How can I get a list of all Dpkg::Options and their currently set values?

I need specific (source or binary) packages from Debian.

Can I download the package using apt-get?

How can I add the Debian repository to my sources.list so it only gets used on a by case base? Without messing up my system by using the whole Debian repository?

How can I get the gpg key for the Debian repository to be sure the package was signed by the Debian archive?

(Please don't tell me, that the system may break. I am aware of that and couldn't care less, because I can easily restore a VM snapshot.)

Are there any tools to view man pages in a GUI?

I personally dislike the command line interface. It lacks easy scrolling, searching and so on. Is there any tool with some more intuitive user interface and features?

Preferably for KDE.

I have a text file with lots of package names.

package1
package2

# comment
# installing package3 because it was needed for...
package 3

package 4

How can I mass install all packages inside the text file without removing the comments?

Example...

This is what I want.

/tmp $ cp -f -R --verbose /tmp/a /tmp/b
`/tmp/a' -> `/tmp/b'
`/tmp/a/file2' -> `/tmp/b/file2'
`/tmp/a/file1' -> `/tmp/b/file1'

This is what I do not want.

/tmp $ cp -f -R --verbose /tmp/a /tmp/b
`/tmp/a' -> `/tmp/b/a'
`/tmp/a/file2' -> `/tmp/b/a/file2'
`/tmp/a/file1' -> `/tmp/b/a/file1'

How can I let cp behave as if the folder didn't already exist?

(I don't want to delete it beforehand. Just some files from /tmp/a to get copied into /tmp/b without creating a sub folder a inside /tmp/b. So it looks like /tmp/b/file1 /tmp/b/file2 and so on.)

Zenity is a bit too limited for my use cases. What are the alternatives?

It must be inside package sources, and it must be useable from within Bash scripts.

Login and non-login shell defined as:

su - $USER # will give you a login shell
bash # will give you a non-login shell

/etc/profile is not invoked for non-login shells, such as when you start konsole (kde). /etc/profile is only invoked for login shells.

Why is that? Please explain, because I like to understand the rationale of this.

Is there a graphical user interface to verify gpg signatures? I got a file and a file.sig. It's clear how to do it in terminal but doing with a right click gui would be more comfortable.

I read it's possible with kgpg but I couldn't get it to work.

Do you know a graphical user interface to verify gpg signatures or how kgpg can be utilized?

For example: A cron script runs in background checking for updates. The user is logged into a virtual console (tty).

Only wall has a nonbanner option.

Wall still adds unnecessary newlines at the beginning and the the end. Also pressing enter to return to the prompt is awkward.

Are there any alternatives for displaying notifications in a tty console?

I am on Ubuntu 12.04 with KDE. I'd like to use the xdg-desktop-icon tool because it can be scripted and works cross desktop.

Made a minimal file: test.desktop

[Desktop Entry]

Encoding=UTF-8
Type=Application

Exec=test
Icon=test

Name=test

Used xdg-desktop-icon...

xdg-desktop-icon install --novendor test.desktop

Exit code is 0. (Success.) But... I do not see any new icons on my desktop. Also not after reboot. How to use the xdg-desktop-icon tool correctly?

Possible Duplicate:
Upstart script: Detect shift key down at boot

I want to add a question during boot. The user is supposed to make keyboard inputs and depending on those inputs, there is an if inside the script.

"Do you want X or Y?"

"Or simply wait 10 seconds to default to X."

Note: If you have lost and want to recreate your /etc/apt/sources.list file, please use the Ubuntu Source Generator, with the appropriate choices. Warning: any custom repositories you added to your old sources.list (but not PPAs) will be lost.

Where can the original /etc/apt/sources.list be found?

I know some forum posts and third party sites pasting it's contents, but what is the official source for this file?

It must be somewhere on ubuntu.com?

Where to I find the scripts to bootstrap and create an normal Ubuntu installer/live iso image?

Or in other words, how are the (X)Ubuntu default installer/live images build?

What is the difference between chroot, dchroot and schroot?

What do they have in common?

Where are the differences?

Which one is needed for what?

ddd script.bsh does not open the script. It shows an our glass and if I want to close ddd, it says "bash is busy"...

I found an old message, but it didn't help. https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/ddd/2008-10/msg00006.html

I couldn't find ddd-3.3.12-test6.tar.gz, therefore I am using the ddd version from ubuntu repository. Also bashdb is already installed. Used apt-get install ddd bashdb.

Anyone able to use ddd for bash on Precise?

Using a command line website downloader, such as wget, curl or any other one... In a script...

I have the SHA-1 and the SHA-256 certficate fingerprint of a website. Due to security concerns (1) (2), I don't want to use the public SSL certificate authority system. The fingerprint must be hard coded.

Can a wget like application check the SSL fingerprint?

wget does not have such a functionality. (3)

Using wget --ca-certificate or curl --cacert I would have to run my own local certificate authority, which I'd like to prevent, because that adds a lot complexity. It's also ultra difficult and no one did that ever before. (4)

Isn't there any tool, like
download --tlsv1 --serial-number xx:yy:zz --fingerprint xxyyzz https://site.com?

The solution must of course not be vulnerable to TOCTOU. (5) The MITM could let return a valid fingerprint for the openssl client request and tamper with the following wget request.

I want to download an Ubuntu ISO, preferably over bittorrent, and verify its integrity.

Currently, the following steps are required:

• start web browser, go to ubuntu.com, find download link
• find gpg signature for the checksums
• get the gpg key to check gpg signature of the checksums
• wait until download finished
• gpg verifiy
• checksum verification

Isn't there a simpler way? Just like

• apt-get install 12.04-64bit-ubuntu-iso
• apt-get install 12.04-32bit-server-iso
• etc.?

Of course, apt-get (or whatever it would be called) should download over bittorrent to remove load from the servers.

If it doesn't exist, it should probable post that at ubuntu brainstorm? Is there already such a tool? I wanted to ask before posting to brainstorm.