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, UUIDs, or IP addresses. If your question does not appear immediately, it is just because there is such a lot, and I do them, first-come-first-served.
So I was looking at new games to review (Deep Rock Survivors) and realised there were waaay too many Vampire Survivors clones. I realised that I wanted to play an auto-battler, not an auto shooter, and the second game that came to mind was Z from 1996. I used to own the game, but CD rot meant it was gone. So I bought it on Steam for less than $5 USD. Big mistake! Not only is it slower than a government worker coming back from break, it is also buggy, and not the original. So I went looking. Google – to find the results have been censored. It is not the first time I realised how much Google censors, but this time it just peeved me off. This had me searching for search engines that don’t just mirror Google results! Anyway, it brings me to my point; when you outsource your work or computer, you have no control over it. Google decides what you see or don’t see when you use them. This is the other reason I do not like VPS’s and other cloud hosting… Don’t get me wrong, there are use cases for it. The company I work for now, certainly has a use case for it. I’m talking about things like Sony deleting people’s digital movies or Kindle deleting my digital books. Everyone wants control over your stuff these days and everyone seems content to give it to them??? I mean, I wanted to grab that new Nightingale game, but online only is a hard pass for me. Instead of people voting with their wallets and not buying the game, millions of sheeple are buying, basically a game that is a bomb with a fuse. It’s times when I see stuff like this, I feel they deserve everything that comes their way. I suppose that is why Linux people are my people.
Q: I got a course on Udemy, Ultimate SQL bootcamp, but they only cover windows and MAC installs for mysql. I installed it myself from linuxgenie.net, and all went well. I went to bed and the next day I couldn't log in any more. My password can’t be wrong as I made it “zxcvb” because it is in a VM with no network and I used it all night. This is copied from the terminal: sudo mysql -u root -p [sudo] password for Sydney: Sorry, try again [sudo] password for Sydney: Sorry, try again. And it just continues like that, even if I copy and paste from my notes. This is not the first time it happened, I can’t keep uninstalling and reinstalling every time. What are my options?
A: Look carefully, even though you typed mysql -u…. you have a sudo preceding it. That may be the first time you authenticated sudo in that terminal, so you need to put in your Ubuntu user password first and once that is successful, it will ask you for your sql user / password.
Q: Something weird happened in the last week; if I go to the files I saved, I can't access them any more. If I go to properties→permissions, it says “root” and not “me”. I’m not even sure what I did wrong either.
A: Usually the culprit is sudo if you are new to Ubuntu. You usually see sudo this and sudo that, and then you launch an application with sudo, like gedit or kate or whatever. Sudo means you are now pretending to be root. The files you save don’t know that, and will say they belong to root. Don’t use sudo unless 100% needed. You will have to use chown on each and every file you saved as root. Don’t do this willy-nilly as there are files supposed to be owned by root, only the files belonging to you.
Q: My bluetooth headphones work fine with my dongle, however, my dongle is old USB (office supplies) and my laptop has only USB-C ports. I use a converter, but it sticks out too far. I want to use my laptop’s built-in bluetooth, but my headphones are not detected at all. My Ubuntu is up to date and I know that the bluetooth works; it used to work with my previous headphones. It connects to my phone’s built-in bluetooth every time.
A: Before we go off faffing with software, if you boot with a live Ubuntu distro, does it work there? Bluetooth is a bit of a minefield when it comes to computers. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fr_Xga4hmE
Q: I want to control the fans on my Dell laptop with fancontrol on Ubuntu 22.04. If I use lm-sensors, I can see sensors, but I have no idea where to start to configure any of this. Isn’t there something simple like MSI afterburner? I mean Dell supports Linux now, right?
A: MSI Afterburner, I wish! OK, Dell usually needs a shim to run, *IF you can get fancontrol talking to Dell firmware at all. I have no idea why they don’t make fan control software for Linux, probably M$ money at play. Dell does not really support Linux, other than allowing firmware updates, the rest is just lip service. (Don’t believe me? Call the support). You are going to have to console yourself with the firmware controlled version, sorry.
Q: This is weird, I have Ubuntu 22,04 and 22,10. When I try to install a library, I can get it working on the older version, but the newer version is saying “unable to locate package”. It is this knock-on effect, I need a to run b, and b to run c. It’s not making sense to me. <removed> <removed> <removed>
A: This is why I tell people not to bother with test releases, unless you are willing to toss it. Ubuntu 22.10 is end-of-life, but Ubuntu 22.04 is not, so it does not matter how much newer it is, EOL means there are no upgraded packages released for it any more. See: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EOLUpgrades
Q: Is there a graphical way to work with grub? I am not at all comfortable on the terminal with grub timeouts and adding stuff to lines as I have bungled it twice before. Every time something goes wrong I get nervous.
A: May I suggest using Grub Customizer, I have not used it myself, but it seems like a viable option. See: https://askubuntu.com/questions/100232/how-do-i-change-the-grub-boot-order
Q: Do I need to learn docker to have an isolated environment? I am using Ubuntu Minotaur.
A: Firstly, the question is too vague for a real answer. Docker is an isolated environment, BUT it is made to run an app and terminate once the app completes and therefore application environment only. You may be looking for a virtual machine. “Docker is a tool for building and deploying applications by packaging them into lightweight containers.”
Q: I get a popup that says: kernel driver not installed =- rc1908. The virtualbox kernel driver is either not loaded or not set up correctly, please try setting it up again by executing ‘/sbin/vboxconfig’ as root. I have Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.
A: My first reaction would be to uninstall virtualbox and reinstall virtualbox, especially if you did it from a .deb-file. The kernel driver issue I suspect is you installed DKMS, so that may be build-essentials. After searching for a few minutes, I found this, hope it helps: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78061041/getting-an-error-in-virtualbox-on-ubuntu-22-04-lts-kernel-driver-not-installed/78067344#78067344
Q: I have set up a server with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Only two of my friends know about it and when it is on. I see six IP addresses always. How can I check to see who they belong to? Please explain it like you are talking to a toddler?
A: a) You could simply ask your friends for their IP’s. b) You could look it up if you know where they live. On the server, simply curl their IP address to a resolver like https://ipinfo.io/. For instance, let's say I know Ronnie’s IP. I look at the resolver above and see they provide ip: hostname: city: region: country: loc: org: postal: timezone: Since he is in the UK, postal would be the best (narrowest, some provide long/lat), so I type:
curl -s https://ipapi.co/84.64.83.209/postal
and get g68. If you have a better resolver, you may get g68 8bw. You will need a browser to look that up and find it is Dunbrach Road, Cumbernauld, Glasgow, Scotland. There are some cheap OSINT courses on Udemy.
** for all the monkeys out there, it is a thumb-suck IP, not Ronnie’s real IP.
Q: Month-old newbie here. I installed Dbgate on Ubuntu as it is free and it has a dark theme. I connected to my mySQL instance. I see ‘localhost – unsaved a checkmark and mysql’, my question is, how do I save it as a named instance? I don’t even see a save.
A: I cannot say, I suspect it may be a feature of the paid version? You will need to ask on their forum. We mostly cover the OS only, not app support.
Q: I installed VirtualBox 7, and when I run my Manic Minotaur VM, it opens a small window, and when I try to maximize it, the OS window stays small; what’s going on here?
A: You would need to install the guest utils in the vm:
sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-utils
once done, adjust your screen size with display and you should be good.