Stephen Boston's questions

On every desktop startup, I have a dialog asking for password. The cause is policy kit.

I haven't found what exactly is raising the prompt, but it brings me to the question:

Do I need policy kit? If so, why?

If not, how do I remove it?

sudo apt remove polkit*
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'polkit-1-auth-agent' for glob 'polkit*'
Note, selecting 'polkit-kde-agent-1' for glob 'polkit*'
Package 'polkit-kde-agent-1' is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

sudo apt remove polkit-1-auth-agent
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Virtual packages like 'polkit-1-auth-agent' can't be removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

I am not a Ubuntu Advantage subscriber but there's this systemd unit active and waiting on my 21.04

 ua-messaging.timer    loaded active waiting   Ubuntu Advantage update messaging

Ubuntu Advantage I understand is a program for enterprise support.

I some part of UA important for a civilian user's installation or is this installed as a convenience for optional UA enrollment? If the latter, I assume it can be removed?

The playlist is a plain text file of filenames

I have tried :

 cvlc --playlist playlist
 cvlc -playlist playlist

And each of those with playlist=playlist.

I have renamed the playlist to playlist.m3u

I have tried :

 vlc --longhelp | grep playlist 

And see nothing but options for a running playlist.

My web searches have lots on how to use the GUI for a playlist but not for the commandline.

This used to work but I haven't used VLC for a while.

https://test-ipv6.com gives me an ipv6 address as:

"Your IPv6 address on the public Internet appears to be 2604:...."

How can I get that information through the commandline?

For IPv4 I can do this :

 wget -qO- http://ipecho.net/plain 

and get the external IPv4 ip for my LAN

I want that service for IPv6. IPv6 is a different animal I understand but the notion of external access by host is still relevant.

I see that test-ipv6.com returns a different internet IPv6 address for each of my LAN-hosts' net devices alternatively there may be a way of getting that info from the output of each host. So:

 ip a | grep inet6 

will list the IPv6 addresses associated with each network device but I don't know how to identify which one of those addresses is the address "on the public internet". Is there a universal rule, a pattern that identifies that address?

I have a newly formatted ext4 1TB HDD that I intend to use only for data. This is a single user machine though the drive or folders within it may be shared out via NFS .

Is there any advantage to partitioning the drive?

I have installed gmtp:amd64 and jmtpfs:amd64 and on connecting via USB and granting access from the phone get error dialog:

No such interface "org.gtk.vfs.Mount" on object at path /org/gtk/vfs/mount/1

I usually transfer files via wifi but my wifi is broken and won't be replaced for a week.

I have tried bluetooth but I have issues there I'll put to another question.

I have this message while running apt update

Unit -.mount is masked.

I don't see any file or link to a service like -.mount.service in /etc/systemd/system or /etc/systemd/user or ~/.config/systemd/user or under the /lib/systemd directories.

There is nothing like it in the output of systemctl list units or systemctl --user list-units

So where is this unit file? OR What is this message about?

I have installed python3.8 to python 19.10:

 sudo apt install python3.8

I now want to install pip for python 3.8

 python3.8 -m pip install pip
 Requirement already satisfied: pip in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages (18.1)

But the pip 3 is 3.7

 pip3 -V
 pip 18.1 from /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/pip (python 3.7)

So that, for example :

pip3 install pyinotify
Requirement already satisfied: pyinotify in ./.local/lib/python3.7/site-packages (0.9.6)

Attempting to import pyinotify to a python3.8 script throws a ModuleNotFound error

I issue the following :

# ufw allow from <ip address>

And get the response:

WARN: Rule changed after normalization
Rule added (v6)

I am familiar with the term 'normalization' in relational database structuring but I am curious how this is applied to the UFW rules. The rule I requested is subsequently listed just as I entered it

Anywhere (v6)              ALLOW IN    <ip address>

What has happened in this process of normalization?

I have a plain text file with a large number of lines with a blank line between each pair of lines. I want to remove the empty lines.

I am trying using the Replace dialog with regex, to replace '\n\n' with '\n', but the search does not recognize '\n' as the new line character.

In the Files pane of the Preferences dialog, the 'default end of line character' is set to Unix (LF) and with 'View/Show Line Endings', each line is terminated with a 'LF' icon -- or what looks to me to be an icon.

I have tried \p and \r but they don't work either.

It is a plain text file so I know there are other approaches to removing the blank lines, but I am interested in what's going on here with geany. How could I do this using the geany replace dialog?

Update I can get a match using $ as the search key but the replace all does not replace the endline character, it instead inserts before it.

I want to change the search result highlight of a Geany theme.

In the ~/.config/geany/colorschemes/ directory, we have *configuration files that I can only partially understand.

I have looked through the Geany manual and the GitHub offering, but I haven't found any detailed documentation on the format or fields of the file.

For example: many of the field names are self-explanatory, but some are not. And what effect do the Boolean fields have?

When I disconnect from expressvpn, the resolv.conf file contains expressvpn references that were not there when I connected.

Specifically it sets a nameserver to a non-existent IP address and adds expressvpn to the search domain.

What is the best way to have the expressvpn disconnect restore my previous resolv.conf. I could wrap the disconnect in a script that restores from a backup, but that requires root -- and there may be a standard way. I don't see anything on the expressvpn site.

I want to change the color of the terminal display when entering a SSH session. In the .bashrc I have a snip that changes the prompt when logging in via SSH, but I need to change the whole background color.

The background will apply only when I'm logged into a remote host via SSH.

This thread has a good discussion on changing colors of the terminal display.

Changing colour of text and background of terminal?

For example the following printf lines in a bash script do exactly what I want - change the color of the line responding to the command and all subsequent lines of that terminal session.

However when included in the .bashrc as below,the effect lasts only for the first line of the session.

if [[ -z "$SSH_CLIENT" ]]
  then
  : 
else
   PS1="\[\e[01;36m\]$PS1\[\e[00m\]"
   printf '\e[48;5;125m'
   printf '\e[38;5;255m'
fi

Where 48 and 38 select foreground and background, the 5 selects the color table to use (in this case ANSI), and nnnm selects the color from the selected color table.

How can I make the change stick through the terminal session.

For example :

dconf dump / | grep mouse
[org/mate/desktop/peripherals/mouse]
....

So if I want to make a gsettings command based on this output, I look to gsettings to list the schemas, but....

(output edited to include only likely candidates ):

gsettings list-schemas | grep mouse
....
org.mate.peripherals-mouse
org.gnome.desktop.peripherals.mouse
org.mate.SettingsDaemon.plugins.mouse
....

So it is not clear to me which of these mouse schemas I should use. My understanding is that gsettings is a command line interface to the dconf database, but there is no clear correspondence between gsettings data and dconf data -- as far as I can see.

Can someone explain or point me to explanatory documentation. Thanks.

What is the effect of the nameservers/addresses field in the yaml configuration file?

Any application I've tried uses the /etc/resolv.conf nameservers. This happens even with resolvconf stopped.

This is using systemd as resolver. No errors on generate or apply.

RESOLUTION

Thanks to all who responded. The netplan config yaml configures the nameservers after I do this:

1. Purge resolvconf;
2. Put my LAN DNS as forwarder in /etc/bind/named.conf.options;

3. Replace the /etc/resolv.conf link with a static file as

   search nameserver 127.0.0.53

And that works. I find I have to include the search in the resolv.conf even though I have a search field in my netplan config yaml. Puzzle for another day.

When editing a text in LO writer I will often lose the typing cursor and have to enter text or move the direction keys to create movement on the page so that I can find the cursor. Is there a way of enlarging the typing cursor or making it more obvious?

The LO forum has fixes for Windows, but I haven't found one for Linux.

Note that I am not talking about the mouse cursor here. I can easily modify the size and color of the mouse cursor, and make it ripple with the control key, but this is not about the mouse cursor. This is the tiny little cursor that marks the editing position in the document.

@DK Bose Here's from the libreoffice About menu

libreoffice
Version: 6.0.3.2
Build ID: 1:6.0.3-0ubuntu1
OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
Locale: en-CA (en_CA.UTF-8); Calc: group

Desktop MATE/Marco

Theme: GreenLaguna, text-editable css files

Thanks.

After successfully disabling IPv6 using this script :

echo  'net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = 1'  >> /etc/sysctl.conf
echo  'net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6 = 1'  >> /etc/sysctl.conf
echo  'net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6 = 1'  >> /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p

I try to re-enable using this script :

sed  -i "/net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6/d" /etc/sysctl.conf
sed  -i "/net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6/d" /etc/sysctl.conf
sed  -i "/net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6/d" /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p

I have verified that the enable script removes the disable lines from the sysctl.conf file.

In each case, I check the result with this :

cat /proc/sys/net/ipv6/conf/all/disable_ipv6

where '1' means disabled and '0' means not.

The re-enable piece does not work.

In each case, the sysctl -p command reloads the /etc/sysctl.conf file. However it seems that the reload simply pulls into its buffer rather than over-writing it completely so that the disabling properties are not removed.

Is this analysis correct?

If so, I don't see an option to clear the sysctl.conf cache. Is there one? Or is there a strategy for this requirement?

This used to be fairly standard - many years ago. I see this:

How to do window roll-up/shade in 16.04?

But I haven't been able to make any of the solutions work for MATE.

Is there any tweak other than installing an entirely different desktop?

I asked this question in the mate user forum but have received no reply so I bring it here.

I run some ubuntu-mate VMs and so want to copy pieces of the configuration between VMs.

For most applications I have found settings in the ~/.config directory and its siblings, but I cannot find where the keyboard shortcuts are kept.

Is there a text file? Or perhaps an export/import facility?

Thanks.

I have a number of VBox Ubuntu VMs that use a Bridged adapter for internet traffic and Host-only adapters for internal traffic. (Just a hobby.)

Using netplan, the only way I've been able to get both interfaces configured is to boot with one file for one interface then load the other file to configure the other interface.

Here's the file /etc/netplan/01-systemd-networkd.yaml which is the only yaml file in the /etc/netplan directory.

network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    enp0s3 :
      addresses: [192.168.0.128/24]
      gateway4: 192.168.0.1
      nameservers:         
        addresses: [8.8.8.8,8.8.4.4]

I've tried a parallel entry for enp0s8 that includes all the fields and that produced a strange result whereby the enp0s3 had two IP6 addresses and the enp0s8 had none and neither could communicate even with their gateway.

So how do we do this?

Thanks