Dan's questions

I rarely use the Ubuntu Software application, but when I opened it today I saw that it has a notification saying that my fingerprint scanner firmware can be updated.

However, the apt upgrade and snap refresh commands output that everything is up-to-date. Am I missing a third source of packages on my system?

danny@danny:~$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade 
Hit:1 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish InRelease
Hit:2 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-updates InRelease                                                                                                                                         
Hit:3 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-backports InRelease                                                                                                                                       
Hit:4 https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                                                                                                                              
Hit:5 https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu impish InRelease                                                                                                                                  
Hit:6 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu impish InRelease                                                                
Get:7 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu impish-security InRelease [110 kB]                          
Hit:8 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/ms-teams stable InRelease                     
Fetched 110 kB in 1s (127 kB/s)                          
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

While checking the manual for do-release-upgrade, I found out that it has a --frontend argument that can be passed to the command along with a value. However, the manpage doesn't explain what the argument exactly does, or what are the available values for it.

       -f FRONTEND, --frontend=FRONTEND
              Run the specified frontend

My assumption is that it to allow us to go through a specific application like the Software Updater or the command-line. Can I find a better description and a list of possible values for that argument?

I'm on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 18.04. During installation, I chose the minimal installation instead of the standard one.

I just added myself to the docker group using the following command

sudo usermod -a -G docker danny

I have logged out from my GNOME session (I tried both, from the top bar's menu, and from searching for "logout"). But my user did not get assigned to the docker group. However, if I su into my user, the group is there so the previous command did not fail.

$ groups
danny adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare
$ groups danny
danny adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare docker
$ su - danny
$ groups
danny adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lpadmin sambashare docker

I had to do a full OS reboot for the change to take effect.

I have already rebooted, but this the ouput of id;

$ id
uid=1000(danny) gid=1000(danny) groups=1000(danny),4(adm),24(cdrom),27(sudo),30(dip),46(plugdev),116(lpadmin),126(sambashare),999(docker)

But I'm wondering why logging out isn't enough?

P.S. I am able to reproduce this behavior by adding myself to any random group, not just docker.

I just updated Ubuntu. And immediately after I logged into my Ubuntu session, I got a prompt asking me for my password with the User Name field automatically filled with my Gmail email.

How can I figure out which application is asking me for my password before I input it?

As you can see from the screenshot below, there's no info whatsoever about the application that triggered the dialog.

While running sudo do-release-upgrade, I got a message saying:

16 installed packages are no longer supported by Canonical. You can still get support from the community.

I know I probably shouldn't be worried, but how can I get a list of those packages before starting the upgrade?

The following is the complete output of do-release-upgrade before choosing continue: http://paste.ubuntu.com/12990830/

For better convenience, this is the most important part of it:

Calculating the changes

Do you want to start the upgrade? 


16 installed packages are no longer supported by Canonical. You can 
still get support from the community. 

61 packages are going to be removed. 204 new packages are going to be 
installed. 1617 packages are going to be upgraded. 

You have to download a total of 1,220 M. This download will take 
about 55 minutes with your connection. 

Installing the upgrade can take several hours. Once the download has 
finished, the process cannot be canceled. 

 Continue [yN]  Details [d]

I'm trying to use sudoedit, but it keeps running the nano editor. My preferred editor is vim. How can I make it the default?

Looking at the man page, man sudoedit, I've noticed the following:

 EDITOR           Default editor to use in -e (sudoedit) mode if neither SUDO_EDITOR nor VISUAL is set.
 SUDO_EDITOR      Default editor to use in -e (sudoedit) mode.
 VISUAL           Default editor to use in -e (sudoedit) mode if SUDO_EDITOR is not set.

So I've set them all to /usr/bin/vim, but sudoedit /etc/hosts still uses nano. Am I missing something?

$ EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim
$ VISUAL=/usr/bin/vim
$ SUDO_EDITOR=/usr/bin/vim

$ echo $VISUAL
/usr/bin/vim

$ echo $EDITOR 
/usr/bin/vim

$ echo $SUDO_EDITOR 
/usr/bin/vim

$ sudoedit /etc/hosts # This is still using nano

I typed cd - in terminal by mistake today, and I got an error saying:

bash: cd: OLDPWD not set

And unfortunately, man cd doesn't exist.

No manual entry for cd

What does it actually do?

Can we add an Ubuntu derivative to list of computers to manage in Ubuntu Landscape or just Ubuntu?

At least the official ones (Lubuntu, Xubuntu, etc.).

I have large directory with lots of files and directories on a remote Windows system where I only have FTP access.

I had to do some modifications in some of the files, so I downloaded the whole directory to run a find and replace command in files recursively.

Using Git locally, I was able to get the list of modified files. (Their is no Git on the Windows system, so I can't push/pull. Besides, I only have FTP access.)

Now I need to update the files on the Windows system. Uploading file by file manually can be frustrating as there are a lot of modified files.
Some of the files are located in subdirectories and sub-subdirectories.

For example this structure (There are a lot more files):

./
 |--- file1
 |--- file2
 |--- dir1
 |     |--- file1.1
 |     |--- dir1.1
 |           |---- file1.1.1
 |--- dir2
       |--- file2.1
       |--- file2.2
       |--- file2.3

How can I copy them (or moving them is even fine) to a new location, while preserving their directory structure.
This way, in my FTP client, I would just move the whole folder. It will manage the directory structure by itself.

Keep in mind, that the subdirectories have other unmodified files in them, which I do not want to be copied.

Git gave me this list, so it did half the work:

file1
file2
dir1/file1.1
dir1/dir1.1/file1.1.1
dir2/file2.1
dir2/file2.2
dir2/file2.3

Why are there two or more different versions of a manpage in http://manpages.ubuntu.com

For example, looking at the manpage of at, you can find two, one that is provided by the manpages-posix package ^[ref]. And another that is provided by the at package itself ^[ref].
The same is valid for other packages as well like ls.1 and ls.1posix and ls.1plan9.

What I understood from a quick search is that posix means that it's a standard specified by IEEE to maintain compatibility between different OS ^[ref].

So does Ubuntu has its own implementation of a program?

Let's say I have a two monitor setup.

I open Firefox on display #1. If I hover my mouse to select a menu item on display #1, the global menu will show. But if I hover the mouse to select a menu item on display #2 nothing will show, unless I move the Firefox window to the second display. But then the global menu will not show on display #1.

Can I make the global menu show on all displays, no matter on which display the application is visble?

Please note that I do not want to disable the auto-hide feature.

Edit: Adding a reason on why I need this:

One of the reasons I ask for this, is because I regularly connect my laptop to my TV Set and watch movies (I use VLC). So, most of the times I want to access the menu of VLC without the need of interrupting the playback.

And even if I did interrupt the playback, VLC's playlist can be undocked from the main window, and become a window on its own.

So I always keep the playlist on the laptop display, and the movie on full screen on the TV display. And even if the playlist is the active window, since VLC's main window is on the TV display, the menu would only show on the TV display, and not on the laptop.

I'm wondering why Shift + Arrow Key result in one of the A, B, C or D letters.

Why not other letters? Why any letter at all?

I have been checking the Ubuntu errors page, but in the legend I noticed that both 12.10 and 13.04 are listed twice. Once just Ubuntu 12.10, and another Ubuntu 12.10 (by 12.04 standards).

So what classifies an error to be in 12.04 standards and what doesn't?

I am creating a script which runs a series of command that would download a website to a machine and sets up everything.

So most of the commands require root access. For example adding a vhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available, enabling it, restarting apache, etc...

So in order to do that, I need to run the script with sudo.

sudo ./install-website.sh

The website is located on a server with a git repository which is setup with a password-less SSH access. But that only works for the user dan since the keys are in my home folder and not in the root's home folder.

So when it reaches this part:

git clone [email protected]:git-repo $PATH_TO_INSTALLATION

Since I started the script with sudo, the user that is trying to initiate the git command is root. So the host keeps asking for the host's user's password.

I have tried the following command:

sudo -u $SUDO_USER git clone [email protected]:git-repo $PATH_TO_INSTALLATION

But it was still asking for the host's user's password.

Is it possible to tell sudo to use the $SUDO_USER's home path?

Most of the stuff are variables, and have to be variables as I will run this on more than 1 machine.

Is there a way to start my default music player after connecting the headphones or earphones ?

If there is nothing in the form of a GUI, I don't mind writing a script for it, but I need some starting guidance, which is where do I write the script?

I am connecting the headphones through the 3.5mm jack.

Is it possible to clone/duplicate tab in Firefox?

Basicaly, the other new tab should contain the same history of the tab I'm trying to clone.

After seeing the comment by Anonymous on the question How is the /tmp directory cleaned up?, I found that it would be a great idea to implement on my system, since I have 16GB of RAM and I never used all of it.

My temporary files never get written to the disk. They get written to a RAM disk. I did put tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 in /etc/fstab.

My question is:

Can I set a maximum value for RAM Usage for /tmp? And in that case, what would happen if the maximum amount got exceeded, would it write into the hard-disk drive?

I have read a solution which states:

mkdir -p /tmp/ram
sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=512M tmpfs /tmp/ram/

But in my understanding, this won't be a permanent solution. If I need it to be permanent, it has to be added to the /etc/fstab configuration file.

If this is the correct solution, how can I transform that mount command into a line in /etc/fstab?

Do I have to use the Software Center to install a non-free package?

1. Can I make a purchase using apt-get?
2. How about if already made the purchase and I want to re-install the software. Can that be done with apt-get?

I am suffering from the bug which crashes Ubuntu when I click Alt+Tab: https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/975168 .

While I was doing a do-release-upgrade -d just now to install 12.04, I accidentally clicked Alt+Tab. Now Unity crashed, Alt+Ctrl+F2 doesn't work. All I have is a blank screen. Usually Unity used to restart by itself but it didn't this time.

So my question is, since the upgrade has already finished downloading the packages and was installing them during the crash, should I leave the PC alone as it maybe still installing in the background? Or should I restart it (by holding the power button or Ctrl+Alt+Delete)?

If I upgrade to an LTS version, will it be able to upgrade to the next non-LTS release or will I be stuck with an LTS version of Ubuntu?

I am currently using a non-LTS version of Ubuntu. When the next LTS comes out, should I upgrade, or should I skip it and wait until the next non-LTS version is released? I always prefer having the new features, so I don't want to stay with an LTS version and wait 2 years till the next LTS is released.