Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Welcome back to another edition of Questions and Answers! In this section, we will endeavour to answer your Ubuntu questions. Be sure to add details of the version of your operating system and your hardware. I will try to remove any personally identifiable strings from questions , but it is best not to include things like serial numbers, UUID's or IP addresses.
I used to work for a company who subcontracted for IBM. Somehow we ended up sub-contracting for Olivetti as well. A large Insurance company, who was one of our clients, had a way to misplace their IBM PC info. When I got a call for an Olivetti PC at the same client, I was unsure and called the end user. I got an old lady on the other end, she said to me: “Sonny, this typewriter's television screen is dead.” Prompting her for model numbers, etc, was fruitless. Since they were four hours drive into the wilderness, I packed not only an Olivetti screen, but cables and fuses, etc, and hit the road. (Unlike modern replacement techs, we actually would open a power supply and change fuses, etc, should it be necessary). Four hours later, I arrived onsite in this one-horse town, and had to park very far away as the ten parking spots in the main street was taken. Lugging the screen, and my toolkit, and more spares, to the offices, I had to wait another half-hour as the consultant was busy with clients. Just to find an Olivetti typewriter with a stalk attached with a four-inch green monitor on top of it. How their help desk interpreted this into ‘Olivetti computer under warranty’, I still don't know. Some questions we receive are vague and we interpret. Don't shoot the messenger!
Q: Why is there Ubuntu advantage, and what is the advantage?
A: Ubuntu advantage, as I understand it, is a re-branding of Landscape, the tool used by enterprises to manage lots of servers with ease. It can be a real advantage if you need to repeat the same task over a hundred Ubuntu servers.
Q: My son has renamed my folders by mistake. Things like $rrr! I need to access my files in these folders. I have tried enclosing them in quotes as someone suggested, but it does not work. It is on my Raspberry Pi with no GUI.
A: Instead of using “quotes”, use the 'single' quotes.
Q: I have created a new user on my desktop for my daughter. Everything seems fine, but I do not see the desktop folder so I can copy her shortcuts into. What did I do wrong?
A: You have done nothing wrong, just log in with her user, once. This will create any missing folders. When you create a new user, Linux creates a 'skeleton' that only gets 'fleshed out' once you use it.
Q: I have Ubuntu 18.04. When I try to use the ifconfig command, it asks me to install the net-tools package. Why is is not installed by default?
A: That package is deprecated. The preferred way is using ip show. You can have a look by running “man ip”. This is more like router configuration syntax now.
Q: I am getting “error 23” when installing a clean ubuntu 16.04.5, but I don't get this error when upgrading from 16.04.1. Why?
A: Error 23 is a file transfer error. http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/en/man1/rsync.1.html#exit%20values Please verify your .iso download and do a full format of your thumb drive before you burn your iso to it. I would also suggest using etcher instead of some older tools. Think of it as a CRC error on a CD Rom. Do you know how to verify SHA sums?
Q: How do I use yubuntu to transfer video to my old ipod?
A: That's Ubuntu (pronounced oo-boohn-too) though spelled with three u's – the centre u is much lower and longer than the others and not pronounced “bun”. Now to the answer: there is a program called 'handbrake' https://handbrake.fr/ that will do the heavy lifting for you. The program is very intuitive, but if you need more, feel free to look here: https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/1.1.0/table-of-contents.html
Q: I am a new user to Ubuntu 18.04 and I must say I am impressed. It is fast compared to windows 10, and does not turn itself on in the middle of the night to do lord-knows-what.
I have been awoken many times after midnight by the computer turning itself on. Ubuntu does not do that. I have been using Thunderbird email with the lightning calendar addon.
Yesterday, it stopped picking up my email. My email is important as I work from home. I can see past emails, but I need to see my emails for today. Luckily I have my emails on my phone, but I need to attach files from my PC. I did not delete anything as I hoard all my emails. When I go to the top, the new emails are missing.
A: Just like outlook in windows, Thunderbird sorts your mail via columns. In Thunderbird it is easy to accidentally click on one of those column headers. This will change the sort order of your emails. If you want it sorted by date, click on the word date in the header of the column and the little arrow will appear on it. Clicking it again will change the direction of the sorting. It may not look like anything is happening, but move to the top once you can see the arrow next to the word date. Thunderbird does not auto move once you change the sorting direction. Q: How can Sweden brexit if it's not in the U.K.?
A: I think you mailed me the wrong question?
Q: I tried to install the latest Ubuntu in virtualbox. However, I get an error: Result Code:
E_FAIL (0x80004005). My machine is an i5 with 8GB RAM running Windows 7. All the latest updates are installed. Am I using the wrong Ubuntu?
A: I did a quick internet search and it seems there is a solution, turn off the VM networking. Please go read this post: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=33196 ( I do not think wubi is a thing any more, in case someone points you in that direction before you read this.)
Q: I have installed pygame with ‘apt-install python-pygame’. Yet when I type ‘import pygame’, I get an error:
»> import pygame Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named pygame
I have tried various solutions from the internet, but none of them work. My python versions are 2.7 and 3.6. Why does this have to be so difficult? No wonder people just want to do porn on the internet, at least porn always 'just works'.
A: You really made me laugh there. I decided to try it myself and lo-and-behold, I ran into the same problem. I trawled Google quickly, and I see this is a common problem. I managed to get it working. ( Remember you have to quit IDLE and fire it up again after installation! ) 1. Install pip: sudo apt install python-pip
2. Since you did not say if you were using python 2 or 3, run pip install pygame and python3 -m pip install pygame –user this will install both.
Q: I have installed ‘go’, via the installer, from golang.org. When I am done and I close my terminal and re-open it, then type ‘go version’, it says go is not installed. I tried reinstalling it, but it works only until I close my terminal. Why won't it install permanently?
A: Actually, it is installed permanently, if you pay attention to the last lines after install, you will notice: “source /home/<your profile name>/.bash_profile”. Type this before typing your go commands when you open a new terminal.
Q: I have an HP laptop with 4 gigs, and, when I have firefox and LibreOffice open, the hard drive grinds all the time. I have a 2 gig swap file, and system monitor shows it uses 800MB of the file. I have read about vm swappiness, but i don't think this is the issue. How do I stop it from grinding all the time? PS. This affects my cpu usage.
A: I would need more information here; you did not say if you have increased LibreOffice memory per object, or if you do not have 20 tabs open in Firefox, or which add-ons you are using. Web browsers are memory hungry. That said, sometimes certain add-ons will cause memory leaks too. If you are a power user in both these applications, I would rather suggest getting another 4GB memory module. Instead of looking at the graph tab in system monitor, look at the programs tab and sort it by memory usage. Here you will see what is eating your memory. Things like Firefox may have multiple instances, with multiple high memory uses. Though vm swappiness is the right path, I do not suggest changing it with only 4GB of RAM. The reason your hard drive is “grinding” is because memory is being swapped to the drive. You can also try the “noscript” add-on, and see if maybe one of your web pages is not the cause?
Q: I am running Ubuntu 16.10 and it says it is end-of-life. I prototype all my projects in PHP on this machine so PHP version is important. ‘apt-get upgrade’ is not working. A: First of all, it is not a good idea to run versions that are supported for only 6 months to do any sensitive work on. I assume you want to upgrade, and you are worried your version of PHP will change. Your 'question' is in more of a statement format, so I am guessing here.
I found an article you can look at: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1003053/ubuntu-16-10-yakketty-wont-update-can-i-fix-it-or-should-i-get-16-04-or-17-1
This may point you in the right direction.
Q: I installed the minimal version of Ubuntu 18.04. I can see Python, but no idle? I cannot find idle in the software centre. What happened to it? I don't want some hacked together snap thing.
A: With Python 2 being phased out, the idle package will not install. You need to run: ‘sudo apt install idle3’ from the terminal, and it should show up in your menu. Depending on your Ubuntu flavour, you may see multiple icons for idle3 - use 'alacarte menu editor' to fix.
Q: I seem to be getting applications that don’t integrate well, if that is the right description. Some applications just look “off” and others may have a dark theme, when I have a light theme. How can I apply one theme globally, please?
A: This is actually more complicated at second glance. The Ubuntu themes depend on the desktop - be it Gnome, XFCE, KDE or whatever. If you run Gnome, and install Krita, or some other KDE application, your distribution will pull in almost the whole KDE. KDE's client side decoration does not gel with Gnome CSD. QT applications will look differently to Gnome applications and so on. This is entirely application specific. Some applications have dark themes built in or enabled by default. This can be turned off in some, yet in others it cannot. There is no 'quick fix' answer here. You will have to look at what your application was written in and dive into the 'settings' or 'preferences'. Q: I want to refresh my Ubuntu – like Windows. I don't want to keep any files. I have a backup on an external drive. I just want to uninstall everything.
A: First you will have to export your packages to a list for reinstallation. Secondly, copy all your hidden files to that external drive as well. Things like icons and emails, etc, are usually in hidden folders. Back up your browser favourites and passwords too; those do not back up when copying your files across. My advice then is to reinstall. Ubuntu will reinstall in a few minutes. Then you can re-install your packages, and copy your stuff back.
Q: I have bought an old printer from my company to use at home. It is multifunctional. I can print a test page fine. How do I scan? It does not install a driver like on windows. I have Lubuntu 18.04.
A: In Lubuntu, just install simple scan and you are good to go. Printer manufacturers do not supply drivers for Linux usually, but look in your printer manufacturer's website, You may be surprised.
Q: I am trying to copy an attachment from Thunderbird to a memory stick . Every time I open the memory stick, it disappears and I cannot copy my file to it. I am new to Ubuntu, and it is very frustrating. The memory stick is a Sandisk Cruzer with 16 gigs. I have heard Ubuntu uses different file systems. This stick is not formatted to any of those. It is straight from the packaging.
A: You won't believe me, but I have seen this before. The thumb drive is just fine with fat32 or whatever it came with. The problem is the “opening” part of the thumb drive. The 'arrow' next to the name cruzer (or whatever it is named), is the eject button – and not the open button. That is why the stick disappears. Linux will 'open' the drive automatically for you, but click on the name of the drive instead of the upward pointing triangle or arrow.
Q: I don't like snaps or appimages, and have decided to learn to roll my own. I am using Ubuntu and I get errors when compiling software. I have updated my kernel but it still is not working. My errors are: c1: error: code model kernel does not support PIC mode recipe for target failed. make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.15.0-36-generic' Makefile:58: recipe for target 'all' failed make: *** [all] Error 2
Now I know I am missing something. What it is escapes me.
A: Install the perequisites first: sudo apt-get install build-essential git dkms linux-headers-generic
Now download your sources or clone git. Try again. If this still gives errors, have a look at the recipe, there may be a typo.
Q: I have added plank to xubuntu, and, in the preferences, added the ‘clock docklet’ and the ‘show desktop docklet’. ‘Show desktop docklet’ works, but ‘show clock docklet’ does not. I cannot find any options for it other than right-click digital clock or 24-hour clock.
A: I do not know what you expected, but that is what that specific docklet does, show a clock with system-time on your dock. It does not open another application or bring up the date and time settings. It purely just displays time in the dock. Not all docklets “launch” an application.