Alex's questions

A few of my applications don't show their icon in the application drawer, instead the system icon is displayed. See circled icons in picture below. Regards,

I have a Synology NAS (DS214play) where all my multimedia files and others are stored. However, because I make changes to files from either the client running Ubuntu 18.04 or the NAS, I run into permission issues and I would like to find a solution to this problem.

I think a possible solution is to setup LDAP services in the server and configure my client. I'm familiar with Microsoft's Active Directory and is the kind of functionality I am after without all the users as it is for me only.

I'm open to any suggestion, the simplest solution wins.

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 on a Lenovo X1 Yoga with touchscreen capabilities. When I rotate the laptop to portrait mode, the screen just goes black. When I rotate back to landscape, the screen returns.

EDIT: Just found out this only happens in Wayland, X seems to work fine. The issue in this post seems to be the same as my issue: 18.04 Ubuntu with Wayland, screen will not display in portrait

I cannot get Ubuntu to work on my system. I have a Dell Precision M4500 w/ NVIDIA Quadro 1800m graphics and except for more RAM, SATA SSD, mSSD and Intel 802.11ac card, everything else is OEM. The laptop boots to the login screen where I login but, when using generic opensource display drivers it constantly freezes, and when using the proprietary Nvidia 340 (latest for this GPU) driver, I see the Nvidia logo before the login screen comes up, at which point I login. Immediately after hitting enter, the screen goes black and stays that way.

I’ve tried askubuntu.com answers in addition to Google results without any success, so is time to ask the experts.

I tried these solutions and all of them failed:

• Ubuntu 17.10 Nvidia Drivers, black screen loop?
• Ubuntu 17.10 black screen Nvidia issue

Just to be clear, there are a few other posts about “booting” to a black screen, but I can boot, I get the black screen after login.

Besides the solutions listed above, I tried these configurations with no success.

OS > version > Server > Driver > Result

• Ubuntu > 17.10 > *X.org > NVIDIA 340 – Black Screen
• Ubuntu > 17.10 > *X.org > Nouveau – Freezes
• Ubuntu > 18.04 > *X.org > NVIDIA 340 – Black Screen
• Ubuntu > 18.04 > *X.org > Nouveau – Freezes
• Mint > 18.3 > Not sure > Nouveau - OK

*Wayland server yields same results

Lastly, I tried hitting ctrl+alt+f(n) but no TTY

I ran the above scenarios using default desktop Gnome, but I’ve also tried Cinnamon (which works fine when using Linux Mint) getting the same results. What is strange to me is that during my investigation, I did something resulting in a Gnome desktop becoming available in the gear icon next to the login button, however this desktop looked different than the version that comes in 17.10 (mainly; applications in the shell bar on top and the dock size did not span from top to bottom, instead it was sized according to how many icons were on it.) It also went into a black screen after login, but the strange part is that 1 out 10 times, it loaded the desktop.

Most if not all solutions I found revolve around removing all display drivers and installing Nvidia drivers only plus a few other steps. All solutions have their own unique steps but they all have in common reinstallation of Nvidia drivers.

Being new to Linux, I don't know what other information I can provide, so please, ask away.

I have a bash file with a list of packages to install for a new Ubuntu installation using apt install however, not all the packages in the list are installing. Repos are included in the script as necessary.

I've tried the 2 methods below:

Method 1:

apt install [pkg1] [pkg2] [pkg3] ... [pkgn]

Method 2 - (pseudo code):

String pkgs_list[] = {"pkg1" "pkg2" "pkg3" "pkgn"}
for each pkg in pkg_list {
  if pkg exists then {
    "do nothing"
  else
    apt install pkg
  }
}

Here is the complete bash code:

#***********************#
#***      Keys       ***#
#***********************#
wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | apt-key add -
wget -O - https://dl.sinew.in/keys/enpass-linux.key | apt-key add -
wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key | apt-key add -


#***********************#
#***   Repositories  ***#
#***********************#
echo 'deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list
echo "deb http://repo.sinew.in/ stable main" > \
  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/enpass.list
add-apt-repository -y ppa:webupd8team/gnome3  #This is for gnome tweak tool extensions (source: https://www.wikihow.com/Change-Themes-on-Ubuntu-with-Gnome-Tweak-Tool)
add-apt-repository -y ppa:notepadqq-team/notepadqq
add-apt-repository https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/

apt -y update

#WinHQ enables 32bit architecture
dpkg --add-architecture i386 

#***********************#
#***   apt install   ***#
#***********************#

#apt -y install \
#  nemo \
#  google-chrome-stable \
#  notepadqq dconf-editor \
#  nfs-common \
#  enpass \
#  virtualbox \
#  virtualbox-guest-additions-iso \
#  gnome-tweak-tool \
  #gnome-shell-extensions-user-themes \
#  vlc \
#  gimp \
#  winehq-stable \
#  synaptic

declare -a alist=("nemo"
  "google-chrome-stable"
  "notepadqq"
  "dconf-editor"
  "nfs-common"
  "enpass"
  "virtualbox"
  "virtualbox-guest-additions-iso"
  "gnome-tweak-tool"
  "vlc"
  "gimp"
  "winehq-stable"
  "synaptic"
  "usb-creator-gtk"
  "libreoffice"
  "chromium-browser"
  "thunderbird"
  "shotwell"
  "gnome-calendar")

for application in "${alist[@]}"
do
  dpkg -l $application
  if [ $? = '0' ]; then
    echo "***************************************************************************"
    echo "*****Application "$application" package is installed, no action taken.*****"
    echo "***************************************************************************"
  elif [ $? = '1' ]; then
    echo "******************************************"
    echo "*****Installing package $application.*****"
    echo "******************************************"
    #Add an if to match dock favorites and add to the dock .desktop file
    apt install $application -y
  fi
done

Here's the list of applications and there status after the script ran:

1. nemo - ok
2. google-chrome-stable - ok
3. notepadqq - did not install
4. dconf-editor - ok
5. nfs-common - did not install
6. enpass - ok
7. virtualbox - ok
8. virtualbox-guest-additions-iso - don't know
9. gnome-tweak-tool - did not install
10. vlc - ok
11. gimp - did not install
12. winehq-stable - did not install
13. synaptic - did not install
14. usb-creator-gtk - did not install
15. libreoffice - ok
16. chromium-browser - did not install
17. thunderbird - did not install
18. shotwell - did not install
19. gnome-calendar - did not install

I can provide more information for each package is needed.

Thanks for your help.

EDIT

The log file generated by using the command $ sudo ./my_script.sh >> my_script.log is to large so I will post what I think is the problem and we can go from there.

Below is the output for gimp, one that did not install. When my code checks if the package is installed by using the command dpkg -l [package_name] it returns the following when checking for gimp and the others.

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
un  gimp           <none>       <none>       (no description available)

ALL the packages that did not install return this with Version and Architecture as <none> which tells me there's no package install, right? But when the bash script runs, the command return '0' making my statements believe the package is installed which does not seem to be the case according to dpkg. Instead, dpkg is supposed to return something like this: ...

$ dpkg -l package

dpkg-query: no packages found matching package

... when a package` is not installed.

I don't understand what is happening here with dpkg returning the information posted. What does this mean? What's happening?

Thanks,

EDIT

Additionally, if I try to remove the package with apt I get:

$ sudo apt autoremove gimp
[sudo] password for alex2wr: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package 'gimp' is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

I'm working on a bash script that appends to /etc/profile but instead of appending, I accidentally wrote over it, losing all of its content. How can I restore the file? I did search here but being new to Ubuntu, I don't know if the posted /etc/profile content I see in other questions is the default content.

I'm installing Google Cloud SDK to use it ask my source code repository (for now) for Android apps using the install.sh script included in the root of the SDK however, I am having a few issues.

First, I'd like to ask if the SDK need not to be under root protected path, let me explain my logic... When installing without elevated privileges, an exemption is raised.
-Command: $ ./install.sh
-Output:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/google-cloud-sdk/bin/bootstrapping/install.py", line 218, in <module>
    main()
  File "/opt/google-cloud-sdk/bin/bootstrapping/install.py", line 193, in main
    Prompts(pargs.usage_reporting)
  File "/opt/google-cloud-sdk/bin/bootstrapping/install.py", line 116, in Prompts
    scope=properties.Scope.INSTALLATION)
  File "/opt/google-cloud-sdk/lib/googlecloudsdk/core/properties.py", line 1830, in PersistProperty
    config.EnsureSDKWriteAccess()
  File "/opt/google-cloud-sdk/lib/googlecloudsdk/core/config.py", line 192, in EnsureSDKWriteAccess
    raise exceptions.RequiresAdminRightsError(sdk_root)
googlecloudsdk.core.exceptions.RequiresAdminRightsError: You cannot perform this action because you do not have permission to modify the Google Cloud SDK installation directory [/opt/google-cloud-sdk].

As it can be seen in the last line, it is clear that this exception was raised because of permissions issue with writing to my chosen installed directory, in this case [/opt/google-cloud-sdk].

Now if I run ./install.sh with elevated privileges I get this warning:
-Command: $ sudo ./install.sh
-Output:

WARNING: You appear to be running this script as root. This may cause 
the installation to be inaccessible to users other than the root user.

I chose to ignore this message and continued with the very bumpy installation eventually giving up and coming here.

Before attempting to recreate all the issues encountered, I'd like to, first start on the right path, then if/as issues come up, I'll provide the details.