geoffrey's questions

I know there are lots of dual boot questions on Askubuntu, but can't find reference to the specific issue I am having:

When booting into windows, I can hear the Windows startup music, and I can enter my password and hear the log in sound, but the screen stays blank, or rather it retains the same purple of the grub screen.

I have a Thinkpad x250. Windows 7 was (is) installed. To install Ubuntu I went through the following steps: 1. In W7, I had two partitions, with D: allocated to user files - I moved my user from D: to C: 2. with the Ubuntu 14.04 live USB, launched gparted, and 1) deleted second partition, 2) resized windows system partition, 3) created an ext4 partition with the free space 3. installed Ubuntu using the new partition 4. rebooted, checked that Ubuntu worked. All ok. 5. rebooted, chose W7 in grub -- some message about checking the disk, at some point it restarts 6. boot into windows, problem appears: all the windows sounds are there, but no display besides the Ubuntu purple, I can type in my password and know I am logged in judging from the log in sound

EDIT: I can get into Windows normally if I do this: just after I select W7 in the grub menu, I press (and keep pressed) F8, which gives me a list of options. I select 'start Windows normally' and everything is ok. Good, so I have a way to get into Windows not, but ideally I would like to avoid going through this F8 routine when I want to start W7.

I upgraded from 12.04 to 14.04, and notice a different behaviour in multi-monitor mode. In 12.04, when I plugged in the external monitor and then closed the laptop lid, the laptop would not suspend and I could work with the external monitor, but when I removed the external monitor, I could suspend by closing the lid. In 14.04, when I close the lid the laptop suspends. I want to get back to the original behaviour: i.e.: close lid when monitor present = do nothing; close lid with no monitor = suspend.

This question How can I tell Ubuntu to do nothing when I close my laptop lid? gives solutions to always prevent the laptop from suspending, my question is specifically about different behaviours depending on whether a monitor is attached.

My laptop is a Thinkpad Edge 13 with Intel integrated graphics

(I found a similar question but referring to Ubuntu 11.04 Problems with external monitors on my laptop , the answer mentions a problem with the kernel)

I am on Ubuntu 12.04, Thinkpad Edge 13, encrypted home. A message in the System Monitor tells me that swap is "not available". I can get it back using the swapon option in gparted (I thought I could also do sudo swapon -a in a terminal, but that does not work). The problem is that I have to swapon after every reboot. How can I switch it back on so it stays on even after a reboot?

my fstab:

# # <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass> 
proc /proc proc nodev,noexec,nosuid 0 0 
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation 
UUID=47641b93-9d12-4e6a-b803-dde28f0e5725 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1

[This question has been updated as I now have the same problem with Firefox in addition to flash plugin]

The update manager (on Ubuntu 12.04, 64bit) shows an 'important security update' for flashplugin-installer:i386, firefox, and firefox-globalmenu. The update is unticked, and cannot be selected, and therefore cannot be updated (I can update other packages without problems). Actually the flashplugin-installer package does not appear to be installed on my computer (judging from the Software Centre). I can't remember how I installed flash, probably directly from the Adobe website. The updater asks me if I want to do a partial upgrade.

When running sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade from terminal, I get the following:

The following packages have been kept back: firefox firefox-globalmenu flashplugin-installer:i386

I have a new 2TB external hard drive I will be using for additional storage and backup. I will only use it on two Ubuntu machines. Is it recommended to format the drive to ext4? Are there any advantages in doing so?

How can I retrieve Evolution's address book from an old install?

I used the backup/restore feature of Evolution after an upgrade, but the restore was giving me problems so I had to wipe out the .evolution folders and start over.

How can I get hold of my old address book from the original .evolution folder? The files are in the .db format, and I can't import them from within evolution.

I tried deleting the current address book folder (/.local/share/evolution/addressbook) and replacing it with the original folder, but the address book does not get loaded by Evolution.

Ubuntu 10.04.

After an update, I get a red warning icon in the system tray, warning about an error: broken count >0

Opening Update manager, I see that the broken package is linux-headers-2.6.32-38 (new install)

Trying to use the update manager, I get a further error message: You have 1 broken package on your system! Use the "Broken" filter to locate it.

and then:

E: /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-2.6.32-38_2.6.32-38.83_all.deb: unable to create `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-38/arch/arm/mach-netx/include/mach/vmalloc.h.dpkg-new' (while processing `./usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-38/arch/arm/mach-netx/include/mach/vmalloc.h')

I tried apt-get clean as suggested in another question on this site, and tried reinstalling the package in Synaptic.

One option I have not tried is simply to restart, but I don't dare to in case I can't reboot back into Ubuntu.

I have also tried apt-get install --fix-broken and I get the following:

The following extra packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-2.6.32-38
The following NEW packages will be installed
  linux-headers-2.6.32-38
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/9,937kB of archives.
After this operation, 76.2MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 589950 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking linux-headers-2.6.32-38 (from .../linux-headers-2.6.32-38_2.6.32-38.83_all.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-2.6.32-38_2.6.32-38.83_all.deb (--unpack):
unable to create `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-38/arch/arm/mach-nomadik/Makefile.boot.dpkg-new' (while processing `./usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-38/arch/arm/mach-nomadik/Makefile.boot'): No space left on device
No apport report written because the error message indicates a disk full error
                                                                              dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/linux-headers-2.6.32-38_2.6.32-38.83_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I need to create PDFs out of .odt documents, for submission on an online application website. It is required that the PDFs be "compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5 or higher, with embedded fonts". Do PDFs created with Libreoffice satisfy these requirements? I am using Ubuntu 11.10, LO 3.4.3. The font is Times new roman (but I can change that to a free font if that's a problem).

If not, what other method is recommended?

I have a thinkpad edge 13, with the package tp-smapi-dkms installed. As described in these instructions, I have also run sudo modprobe tp_smapi, and added tp_smapi to /etc/modules

Before upgrade to 11.10, I used to be able to change thresholds for stopping battery charging. I would open the file /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh as administrator and change the value from 100 to 85. Now, I am no longer able to directly edit that file. I also tried sudo echo 85 > /sys/devices/platform/smapi/BAT0/stop_charge_thresh but get Permission denied.

I decided to update to Oneiric using the update manager. At some point, I got this message:

The upgrade has aborted. Your system could be in an unusable state. A recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a).

Then, later on:

The upgrade has completed but there were errors during the upgrade process.

What can I do?

EDIT: Update manager offers to perform a 'Partial Upgrade'. "865 updates have been selected. The updates have already been downloaded, but not installed". It still gives the option to upgrade to 11.10

I get the following error message when trying a network upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10:

authentication failed. authenticating the upgrade failed. there may be a problem with the network or with the server

I googled that error and found one proposed solution:

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 437D05B5

gpg --export --armor 437D05B5 | apt-key add -

However, this seems to have screwed up at least one guy's system.

Is there any safer way of solving this (besides doing a fresh install)?

I am able to search my Tomboy notes using Synapse (and using a zeitgeist plugin), after following the instructions here: How do I get Synapse to search my Tomboy notes? My notes also appear in the Activity Journal.

Since both Synapse and the Dash rely on Zeitgeist data, why don't Tomboy notes also appear in the Unity Dash search results? Is there anything that can be done? (A similar question has been asked: Can I search tomboy notes with dash?)

The usual behaviour when clicking twice on an icon in the unity launcher is to trigger the scale mode: all windows of that app are tiled.

Now, a third click triggers different kinds of behaviour: most of the time it does nothing, sometimes it exits scale mode, and sometimes (not easily reproducible) it shuffles windows around, so for instance if I have Evolution open, and I am editing a message, clicking twice will show the message on the right and Evolution on the left, and a third click will shift the message to the left, and Evolution to the right.

I was wondering what would cause these different behaviours, and is it possible to control them (the second option is most useful, it would be nice for this to be consistent).

Bonus question: is there any purpose to shifting windows around as in the third behaviour, except to impress colleagues?

I open my Documents folder more often than my Home folder. In Unity, if I want to open Documents, I click on the File manager icon in the launcher (this opens Home), then I click on Documents in the Nautilus bookmarks. I would prefer to just left-click once on that icon and have Documents open directly.

I am not able to drag folders into the launcher (is this a bug?) to create shortcuts there. (or is there another way to do it?)

I am not interested in right-clicking the icon (I know it is possible to add bookmarks in the right-click menu, but I just want to single-click that icon).

So what can I do?

I want to use the Presentation Minimizer tool in LibreOffice, on Natty 64bit. I have the package libreoffice-presentation-minimizer installed (it is enabled by default). In OOo, the minimizer tool appeared in the Tools menu, but I cannot find the option there.

I use alarms attached to events in my Evolution calendar. With Unity, I get the usual notification at the appropriate time, but unlike in 10.10 or previous versions, there is no persistent reminder of the event (no 'alarm clock' icon in the system tray). What can I do to get a persistent reminder of the event? Something needs to turn blue in that panel! (In my opinion, that should be the date and time.) If someone could suggest any easy way of setting a persistent visual reminder, that would be great.

In this bug report https://bugs.launchpad.net/synapse-project/+bug/683550 it says "Tomboy has a dataprovider for Zeitgeist, so if you have that Tomboy notes should be easily searchable using Synapse"

I've got the Zeitgeist PPA from here: https://launchpad.net/~zeitgeist/+archive/ppa?field.series_filter=maverick. I installed the package zeitgeist-datasource-tomboy, but still cannot get tomboy notes in Synapse's search results. How do I get it to work?