Jonik's questions

It's easy to install a specific version of a package with apt-get:

apt-get install <package name>=<version>

For example:

apt-get install jenkins=1.517

But is there a shortcut for installing the latest version?

For example, say writing a script to automate Jenkins installation. After adding http:/q/pkg.jenkins-ci.org/debian to /etc/apt/sources.list, Jenkins is available from two sources. Now, I'd like to tell apt-get to install the latest version without knowing exactly what the latest version is at the time the script is executed.

Is this possible in any simple way?

I'd like to open the GKrellM system monitor so that it is present on all virtual desktops. How to do that?

Using Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) & classic GNOME (not Unity).

Bonus questions:

• How to skip the gkrellm window from the taskbar (on the bottom of the screen)?
• How to launch it automatically when logging in?

(I can ask those separately, too. Or please point out if some of these are already covered.)

This is a bug I run into every couple of days, with IntelliJ IDEA's "Go to Class..." (or "Go to File...") dialog.

Usually it closes normally (when a class is selected or Esc pressed), but sometimes the popup is left behind, in the middle of the screen, on top of everything else. Even when I quit (or kill) IDEA completely, it stays. Example of what it looks like:

Only way I've found to get rid of it is logging out completely and then back in (i.e. restart X / GNOME). But having to do that is very annoying, as it can take 10 minutes or whatever to save (and re-setup afterwards) everything I have open.

Is there any other way to get rid of the buggy popup dialog, while remaining logged in? (Such as restarting some GNOME or X service / process.)

Using Ubuntu 11.04 and GNOME (not Unity).

IntelliJ IDEA ultimate edition 10.5, running on Sun's JDK 1.6.0_26 (i.e. sun-java6-jdk version 6.26-2natty1)

Some info about the graphics driver:

$ jockey-text -l
xorg:fglrx - ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (Proprietary, Disabled, Not in use)

And:

$ sudo lshw -c video
  *-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: RV730 PRO [Radeon HD 4650]
       vendor: ATI Technologies Inc
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: 00
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
       resources: irq:47 memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0100000-f010ffff ioport:1100(size=256) memory:f0120000-f013ffff

I need a small tool to ‘pick’ a colour anywhere on the screen (so that I basically get the hex code for it). Earlier, I've used KDE's KColorChooser for this.

According to this page, "Gpick" sounds like what I want, but:

$ apt-cache search gpick
<returns nothing>

Any recommendations?

I'm trying to install MySQL Workbench on my Ubuntu box (11.04). The website has a Ubuntu .deb available for download (for 10.10 and 10.04 so I chose 10.10).

However,

sudo dpkg -i mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.34-1ubu1010-amd64.deb

yields:

(Reading database ... 194069 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace mysql-workbench-gpl 5.2.34-1ubu1010 (using mysql-workbench-gpl-5.2.34-1ubu1010-amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement mysql-workbench-gpl ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-workbench-gpl:
 mysql-workbench-gpl depends on libctemplate0; however:
  Package libctemplate0 is not installed.
 mysql-workbench-gpl depends on libpython2.6 (>= 2.6); however:
  Package libpython2.6 is not installed.
 mysql-workbench-gpl depends on libzip1 (>= 0.8); however:
  Package libzip1 is not installed.
 mysql-workbench-gpl depends on python-paramiko; however:
  Package python-paramiko is not installed.
 mysql-workbench-gpl depends on python-pysqlite2; however:
  Package python-pysqlite2 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing mysql-workbench-gpl (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_US.utf8.cache...
Processing triggers for python-support ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 mysql-workbench-gpl

My question is, is there a way to tell dpkg to automatically fetch missing dependencies, or do I need to manually apt-get install missing packages like libctemplate0 and libpython2.6?

(Or alternatively, is there some other way to get MySQL Workbench easily up & running?)

Disclaimer: I'm probably missing something obvious, sorry in advance.

I need more EBS disk space for my Ubuntu 11.04 server running on Amazon EC2, and decided to create new volume in addition to the root volume. (It's an EBS-backed instance, created from official Ubuntu AMIs.)

So, I opened AWS management console, created a volume, and attached it to the instance:

I chose /dev/sdb as suggested by the dialog. AWS console shows the volume as correctly attached to the instance.

Problem is, the device /dev/sdb is not available on the instance, not immediately nor after reboot:

$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb
mke2fs 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
Could not stat /dev/sdb --- No such file or directory

Did I miss some necessary step, or is the volume available under some other device name?

(Also tried /dev/sdc with same result; /dev/xvda3 wasn't accepted as "valid EBS device name".)

In 11.04, using traditional GNOME (not Unity), windows suddenly lose their decorations way too often:

For the next time this happens, can anyone suggest a fix that would be quicker than logging out & back in (i.e., having to close all programs)? Perhaps relaunching some service or process?

NB: simply doing metacity --replace does not fully fix the GNOME session; at least visual effects are lost.

How are you supposed to install the ElasticFox add-on on Firefox (4.0.1) on latest Ubuntu (11.04)? (ElasticFox is an extension for Amazon EC2 management.)

Going to Tools -> Add-ons and searching for it returns nothing. Top results for "install elasticfox firefox 4" search are strange links that just throw me back to browser's home page. Apparently people who had it installed before upgrading to Firefox 4 have got it working, but how about us who don't have it yet?

What's the recommended way to run virtualised Windows environment on top of Ubuntu nowadays?

I need to create new Windows virtual machines too, not only use existing ones, so, to my understanding, VMware Player would not be enough.

I've used VMware Server earlier, but I'm having too many problems getting its latest version to work on latest Ubuntu (11.04)... Probably related to this:

VMware has declared VMware Server End Of Availability on January 2010 with the actual support ending on June 30th, 2011. [...] Furthermore, VMware Server is not officially supported on Ubuntu releases greater than 8.04.

So, are there any good alternatives to VMware Server?

In the Ubuntu / GNOME login screen, I tried some of the different accessibility settings out of curiosity. Big mistake!

Enabling the "use screen magnifier" (or whatever) option breaks down the view horribly, and makes it impossible to even access the settings again:

Yes, I tried to access every corner of the screen using the mouse, but there's just chaos everywhere. Fortunately, I can still log in (pressing "Esc" makes the normal login dialog appear on the left-hand monitor).

My question is, how to disable the "magnifier" option outside of the login screen itself? (By editing some config file perhaps?) I don't care about getting the magnifier mode to work properly - just make it go away altogether, please.

I made the mistake of trying out some settings through Administration -> Language Support. Now my user account has LANG set to fi_FI.utf8, even though I want to use en_US.utf8. (This is kind-of a follow up to this.)

Listing 1: current locale settings for my user account:

$ locale
LANG=fi_FI.utf8
LANGUAGE=en
LC_CTYPE="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_TIME=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_PAPER=fi_FI.utf8
LC_NAME="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT=fi_FI.utf8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_ALL=

Listing 2: /etc/default/locale which contains the locale settings I want to use:

$ cat /etc/default/locale 
LANG="en_US.utf8"

LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="fi_FI.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="fi_FI.utf8"

The Administration -> Language support settings look like this:

My specific questions:

• Where exactly (in what file) are the user-specific locale settings (listing 1) stored?
• What is the recommended way of changing that? By editing a file or through some config UI? (I want to use the settings in listing 2.)

The root annoyance which prompted me to ask this: How to change Firefox UI language from Finnish back to English?

I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 if that makes any difference.

My numeric keypad has somehow got into a "mouse emulation" mode where the number keys just move the mouse pointer around (2 = down; 8 = up, 6 = right, etc). Anyone know how to make it work normally again?

None of the other numpad keys work either (I first noticed the whole thing when Ctrl + ÷ (numpad division sign) no longer produced "line comment" in IntelliJ IDEA). Toggling num lock doesn't affect this (though the indicator LED works as usual).

I'm using GNOME on Lucid Lynx (10.4).

I'm trying to install VMware Server 1.0.10 (released 2009-10-26) on Ubuntu 10.04.

^{(Why not 2.0? Well, I've tried 2.0; didn't like its UI and had some other issues with it too, and I know 1.0.x does everything I need.)}

When I run sudo ./vmware-install.pl, it fails thusly:

None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Server is suitable for your 
running kernel.  Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for 
your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)? [yes] 

Using compiler "/usr/bin/gcc". Use environment variable CC to override.

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running
kernel? [/lib/modules/2.6.32-24-generic/build/include] 

Extracting the sources of the vmmon module.

Building the vmmon module.

Using 2.6.x kernel build system.
make: Entering directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only'
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.32-24-generic/build/include/.. SUBDIRS=$PWD SRCROOT=$PWD/. modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic'
  CC [M]  /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vmware.h:25,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:48:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_basic_types.h:104:7: warning: "__FreeBSD__" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/x86.h:20,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/machine.h:24,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:15,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/x86apic.h:79:1: warning: "APIC_BASE_MSR" redefined
In file included from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/apic.h:11,
                 from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/smp.h:13,
                 from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/mmzone_64.h:12,
                 from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/mmzone.h:4,
                 from include/linux/mmzone.h:783,
                 from include/linux/gfp.h:4,
                 from include/linux/kmod.h:22,
                 from include/linux/module.h:13,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:12:
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/apicdef.h:136:1: warning: this is the location of the previous definition
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/x86.h:21,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/machine.h:24,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:15,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/x86desc.h:593:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/machine.h:24,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:15,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/x86.h:830:1: warning: "PTE_PFN_MASK" redefined
In file included from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/paravirt.h:7,
                 from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/irqflags.h:60,
                 from include/linux/irqflags.h:57,
                 from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/system.h:11,
                 from /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/processor.h:17,
                 from include/linux/prefetch.h:14,
                 from include/linux/list.h:6,
                 from include/linux/module.h:9,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:12:
/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic/arch/x86/include/asm/pgtable_types.h:182:1: warning: this is the location of the previous definition
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vcpuset.h:78,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/modulecall.h:22,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./common/vmx86.h:18,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:16,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_atomic.h:226:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_atomic.h:230:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_atomic.h:298:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_atomic.h:304:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
[...]
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_atomic.h:1454:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_atomic.h:1587:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:20,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_wait.h:37:5: warning: "VMW_HAVE_EPOLL" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_wait.h:43:5: warning: "VMW_HAVE_EPOLL" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.h:20,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:49:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_wait.h:60: error: conflicting types for ‘poll_initwait’
include/linux/poll.h:70: note: previous declaration of ‘poll_initwait’ was here
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm_x86_64.h:23,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm.h:28,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:52:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm_x86.h:430:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm_x86.h:676:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm_x86.h:716:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm.h:28,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:52:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/vm_asm_x86_64.h:40:7: warning: "_MSC_VER" is not defined
In file included from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/vmhost.h:13,
                 from /tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:71:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/./include/compat_semaphore.h:5:27: error: asm/semaphore.h: No such file or directory
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:146: error: unknown field ‘nopage’ specified in initializer
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:147: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:150: error: unknown field ‘nopage’ specified in initializer
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:151: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c: In function ‘LinuxDriver_Ioctl’:
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1650: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘euid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1650: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘uid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1651: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘fsuid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1651: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘uid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1652: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘egid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1652: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘gid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1653: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘fsgid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1653: error: ‘struct task_struct’ has no member named ‘gid’
/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.c:1670: error: too many arguments to function ‘smp_call_function’
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only/linux/driver.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.32-24-generic'
make: *** [vmmon.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config0/vmmon-only'
Unable to build the vmmon module.

For more information on how to troubleshoot module-related problems, please 
visit our Web site at "http://www.vmware.com/download/modules/modules.html" and
"http://www.vmware.com/support/reference/linux/prebuilt_modules_linux.html".

Execution aborted.

Am I missing some required kernel header packages, or is there something else I can do to fix this? Or does someone know already that you just can't get these pieces of software to work together?

Update

Turns out that to get VMware Server 1.0.x working, compiling the kernel module isn't enough, but I'd need to compile my own kernel. While that's certainly doable, for this particular need I think that's a bit too much work.

What is the recommended way to change the first day of the week to Monday (instead of Sunday, as in the screenshot below)?

I couldn't find anything related in Clock Preferences, nor in System -> Preferences, or System -> Administration.

This probably has something to do with tweaking locales, so here's (possibly relevant) output from locale:

LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_US.utf8"
...
LC_ALL=

NB: I want to keep English as the UI language both in GNOME and on command line. Dates are currently displayed like this (e.g. ls -l): 2010-10-06 15:32, and I also want to keep that as it is.

I have a workstation with NVIDIA GeForce GT 210 graphics card & Ubuntu 10.4, and am having rather annoying problems trying to get them working together. (On other machines and earlier Ubuntu versions I've been a pretty happy NVIDIA user though.)

First of all, simply using the NVIDIA driver automatically suggested by "Adminstration -> Hardware drivers" didn't work at all. Based on this answer, I tried with drivers straight from NVIDIA, and got it working for a while. But now (perhaps due to reboot, or apt-get upgrade) I'm out of luck again.

There now seems to be a conflict with the Nouveau driver. I've tried removing it:

• apt-get --purge remove xserver-xorg-video-nouveau (as suggested here) and reboot

• I've also tried modprobe -r nouveau but it gives FATAL: Module nouveau is in use.

But when trying to (re-)execute NVidia's installer (NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-256.53.run) it keeps complaining about Nouveau. I'm starting to run out of ideas, so any help would be welcome!

I have a new Ubuntu 10.04 installation with encrypted home directory (using the built-in encryption offered by Ubuntu installer).

What's the easiest way to stop using encryption? (I.e., to decrypt my home directory permanently.)

(It's giving me problems with kernel updates, and I'd just like to cut down on all the hassle I'm having with this installation.)