Stewart's questions

I'm trying to make an Ubuntu bootable USB drive from a .iso file.

I am following the tutorial at ubuntu.com

• Step 3 says, "Launch Startup Disk Creator".
• Step 4 covers "ISO and USB selection"

At this point, it refuses to write to the drive. I thought my USB stick was old, so I bought a brand new one, but same behaviour.

I've tried various incantations suggested on SE or forums, suggesting such things as "umount", etc.

Ultimately, I'm trying a late upgrade from 18.04, and have rendered my system into an unstable state (don't have gparted available) due to packages that will no longer install, so I was going for a fresh install, given that /home/stewart is on an entirely separate disk.

Help!

So I have a custom build laptop with only Ubuntu installed.

During boot-up, the back-lighting for the keyboard comes alive, and shows off the various changing colours it is capable.

I cannot find any way to control or engage with this hardware feature once Ubuntu has loaded.

There are keys on the number pad which appear to be marked with symbols related to back-lighting, but I've never had them work.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

So these are the install instructions for Docker

After you setup the GPG key and prerequisites it basically consists of:

1. Getting the (latest) .deb release from the releases page
2. sudo apt install ./docker-desktop-<version>-<arch>.deb

I was getting the following error:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'docker-desktop' instead of './docker-desktop-4.8.1-amd64.deb'
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
 docker-desktop : PreDepends: init-system-helpers (>= 1.54~) but 1.51 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

But if I tried sudo apt upgrade init-system-helpers then I got:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
init-system-helpers is already the newest version (1.51).

What is the solution to this, to install Docker?

See my screenshot below. Memory monitor, top right of screen, shows several massive spikes of memory use. During these periods, the entire computer locks, and nothing can be done. These spikes last for several seconds, and happen two or three times a minute. This only happens when I'm using LibreOffice Calc, and it makes it unusable.

Has anybody else experienced this? What is the fix?

Currently, in Ubuntu 18.04, pressing F2 brings up a "Gnome Menu" in the top left corner.

This is not Alt+F2 or Fn+F2. It's just straight F2.

But F2 is also a shortcut in Eclipse, which I use a lot. The Ubuntu F2 overrides the Eclipse F2, losing the Eclipse functionality.

Going into Keyboard Shortcut settings, I don't see anyway to reconfigure or change or disable the F2 key. I can see options for changing Alt+F2, but not straight F2.

What do I need to know about this?

UPDATE: Screenshot of Desktop.

I forget all the widgets I've installed over the past year. Pressing F2 pops up this menu, but I can't find a settings toggle for it.

So I installed 18.04 LTS from .iso, and am mainly interested in stability over "having the latest".

I have seen that 18.04.2 is released, but the documentation suggests downloading a fresh .iso, which seems like a lot of install work (and risk) for a minor point release.

Surely there must be a simple apt command which does this, similar to if I was upgrading from 16.04 or 17.* releases?

Note: I do not want to upgrade to 18.10 or 19.04 at this time.

On the target machine, running Ubuntu 18.04:

$ sudo netstat -tnlp | grep :2113
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:2113   0.0.0.0:*     LISTEN      24854/eventstored

The service responds to HTTP request:

$ curl localhost:2113
Moved

Tried with UFW disabled, and enabled with port 2113 open:

$ sudo ufw status
Status: inactive

Or:

$ sudo ufw status
Status: active

To                         Action      From
--                         ------      ----
Nginx Full                 ALLOW       Anywhere                  
2113                       ALLOW       Anywhere                  
22/tcp                     ALLOW       Anywhere                  
Nginx Full (v6)            ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
2113 (v6)                  ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)             
22/tcp (v6)                ALLOW       Anywhere (v6)

In both cases, from the client machine (also running Ubuntu 18.04)

$ curl 192.168.178.34:2113
curl: (7) Failed to connect to 192.168.178.34 port 2113: Connection refused

Ping confirms the IP address is correct.

What else may be preventing the connection?

I've been trying to configure Grub to give a hidden 3 second countdown, and then boot into the default option.

What appears to happen is that Grub will alternate randomly between doing just that, and showing the menu with a 25 second countdown.

This happens both on full reboot, and on restore from hibernate. I have not been able to establish any pattern which will predict when it happens. Sometimes it gives one config 2 or 3 times in a row, sometimes it switches.

How can I make it consistent?

Ubuntu Desktop 18.04

Contents of /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=countdown
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nouveau.modeset=0"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash resume=/dev/nvme0n1p3"
#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"
#GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

I have also used grub-customizer 5.1.0.

I have a fresh install of 18.04 on a brand-new high-end laptop. Hibernate works using

sudo pm-hibernate

By "works" I mean that it saves the system to disk, and powers down. Upon reboot, the session is resumed at exactly the point I left, including the last terminal command being pm-hibernate.

During shutdown it reports:

s2disk: Snapshotting system

I tried to follow various instructions and many SE answers about installing Hibernate as menu option and to trigger upon the power button.

The main one is this reference on 18.04 and this one for 17.10.

One expects pm-hibernate to work. The other expects the command to be

sudo systemctl hibernate

But systemctl hibernate does not work for me. It reports different text output to the console as it shuts down (something about Alarms can be one month in the future.) Upon re-boot, it's a full-fresh boot-up, with Chromium complaining it was shutdown ungracefully.

I have a Hibernate option in the shutdown menu thanks to this plugin and I have a Hibernate option under Power Settings.

How do I get these GUI options to use the Hibernate which works - the pm-hibernate - instead of the broken Hibernate?