HippoMan's questions

I'm currently running Ubuntu 20.04.4 LTS.

Four times over the past year or two, my apt database got screwed up somehow (I don't know how), and the next time I ran apt, apt-get, and aptitude, I was told that I have more than 1,000 packages that are set up to be removed. If I did an autoremove with the intention of later trying to reinstall, my entire system would have become unusable, because most of the normal, everyday programs would then have been removed during that autoremove.

I did not (!!!) delete the top-level desktop package, nor any top-level package. This error occurred due to something (??? I don't know what) which somehow damaged the integrity of the apt databases on my machine.

I was able to fix this each time by going through the procedure which I have outlined in the "Answer" to this question: Fixing broken apt **without** destroying my system via "apt autoremove"

However, the fact that this has occurred multiple times means that whatever caused this might cause it to happen again. In order to help fix this situation if/when it happens again, I'd like to know the following ...

What directories on my system should I back up if I want to preserve the state of the entire apt system at any given time? I want to take periodic backups of all of these apt-related directories, so that next time this error occurs, I could quickly restore my apt environment by restoring all of these directories to their last backed-up versions.

Thank you for any pointers and suggestions as to what directories I should back up in order to preserve the integrity of my entire apt environment.

I'm using Xfce4 under Ubuntu 20.04.4 (i.e., it's Xubuntu).

I would like to totally and completely disable all notification sounds, always. However, I want all other sound to be enabled as normal.

I have not been able to find any configuration settings that control notification sounds. Am I missing something, or am I just out of luck?

PS: In Settings=>xsettings, the EnableEventSounds and EnableInputFeedbackSounds items are not set. Nonetheless, I am still getting sounds for all my notifications.

Thank you in advance for any ideas and suggestions.

Somehow, my apt system got hosed on my Ubuntu 20.04.4 system, and now there are more than 1,800 packages that are marked as needing to be uninstalled.

This is from the Xubuntu installation, which means I'm running the xfce desktop.

I know that the recommended way to fix this kind of apt problem is to do an apt autoremove followed by reinstalls of the packages. However, if I do that, my system will then be totally unusable after the apt autoremove, due to the fact that most of my system's packages will have been uninstalled.

I'm looking for an alternative way to fix my apt database so that I don't have to destroy my system with the apt autoremove command in order to correct apt.

In order to illustrate the state of apt on my system, here are some of the things I have run ...

% sudo apt-get install -f
[returns a list of the names of the 1,800 packages]

% sudo dpkg configure -a
[no output]

% sudo aptitude search ?broken
[no output]

% sudo cat /var/log/apt/history.log
Start-Date: 2022-05-04  18:01:54
Requested-By: [MYUSERID] (1000)
Upgrade: networkd-dispatcher:amd64 (2.1-2~ubuntu20.04.2, 2.1-2~ubuntu20.04.3), libvirt-daemon-system-systemd:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16), openssl:amd64 (1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.12, 1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.13), librbd1:amd64 (15.2.14-0ubuntu0.20.04.2, 15.2.16-0ubuntu0.20.04.1), google-chrome-stable:amd64 (101.0.4951.41-1, 101.0.4951.54-1), libvirt-clients:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16), iio-sensor-proxy:amd64 (2.8-1ubuntu1, 2.8-1ubuntu2), libvirt-daemon-driver-storage-rbd:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16), libpq5:amd64 (12.9-0ubuntu0.20.04.1, 12.10-0ubuntu0.20.04.1), ubuntu-drivers-common:amd64 (1:0.9.0~0.20.04.6, 1:0.9.0~0.20.04.7), libvirt-daemon-driver-qemu:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16), libvirt-daemon-system:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16), libssl-dev:amd64 (1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.12, 1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.13), libssl-doc:amd64 (1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.12, 1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.13), libmysqlclient21:amd64 (8.0.28-0ubuntu0.20.04.3, 8.0.29-0ubuntu0.20.04.2), libmysqlclient21:i386 (8.0.28-0ubuntu0.20.04.3, 8.0.29-0ubuntu0.20.04.2), libvirt0:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16), lm-sensors:amd64 (1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1, 1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1.1), libsensors-config:amd64 (1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1, 1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1.1), libssl1.1:amd64 (1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.12, 1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.13), libssl1.1:i386 (1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.12, 1.1.1f-1ubuntu2.13), libsensors5:amd64 (1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1, 1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1.1), libsensors5:i386 (1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1, 1:3.6.0-2ubuntu1.1), librados2:amd64 (15.2.14-0ubuntu0.20.04.2, 15.2.16-0ubuntu0.20.04.1), libvirt-daemon:amd64 (6.0.0-0ubuntu8.15, 6.0.0-0ubuntu8.16)
End-Date: 2022-05-04  18:02:47

% sudo ls -l /etc/apt/sources.list
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3280 Jan 19 17:24 /etc/apt/sources.list
[note that the file hasn't changed in a few months]

% sudo ls -l /etc/apt/sources.list.d 
total 16
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 190 Jan 19 17:24 google-chrome.list
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 190 Jan 19 17:24 google-chrome.list.save
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  56 Apr 14 11:06 skype-stable.list
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root  56 Jan 19 17:24 skype-stable.list.save
[note that none of this has changed recently]

% sudo apt update
Hit:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                                                             
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease [114 kB]                                                                            
Hit:3 http://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                                                         
Get:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [108 kB]                                                                          
Get:5 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [114 kB]                                                                          
Hit:6 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                                                             
Hit:7 https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                                                 
Get:8 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [278 kB]
Get:9 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [391 kB]      
Get:10 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/multiverse amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [940 B]                     
Get:11 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [9,568 B]
Get:12 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [30.8 kB]
Hit:13 https://repo.skype.com/deb stable InRelease                                              
Get:14 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [40.6 kB]
Get:15 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [66.3 kB]
Get:16 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/multiverse amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [2,464 B]
Fetched 1,155 kB in 2s (555 kB/s)                       
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.

% sudo grep -r "^deb" /etc/apt/ --include=*.list
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list:deb [arch=amd64] https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/skype-stable.list:deb [arch=amd64] https://repo.skype.com/deb stable main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d.save/alex-p-ubuntu-aegisub-focal.list:deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/alex-p/aegisub/ubuntu focal main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d.save/teamviewer.list:deb https://linux.teamviewer.com/deb stable main
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal partner
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal partner
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ focal main

I had a similar problem in the past which I fixed as described in the "Answers" section of the following post: apt forgot about more than 1,000 packages, and I'm unable to reinstall ... it's the Answer which begins with "I figured out how to fix this problem ..."

However, this seems like a hack-y way to fix this, and I'm not sure how reliable it will be if I run it now.

Can anyone suggest any other way to fix this problem without sudo apt autoremove and without that hack-y method that I used in the past?

Thank you very much in advance.

PS: I take daily backups of my system. Are there perhaps any files or directories I can restore from my latest backup which would contain the non-broken versions of the apt database?

PPS: I tried installing xubuntu-desktop as discussed in the comments below. Sadly, it didn't help ...

% sudo apt install xubuntu-desktop
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
xubuntu-desktop is already the newest version (2.233).
xubuntu-desktop set to manually installed.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
[list of 1,800 package names, followed by ...]
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

And all those packages remain marked as requiring uninstallation.

I'm not sure if this is an Ubuntu-specific question, but I'm asking here first, because I'm running Ubuntu 20.04. If this turns out to not be pertinent to Ubuntu, I'm glad to go elsewhere to ask this.

I am a clumsy typer, and occasionally, I hit an incorrect keystroke sequence which causes all characters that are typed to start coming out in a new character set ... it looks like garbled characters and also some Greek characters. This happens in every window that I am running, including on the console, so this is not application-specific.

Unfortunately, I don't know which incorrect keystrokes might have caused this character-set switch to occur, and I'm hoping to find out ... and also to find out whether there is a similar set of keystrokes or possibly a command which would reset the character set back to normal ... where "normal" is UTF-8.

When this problem occurs, the character set gets reset back to normal if I reboot my machine.

If this is not a good place to ask this question, can anyone suggest a more appropriate place?

Thank you in advance for any help or suggestions which could be offered.

After doing some package installs, the desktop-file-utils package is now failing to be installed via apt and aptitude. This is for Xubuntu 20.04.2.

When running apt, I now always get this error:

dpkg: error processing package desktop-file-utils (--configure):
 installed desktop-file-utils package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 desktop-file-utils

I know that I can purge this package, but then quite a few of its dependencies will also be uninstalled, and my system is likely to become unusable.

I don't understand what could have caused this problem, because I don't know what I could have done to affect this package.

Is there some way to fix this other than purging desktop-file-utils and making my system unusable? Also, is there some way where I can get more detailed information about exactly how the post-installation script is failing? If so, perhaps I could debug this.

Thank you in advance for any suggestions.

I'm running 20.04.2 LTS (Focal Fossa)

I hadn't run aptitude for a couple days. It always worked fine, but when I tried it now, it started giving me the "e Examine" dialog each time I run it. When I type "e", it goes into a 10-20 minute run with the following showing at the top of the page:

open: aaa; closed: bbb; defer: ccc; conflict: ddd

Where 'aaa', 'bbb', 'ccc', 'ddd' are increasing numeric values ... and 'aaa' and 'bbb' are increasing rapidly, up to more than 50,000.

After a while, aptitude simply exits.

At this point, if I run dpkg --configure -a, it quickly returns to the command prompt with no error. But then, when I run apt-get install -f, I get a list of more than 1,000 package names followed by this ...

Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Most of these packages (probably all of them, actually) are items that I use from day to day, and they should not be removed.

Oh, also, if I capture the huge list of packages that are shown when I do apt-get install -f, and if I generate a thousand or so apt install PKG commands for each of these package names and then run this, I just get multiple lists of those same thousand-or-so packages for each of these commands, followed by that same "use sudo apt autoremove" message after each apt install PKG run.

Somehow, my apt caches seem to have gotten hosed. I don't know what could have caused this.

However, I don't really want to spend time trying to figure out why this happened. I just want to fix it so that all those packages are once again properly installed and manageable via apt.

Can anyone point me to docs that could help me, or perhaps to suggest a solution?

Thank you very much in advance.

PS: my /etc/apt/sources.list hasn't changed for weeks, nor have any files in /etc/apt/source.list.d changed in a long time. Actually, nothing under /etc/apt seems to have changed since a couple months ago.

PPS*: Here are the last dozen or so lines of /var/log/apt/history.log ...

Start-Date: 2021-07-24  20:01:24
Requested-By: ljz (1000)
Install: linux-headers-5.4.0-80-generic:amd64 (5.4.0-80.90, automatic), linux-modules-5.4.0-80-generic:amd64 (5.4.0-80.90, automatic), linux-headers-5.4.0-80:amd64 (5.4.0-80.90, automatic), linux-image-5.4.0-80-generic:amd64 (5.4.0-80.90, automatic), linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-80-generic:amd64 (5.4.0-80.90, automatic)
Upgrade: networkd-dispatcher:amd64 (2.0.1-1, 2.1-2~ubuntu20.04.1), linux-headers-generic:amd64 (5.4.0.77.80, 5.4.0.80.84), linux-libc-dev:amd64 (5.4.0-77.86, 5.4.0-80.90), libcurl4:amd64 (7.68.0-1ubuntu2.5, 7.68.0-1ubuntu2.6), ruby2.7:amd64 (2.7.0-5ubuntu1.4, 2.7.0-5ubuntu1.5), libsystemd0:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), linux-image-generic:amd64 (5.4.0.77.80, 5.4.0.80.84), libsystemd-dev:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), python3-pip:amd64 (20.0.2-5ubuntu1.5, 20.0.2-5ubuntu1.6), udev:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), ruby2.7-dev:amd64 (2.7.0-5ubuntu1.4, 2.7.0-5ubuntu1.5), ruby2.7-doc:amd64 (2.7.0-5ubuntu1.4, 2.7.0-5ubuntu1.5), libudev1:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), systemd-timesyncd:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), libxnvctrl0:amd64 (460.73.01-0ubuntu0.20.04.1, 470.57.01-0ubuntu0.20.04.1), libglib2.0-dev-bin:amd64 (2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.3, 2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.4), libruby2.7:amd64 (2.7.0-5ubuntu1.4, 2.7.0-5ubuntu1.5), systemd-sysv:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), libglib2.0-bin:amd64 (2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.3, 2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.4), libpam-systemd:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), libglib2.0-dev:amd64 (2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.3, 2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.4), libglib2.0-doc:amd64 (2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.3, 2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.4), systemd:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), libnss-systemd:amd64 (245.4-4ubuntu3.7, 245.4-4ubuntu3.11), libglib2.0-data:amd64 (2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.3, 2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.4), curl:amd64 (7.68.0-1ubuntu2.5, 7.68.0-1ubuntu2.6), linux-generic:amd64 (5.4.0.77.80, 5.4.0.80.84), python-pip-whl:amd64 (20.0.2-5ubuntu1.5, 20.0.2-5ubuntu1.6), libglib2.0-0:amd64 (2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.3, 2.64.6-1~ubuntu20.04.4), libcurl3-gnutls:amd64 (7.68.0-1ubuntu2.5, 7.68.0-1ubuntu2.6)
End-Date: 2021-07-24  20:02:46

Start-Date: 2021-07-25  19:31:25
Requested-By: ljz (1000)
Remove: linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-74-generic:amd64 (5.4.0-74.83), linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-73-generic:amd64 (5.4.0-73.82)
End-Date: 2021-07-25  19:31:28

Start-Date: 2021-07-27  18:56:53
Requested-By: ljz (1000)
Upgrade: libaspell15:amd64 (0.60.8-1build1, 0.60.8-1ubuntu0.1), aspell:amd64 (0.60.8-1build1, 0.60.8-1ubuntu0.1), libmysqlclient21:amd64 (8.0.25-0ubuntu0.20.04.1, 8.0.26-0ubuntu0.20.04.2), teamviewer:amd64 (15.19.3, 15.20.3)
End-Date: 2021-07-27  18:57:05

aptitude worked fine around 2021-07-24, so whatever broke my setup must have occurred after that.

Output of sudo aptitude search ?broken

iB  anydesk                                                 - The fastest remote desktop software on the market.                
iBA apt                                                     - commandline package manager                                       
iBA aptitude                                                - terminal-based package manager                                    
iBA base-files                                              - Debian base system miscellaneous files                            
iBA base-passwd                                             - Debian base system master password and group files                
iBA bash                                                    - GNU Bourne Again SHell                                            
iBA bsdutils                                                - basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite                                  
iB  chromium-common                                         - web browser - common resources used by the chromium packages      
iB  chromium-sandbox                                        - web browser - setuid security sandbox for chromium                
iB  containerd.io                                           - An open and reliable container runtime                            
iBA coreutils                                               - GNU core utilities                                                
iBA dash                                                    - POSIX-compliant shell                                             
iBA debianutils                                             - Miscellaneous utilities specific to Debian                        
iBA diffutils                                               - File comparison utilities                                         
iBA dpkg                                                    - Debian package management system                                  
iBA e2fsprogs                                               - ext2/ext3/ext4 file system utilities                              
iBA fdisk                                                   - collection of partitioning utilities                              
iBA findutils                                               - utilities for finding files--find, xargs                          
iB  google-chrome-stable                                    - The web browser from Google                                       
iBA grep                                                    - GNU grep, egrep and fgrep                                         
iBA gzip                                                    - GNU compression utilities                                         
iBA hostname                                                - utility to set/show the host name or domain name                  
iBA libc-bin                                                - GNU C Library: Binaries                                           
iBA libcurl3-gnutls                                         - easy-to-use client-side URL transfer library (GnuTLS flavour)     
iBA libglib2.0-0                                            - GLib library of C routines                                        
iBA libnss-systemd                                          - nss module providing dynamic user and group name resolution       
iBA libpam-systemd                                          - system and service manager - PAM module                           
iBA libsystemd0                                             - systemd utility library                                           
iBA libudev1                                                - libudev shared library                                            
iBA linux-base                                              - Linux image base package                                          
iBA linux-headers-5.4.0-80-generic                          - Linux kernel headers for version 5.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP          
iBA linux-image-5.4.0-80-generic                            - Signed kernel image generic                                       
iBA linux-image-generic                                     - Generic Linux kernel image                                        
iBA linux-modules-extra-5.4.0-80-generic                    - Linux kernel extra modules for version 5.4.0 on 64 bit x86 SMP    
iBA login                                                   - system login tools                                                
iBA mount                                                   - tools for mounting and manipulating filesystems                   
iBA ncurses-bin                                             - terminal-related programs and man pages                           
iB  net.downloadhelper.coapp                                - Video DownloadHelper companion app                                
iBA networkd-dispatcher                                     - Dispatcher service for systemd-networkd connection status changes 
iB  ocenaudio                                               - Ocenaudio is a fast, cross-platform audio editor.                 
iB  palemoon                                                - Firefox-based, efficient and easy to use web browser              
iBA perl-base                                               - minimal Perl system                                               
iB  rpi-imager                                              - Raspberry Pi imaging utility                                      
iBA sed                                                     - GNU stream editor for filtering/transforming text                 
iB  signal-desktop                                          - Private messaging from your desktop                               
iB  signal-desktop-beta                                     - Private messaging from your desktop                               
iBA systemd                                                 - system and service manager                                        
iBA systemd-timesyncd                                       - minimalistic service to synchronize local time with NTP servers   
iBA sysvinit-utils                                          - System-V-like utilities                                           
iBA tar                                                     - GNU version of the tar archiving utility                          
iBA util-linux                                              - miscellaneous system utilities                                    
iB  vdpau-va-driver                                         - VDPAU-based backend for VA API                                    
iB  zoom                                                    - Zoom, #1 Video Conferencing and Web Conferencing Service          

And here's more:

% sudo apt update
Hit:1 https://linux.teamviewer.com/deb stable InRelease
Hit:2 https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial InRelease                                     
Get:3 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [114 kB]                         
Hit:4 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                    
Hit:5 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease                                            
Get:6 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [101 kB]
Hit:7 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal InRelease                                
Fetched 214 kB in 1s (178 kB/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
3 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

% sudo apt list --upgradeable
Listing... Done
signal-desktop-beta/xenial 5.11.0-beta.3 amd64 [upgradable from: 5.8.0-beta.1]
signal-desktop/xenial 5.10.0 amd64 [upgradable from: 5.9.0]
ubuntu-advantage-tools/focal-updates 27.2.2~20.04.1 amd64 [upgradable from: 27.1~20.0

% sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  fonts-ubuntu fonts-uralic fotoxx fotoxx-common friendly-recovery ftp gdal-data gegl genisoimage geoclue-2.0 geoip-database
  [ ... more than 100 lines containing more package names ... ]
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.

Still more ...

grep -r "^deb" /etc/apt/ --include=*.list
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal restricted main universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates restricted main universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal partner
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal partner
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security restricted main universe multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/teamviewer.list:deb https://linux.teamviewer.com/deb stable main
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list:deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main

Possible solution ...

What if I do the following? ...

1. run sudo apt-get install -f >apt-installs
2. edit that file, removing the lines that precede and follow the package names, and putting "sudo apt install " at the beginning of each line
3. run "sudo apt autoremove"
4. run "bash apt-installs" to reinstall each and every package.

Here's what the "apt-installs" file would look like after step 2 ...

sudo apt install accountsservice acpi-support acpid adb alsa-base android-libadb android-libbase android-libboringssl android-libcrypto-utils
sudo apt install android-libcutils android-liblog android-sdk-platform-tools-common apt-rdepends aptdaemon aptdaemon-data apturl apturl-common
sudo apt install aria2 audacious audacious-plugins audacious-plugins-data bind9-dnsutils blueman bluez bluez-cups brltty brltty-x11 brotli
sudo apt install busybox-static byobu catdoc catfish cheese-common cinnamon-desktop-data cinnamon-l10n clang-format-11 clang-tidy-11
sudo apt install clang-tools-11 command-not-found cppcheck cvs dc dctrl-tools debhelper debtree devilspie devilspie2 dh-autoreconf
sudo apt install dh-elpa-helper dh-strip-nondeterminism diffstat distro-info dmz-cursor-theme doc-base docbook-xml dwz efibootmgr elfutils
[ ... etc. ... for more than 100 lines ]

What do you folks think? Could this fix my problem?

More follow-up ...

After more investigation about apt, I now see that the sudo apt autoremove will indeed uninstall all of those packages. That's over 1,000 packages, and the my system will indeed become unusuable after that. And it's unclear to me whether running all of those sudo apt install ... commands will even work, given that so much other software would have been uninstalled.

So, I'm still stuck. :(

I don't want to uninstall any software. I just want to get the apt caches back into a usable state, without changing any existing software installations.

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 from the 18.04 version. Since then, the snap-based chromium browser that comes with 20.04 is unable to access any items in the /opt partition which I have separately mounted on my system.

If I go to the trouble of installing a non-snap-based version of chromium, I do not have this problem under 20.04.

I'm not sure, but I think this problem with accessing filesystems outside of the one on which a snap program is running might be present in all snap-based software, not just chromium.

How can I get chromium and all other snap-based programs to see all the filesystems that I have mounted?

Thank you very much.

PS: On my system, /opt is mounted via the following line within /etc/fstab ...

UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx /opt ext4 defaults,auto 0 0

... where the x's take the place of an actual, valid UUID.

PPS: All non-snap-based software on my system has no trouble whatsoever in accessing anything on this /opt partition.

PPPS: The suggested solution in the referenced article does not solve my problem, because I would have to change my system around (changing mounts, paths, scripts, etc.), simply to get this crippled, snap-based chromium to work as it used to work before. My goal is to not change my long-standing system setup at all, but rather, to simply install a version of chromium which can run in the same way that I have been running it for years. The answer I have now posted shows the way I learned how to do this. After discovering that method to eliminate the snap-based chromium and replace it with the traditional version, it took me no longer than 10 minutes to replace chromium so that everything runs like it always has been able to run.

I'm on ubuntu-18.4 and I have 5 static IP's available to me. They are of the following form ...

a.b.c.34
a.b.c.35
a.b.c.36
a.b.c.37
a.b.c.38

I have set them up in the NetworkManager applet by specifying "Manual", and by trying to enter each of them in the IPV4 screen as follows:

Address     Netmask   Gateway
a.b.c.34         24   a.b.c.1
a.b.c.35         24   a.b.c.1
a.b.c.36         24   a.b.c.1
a.b.c.37         24   a.b.c.1
a.b.c.38         24   a.b.c.1

However, after saving the setup and then going back to the IPV4 screen, the "Gateway" values for the 2nd through 5th entries are blanked out, and after restarting my network, only the first IP address (a.b.c.34) is active.

What am I missing in order to get my machine to respond to all 5 IP addresses?

Thank you in advance.

PS: I know that the IP addresses are valid and active, because I previously was using them with my same machine that was running Ubuntu-16.x. Whatever I did on that machine, all IP's were working (but I forget the details of what I did). But after upgrading my machine to ubuntu-18.4 and trying to use NetworkManager, the 2nd through 5th IP's are not being recognized.

Follow-up ...

This is a laptop which is being used as my desktop and also as a server. And here is the requested info ...

# cat /etc/network/interfaces
# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# cat /etc/netplan/*.yaml
# Let NetworkManager manage all devices on this system
network:
  version: 2
  renderer: NetworkManager
# ls -al /etc/systemd/network/
total 8
4 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 20  2018 ./
4 drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Apr 17 00:52 ../

Further follow-up ...

The connection is called "Hippo-Wired". I changed the high-order IP octets to "a.b.c" here, and I also anonymized the uuid, the Mac address, and the DNS entries. Note that there is only one IP address. The 2nd through 5th addresses in the applet are not showing. For some reason, the applet didn't accept them ...

# cat Hippo-Wired 
[connection]
id=Hippo-Wired
uuid=tttttttt-uuuu-uuuu-iiii-dddddddddddd
type=ethernet
autoconnect-priority=-999
permissions=
timestamp=1588347775

[ethernet]
mac-address=nn.nn.nn.nn.nn.nn
mac-address-blacklist=

[ipv4]
address1=a.b.c.34/24,a.b.c.1
dns=sss.ttt.uuu.vvv;www.xxx.yyy.zzz;
dns-search=
method=manual

[ipv6]
addr-gen-mode=stable-privacy
dns-search=
ip6-privacy=0
method=auto

Could it be that the applet will not allow more than one IP address with the same Gateway?

I'm using xfce4 under ubuntu with the 4.15.0.30 kernel.

Starting yesterday after a number of reboots, the screensaver (I'm using xscreensaver) stopped getting invoked when the system is idle.

• xscreensaver is definitely running
• When I issue xscreensaver-command activate the screensaver starts successfully
• When I close the laptop lid and reopen, xscreensaver comes up properly with a lock screen.
• The screensaver is enabled within the xfce4 settings panel and set to blank after 3 minutes. No matter what value I use for "Blank after", the screen saver never automatically pops up.
• I can issue a Preview of the screensaver within the settings panel, and it works.
• I have completely uninstalled and reinstalled xscreensaver and completely reset all of its settings. This did not fix the problem.
• I have rebooted several times, and this did not fix the problem, either.

My guess is that this isn't a problem with xscreensaver or its configuration, but rather, it's as if my system is no longer detecting that it is in an idle state. How do I test and diagnose this? What factors can cause my system to stop realizing that it is idle?

I made a change in /etc/systemd/system.conf yesterday. I entered this setting:

DefaultTimeoutStopSec=15s

... and then I issued systemctl daemon-reload and rebooted. All other entries in /etc/systemd/system.conf are commented out. Thinking that this might be causing the problem, I commented out that setting again, ran systemctl daemon-reload again, and then followed that by a reboot. But the same screensaver problems continued.

Any ideas of what might be causing my system to not detect that it is idle, and how this might be fixed?

Thank you in advance.

Is there a way to have resizable separators on the panel in XFCE4?

We either have a very narrow, fixed-width separator, or else we have one that is expandable, which means that it expands to the maximum size possible.

I would like to have the option of resizing panel separators to an absolute width, so that I can configure the amount of space between the widgets on the panel.

This is possible in Plasma and probably other environments, and I'm looking for a way to do this under XFCE4.

Any ideas?

Thank you very much.

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04. I have some mountable USB drives that cause the system to hang forever at boot time if it tries to mount them at that time, although the mounts work fine after the system is up and I'm logged in.

Here is a typical entry in /etc/fstab ...

UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx  /media/sdcard  ext4  defaults  0  0

I know that marking an entry in /etc/fstab with noauto will prevent the system from trying to mount it at boot time, since noauto causes the entry to be ignored when mount -a is run ... which occurs at boot time.

I have changed defaults to defaults,noauto, and now the boot runs normally.

However, then I can't run mount -av later to cause these devices to be mounted. If after boot, I remove noauto and then run mount -av, the devices then get properly mounted. The system hangs with these items only at boot time.

I would like to set up the system so that at boot time, those items are ignored, but that after boot, they can be mounted automatically ... for example, when I first log into my desktop session after boot.

I know I could write a script to grep through /etc/fstab, find these entries, and then cause each one of them to be manually mounted, and I could then cause that script to run at session startup time when I log in.

However, I'm wondering if there is some way to configure /etc/fstab so that those entries get ignored by mount -a *only* at boot time, and that they get mounted by mount -a once the system is up and I'm logged in.

Is this possible?

Thank you very much.

For several months, I have been successfully connected to the net via a static IP with my machine that is running ubuntu (16.04.3). I recently had to reinstall the OS, and now on the same machine, the system is ignoring my DNS settings. The DNS server hasn't changed, nor has the machine's static IP address changed. Furthermore, I can ping the DNS IP addresses with no problem from the ubuntu device. As a double check, other machines that I own and which reside on the same network have no trouble with DNS using the same addresses.

For the purpose of this discussion, assume the following hypothetical settings:

Hostname:    host-o-rama-bama.com
Static IP:   10.20.30.40
Gateway:     10.20.30.1
Netmask:     255.255.255.0
DNS server:  100.110.120.130
DNS server:  100.110.120.140

Using the Ubuntu Network Manager, I configured these settings as follows:

General
* Automatically connect to this network when it is available: Yes
* All users may connect to this network: Yes
Ethernet
* Device: enp2s0f1
* Wake on LAN: Default
802.1x security
(None)
DCB
(None)
IPV4 Settings
* Method: Manual
* Address:  10.20.30.40
* Netmask:  255.255.255.0
* Gateway:  10.20.30.1
* DNS Servers: 100.110.120.130,100.110.120.140
* Search Domains: host-o-rama-bama.com
IPV6 Settings
* Method: Ignore

After starting the network ...

# ifconfig
enp2s0f1  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 80:fa:5b:4c:02:07  
          inet addr:10.20.30.40  Bcast:10.20.30.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::82fa:5bff:fe4c:207/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:63252 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:40966 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:53814860 (53.8 MB)  TX bytes:5441842 (5.4 MB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:7029 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:7029 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:650606 (650.6 KB)  TX bytes:650606 (650.6 KB)

At this point, I can ping each of my DNS servers via their IP addresses.

Furthermore, remote sites can ping my ubuntu host both by its static IP address and also by the name host-o-rama-bama.com, which is already set up on the DNS servers. I can even ssh into my host both via its IP address and its DNS name.

However, I cannot see any domain names from the ubuntu machine, but , I can indeed access anywhere I want on the net via ssh, telnet, http, ping, etc. as long as I use the IP address.

In /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/base, I put the following, and then I ran resolvconf -u ...

domain host-o-rama-bama.com
search host-o-rama-bama.com
nameserver 100.110.120.130
nameserver 100.110.120.140

However, after running it, the DNS is still not working.

I put the following into /etc/network/interfaces ...

# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto enp2s0f1
iface enp2s0f1 inet static
address 10.20.30.40
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 10.20.30.1
dns-nameserver 100.110.120.130
dns-nameserver 100.110.120.140
dns-search host-o-rama-bama.com

I then did the following:

# ifdown enp2s0f1
# ifup enp2s0f1

Nothing changed. The DNS is still not working.

I then commented out everything in /etc/network/interfaces from the auto enp2s0f1 line to the bottom of the file and then did this ...

# ifdown -a
# ifup -a

Still no DNS.

I then tried this ...

# /etc/init.d/network-manager stop
# /etc/init.d/network-manager start

The DNS is still not working.

Then, I did this:

# service networking restart

... and still no DNS.

What am I missing?

Thank you in advance.