Ask Ubuntu General Room

Braiam

12:01 PM

@Mateo ?

Mateo

@Braiam oh, was mentioning the sudo thing with debian

Braiam

@Mateo ahh, yeah, if you left the root account without password it would have installed sudo ;)

Mitch

@RaduRădeanu it wasn't deleted, it was converted to a comment. Besides it's a low quality answer at that.

Mateo

@Braiam not the most logical user design...

@Mitch awesome, knew it was just a "works for me!" answer...

Radu Rădeanu

@Mateo Ok, then close it, and then delete it, I don't care; there are hundred of questions asking about compatibility... close them too.

Braiam

12:04 PM

why someone upvotes all the "freeze" questions?

Radu Rădeanu

@Braiam What seems to be "freeze" for you can be "hot" for others :)

Braiam

nah, most of them are unclear, apart of "my system freezes" there isn't anything else good about them...

Mateo

@RaduRădeanu There are some good ones, the difference is - having the hardware, and working with it to get it do something, or knowing a specific feature you need

Utkarsh

@AvinashRaj Same to you

@AdityaPatil no, delhi

Braiam

@Mateo I normally see the "will X (which has tons of components) work in Ubuntu" questions bad ones... is like asking me for what system buy...

Utkarsh

12:17 PM

Lol

I suck at shopping

@Braiam yep

@Braiam SHIT! laptop burst in flames

Avinash Raj

12:46 PM

1 more askubuntu.com/questions/412739/…

Braiam

12:56 PM

anyone thinks this should get closed? @Mateo

souravc

Is this fine to declare something duplicate which itself is duplicate

0

Q: How to make NVIDIA GEFORCE 710M a default graphics on Ubuntu

Honestly, my default graphic driver for Ubuntu 13.10 is Intel® Ivybridge Mobile.. But got a NVIDIA driver which it was already been installed.. So, how to make NVIDIA driver as a default graphics driver? :)

blade19899

PARTYY PEOPLE!

WADDUP!!!?

Braiam

@souravc no freaking no... if something like that is happening then there's serious problems in all the three questions

Mateo

@Braiam yeah, at least a dupe to the "run ubuntu on rt" q if nothing else

Avinash Raj

@Braiam i wrongly flagged a post.

Mateo

1:08 PM

@Braiam the rt tablets are mandatory secure boot, so locked down to windows rt only

Avinash Raj

Someone flagged Jorges's answer as not an answer.I accidentally flagged the same.

Braiam

you talking about this one? askubuntu.com/a/59504/169736

Avinash Raj

yes,:(

Braiam

@AvinashRaj strip the markdown, do still answers the question?

Avinash Raj

no,

Braiam

1:11 PM

and what you think should be done?

Avinash Raj

why he fails to post that as a comment?

Braiam

> 2011

Avinash Raj

hmmm.

Mateo

hm, I keep skipping all but the review audits...

they tend to be the interesting questions

Braiam

@Mateo LOL

Utkarsh

1:17 PM

@Braiam laughing or shouting?

blade19899

@Oli, cloud you take a look at this, - possible - serial down voting

Braiam

1:58 PM

this needs more reopen votes askubuntu.com/questions/342969/…

terdon

3:04 PM

@Seth I'm not saying it's "easy", just unjustified to have a swap in today systems. — Braiam 12 hours ago

@Braiam please never, ever suggest to people that they don't need swap! Unless you are very low on disk space you always need swap. If only to save your system from buggy programs that start occupying your RAM with garbage. I have very often been saved by my swap space, which gave me enough time to kill the offending program when it started swapping and instead would have crashed my entire system. Not 2xRAM, no, but some yes.

Braiam

Some systems doesn't need swap at all. — Braiam 19 hours ago

emphasys some

terdon

Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Please delete that! It gives a very dangerous and wrong idea.

The vast majority of systems need or at least would benefit from swap!

Braiam

@terdon some systems have 16 GB of ram, you think they need 32 GB?

terdon

There are very few exceptions, and given the size of modern disks, I can't really think iof any cases where you don't want swap.

@Braiam I said, not 2xRAM

But yes, they need some. I have often filled the 32G of ram of my lab's server for example.

And have really often been saved by my 8G of SWAP, despite my 8G of RAM

Braiam

the thing with swap is that you do not use it all the time

terdon

3:09 PM

@Braiam no, and you shouldn't but you can't predict when you will

Usually, you don't have time to create a swap file, cause some program is filling your RAM now

You should always have SWAP, ot causes no harm, usually helps and better safe than sorry. Why would you suggest to anyone not to have swap?

Does your system not have any?

Braiam

free -h
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           15G       5,3G        10G         0B       395M       2,8G
-/+ buffers/cache:       2,1G        13G
Swap:           0B         0B         0B

terdon

@Braiam yes? So?

Braiam

:)

that's a server

this is my system:

free -h
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          992M       921M        71M       3.0M       5.9M       121M
-/+ buffers/cache:       793M       199M
Swap:         1.5G       126M       1.4G

terdon

@Braiam then fire your sysadmin

Braiam

@terdon why? is a VM with SSD

terdon

3:12 PM

@Braiam used only by you and not professionally. OK

Here's a server:

 free -g
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           125        100         24          0          0         94
-/+ buffers/cache:          5        120
Swap:          119          2        116

That's 125G of RAM, still has 119G of swap

Braiam

@terdon I really hope those aren't HDD

terdon

Here's another:

$ free -g
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:            63         53          9          0          0         50
-/+ buffers/cache:          2         60
Swap:            3          0          3

Takkat

9

A: Do I need a swap sized double of the amount of RAM?

Argh. The answers on this post are so very wrong, and this comes up as one of the first results in a Google search for "How much swap?" First, a good point of reference is the Ubuntu Swap FAQ This FAQ makes an important point that no one here mentions, and that is (emphasis mine) Sometimes,...

^entirely underrated answer

terdon

I promise you, you will never find a real server with no swap and if you do, you should change sysadmins

@Takkat indeed

@Braiam seriously, programs can be buggy and start eating all your RAM=> crash unless you have swap. Especially on a server

Assuming a large enough disk, you should always recommend SWAP>=RAM unless the user really really knows what they're doing, in which case of course, they'll want swap anyway.

Braiam

@terdon but in the context "little user new to Ubuntu, with a modern system with 8 gb of ram that only check mains and see cute catz pics" sometimes you would prefer getting those 16 GB for something else and have little or no swap

terdon

3:17 PM

@Braiam no!

Braiam

why?

terdon

1. Hibernation

2. Protection from memory overruns

Braiam

@terdon do you know that gnome (and I think unity) hides the hibernation option

terdon

Most modern HDDd are >=500GB, those 8G of swap are a tiny percentage

@Braiam umm, so?

Takkat

sometimes I create VM's without a swap because I want to keep the disks tiny... but its single-use systems anyway.

terdon

3:18 PM

@Takkat VMs are different, that's just a VM

Braiam

@terdon exactly, what makes you think that OP isn't using a VM?

Takkat

In case they hang they just get powered off.

terdon

@Braiam I don't care! Why should you recommend no swap? If the OP wants to, let them but it is not a good idea, so why promote it?

Braiam

@terdon hence some systems I didn't say all of them

Takkat

Most of my VMs have a swap however, because I am too lazy to do "something else" on installing an OS.

Braiam

3:21 PM

look, we are not going anywhere, some systems do not need swap due reasons, ok?

terdon

@Braiam Let's repeat. It never_ a good idea to have no swap. There are some situations where you can get away with it but simply saying that "some systems don't need it" on a site read by loads of newbies will only lead to tears.

Braiam

is up to you decide if your system is in the category that needs swap or that you don't need swap at all

terdon

@Braiam man, you always need swap really. It's like salt. You can live without it but why should you?

It is dangerous advice that can only be followed correctly by experts.

Braiam

@terdon hence only experts read comments

terdon

You'll never find a serious sysadmin who will set up a system with no swap unless there are very special circumstances.

@Braiam um, no?

Everyone reads comments.

Braiam

3:25 PM

@terdon they in some case don't read warnings in bold in the answers, you think they read comments?

terdon

You can't be serious.

Braiam

happened... more than once in AU

terdon

So, you're assuming that the level of attention is correlated to the level of *nix knowledge?

Braiam

no, I'm saying that if they can't read completely the answers is not surprising that they may ignore comments

terdon

All text on the page could be read by anyone, there is no filter in our minds that develops as we get more competent with computers that magically makes comments visible where they were not before.

Braiam

3:27 PM

heck, there was one guy that followed the most downvoted answer with several other better suggestions on top

terdon

Some people don't read answers fine. Others do. And comments too. So don't leave dangerous comments where they can be read by everybody and end up causing problems! That's a no-brainer really!

@Braiam Exactly, there are always idiots, don't feed them dangerous ideas.

Braiam

@terdon is my comment really not valid?

or it is valid in some very specific scenarios?

terdon

"Ummm, I read on AU that swap is not needed, so I'l run my old system with 512RAM on my new HD pf 1TB with no SWAP. Yeeeha!"

Takkat

<-- reads comments only after someone told me to do so - comments are clutter IMO

terdon

@Braiam It is only valid if you have a tiny drive. And it would be a better idea to get a bigger drive and have a swap partition.

Takkat

3:30 PM

A question or an answer should incorporate all valuable comments in order to be able to clean them from the post. If a comment was not edited into a Q or A its of little value.

terdon

@Takkat and in this case, it is of negative value.

Takkat

So why should I read them?

Braiam

Due some confusion in the comments let me let this clear: There are some scenarios where you don't want or need a swap. Unless you are sure what you are doing create a swap and let your system take care of the rest. — Braiam 6 secs ago

terdon

@Braiam here's a simple scenario where having swap can save you. Run a fork bomb. In a few seconds/minutes your RAM will be full. If you have SWAP, you have that much more time to kill the bomb. If you don't, you have to restart.

Braiam

@terdon IMO there should be fork bomb protection in the shells

terdon

3:32 PM

@Braiam come on, just delete the damn thing. It gives no useful info whatsoever and can be dangerous. There is now a whole conversation in the comment threads, by your own argument, the newbies won't read it. What makes you think that they'll read your comment? Let alone understand it...

Braiam

or it's the kernel

terdon

@Braiam there isn't though.

And can't be

Takkat

There should be an automatic internet ban lasting for 1000 years for people who send fork bombs.

terdon

The kernel/shell can't know if it is a bomb or just memory intensive.

Takkat

or a tiny little bug...

Braiam

3:34 PM

@terdon but limiting the amount of process that an user can have, say 10k, you can alleviate the damage

terdon

@Takkat exactly

Takkat

<-- loves bugs!!!

terdon

@Braiam ?????? Not at all! 1) That is even more expert territory than swap. 2) I can use all my RAM with a single process thank you

Takkat

without bugs there were no updates.

terdon

(and have)

Takkat

3:35 PM

without updates no new features.

terdon

Here: while :; do let i++; done

Let that run long enough and you'll fill up your memory. Granted, that one will take ages but...

Braiam

@terdon I think that will do more damage to my CPU than my memory....

terdon

If you let it run long enough

Depends on how bash manages the variable internally, the point is that you can have a single command that will eat up all your RAM

Braiam

anyone has firefox to test this? meta.stackoverflow.com/q/225615/213575

terdon

Here, if you prefer: while :; do a=$a'a'; echo $a; done

@Braiam can't reproduce on firefox

Braiam

3:42 PM

@terdon latest stable?

terdon

27.0

Give me a specific page to try on, I clicked on the header of the hot questions and was taken to the list of them

Braiam

@terdon any page really

I just activated private window and the bug appeared

Avinash Raj

is there any .desktop files inside ~/.local/share/applications?

Braiam

yes and no, depends

terdon

@AvinashRaj ?? ls ~/.local/share/applications/*desktop

Avinash Raj

3:49 PM

i didn't have any files inside ~/.local/share/applications/*desktop, so that only i asked.

@terdon

terdon

Ah, OK, that seemed like a very strange question :)

Braiam

I have, but they are wine and some single-user apps

Avinash Raj

This doesn't list all applications shown when you hit Super+A. — Radu Rădeanu 1 hour ago

i have to update my answer..:-)

terdon

@AvinashRaj significantly, You forgot all of /bin and /usr/bin for example.

And /opt stuff

Avinash Raj

/bin , /usr/bin ?

terdon

3:58 PM

For example, yes.

You also have /usr/local/bin and various executable are also stored in /opt subdirs. Some are even in lib, for example /lib/udev/collect.

Those won't be shown by Unity's super+A shortcut of course but they're still executables

Avinash Raj

files in /bin and /usr/bin are binary files(packages)

op want's only the applications.

Braiam

@AvinashRaj what's an application?

Avinash Raj

@terdon you're correct.

But op wants only the applications that are listed while pressing super + A, i think.

Braiam

Q: WELP! Each time I run firefox from the CLI it prints lot of letters, but it doesn't why I use the gui? There's no other problem, what is wrong

:/

Avinash Raj

4:18 PM

i think chrubuntu is offtopic here.

@terdon Is that possible to reduce this command.

find /usr/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \; && find ~/.local/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \;

terdon

@AvinashRaj you can give multiple targets to find

Braiam

you know you can give multiple targets to find?

@terdon meh....

terdon

:)

@Braiam great minds think alike :P

Braiam

find /usr/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \;

terdon

find /usr/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec basename {} .desktop \;

lol

Avinash Raj

4:24 PM

ah what's going on here :-)

i'm going to add that command in my answer.Thanks :-) @Braiam @terdon

Seth

4:37 PM

248

Q: What is the optimal algorithm for the game 2048?

I have recently stumbled upon the game 2048. You need to merge similar tiles by moving them in any of the four directions. Similarly, I mean tiles with the same value. After each move, a new tile appears at random empty position with value of either 2 or 4. The game terminates when all the boxes ...

algorithm logic artificial-intelligence

Minato Namikaze

@Seth 248 upvotes and 2048?!

Braiam

4:59 PM

This is why I'm learning (La)TeX — Braiam 8 secs ago

Avinash Raj

@Braiam why there is no tools option in the menu bar of above 10k users page?

terdon

@AvinashRaj It's in the review page

Braiam

@AvinashRaj meta.askubuntu.com/a/7330/169736

Avinash Raj

@terdon yes, we have to go inside review page and then click on tools option.It's a time consuming process.

@Braiam i'll take a look at that ques.

terdon

@AvinashRaj well, the tools aren't all that useful really, having a link at the top would just clutter everything up. It only takes 2 clicks to get to the tools.

Braiam

5:11 PM

what really ticks me off is that if I'm in any of the review queue and click "review" twice I get to the tools

terdon

@Braiam ??

That's cause clicking once changes the page and the tools link is at the same position.

Seth

@Braiam I just Ctrl+R.

Avinash Raj

Both won't work for me.

Braiam

@terdon ^

terdon

@Braiam yeah, that's what I meant, what are you doing double clicking on a link anyway? :P

Avinash Raj

5:16 PM

@terdon i'm also understood that like your's.

1 more askubuntu.com/questions/434789/…

0

Q: 13.10 amd 64 liveCD freezes while booting

I have a Leno y410p Laptop, with Linux Mint 15 and Windows 8 dual boot set up. I have made an Ubuntu 13.10 liveCD to boot into Ubuntu to try it out, but whenever I try and boot the liveCD, the system ends up freezing on this screen (see screen shot), and the CD stops spinning. I usually then pu...

boot 13.10 freeze live-cd

Braiam

@terdon I expect the GUI to be homogeneous

Avinash Raj

1 more vote to go askubuntu.com/questions/434676/… askubuntu.com/questions/435002/…

Braiam

@terdon heh... just ... meh...

terdon

I keep having to tell my father "Don't double click things on the internet!" :)

Seth

Someone upvoted this? D:

Braiam

5:24 PM

> Daily vote limit reached; vote again in 6 hours.

wasn't me...

Seth

someone throw a downvote on that please, so it leaves by the next train.

Avinash Raj

i did.

Braiam

@Seth needs one on the answer or it will not get deleted by community

Seth

The answer is wrong anyway.

Not exactly wrong as much as not applicable to the question..

Avinash Raj

And this askubuntu.com/questions/434654/…

All the answers in this question getting downvotes.

He is correct.:-)

terdon

5:33 PM

@Braiam done

Avinash Raj

@Mitch why you delete that?

askubuntu.com/a/435082/202806

i think, it's correct.

:-)

Seth

fixed.

Certainly not a terribly good answer, but it is an attempted answer.

Mitch

It might be correct, but it not an acceptable answer

@Seth tnx

Seth

Shog9 recently made a good MSO post on how to handle bad/NAA answers:

58

Q: Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

I think we can all agree, this sucks: If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as "The Answer" by well-meaning* forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-obse...

discussion link-only-answers not-an-answer

Very good reading.

IMO this one falls under "partial answer".

and this needs more upticks:

This seems like a slightly more appropriate title: Your answer is in another orchard: when is an answer not an answer? (i.e. castle -> orchard); this fits better with the not-an-apple answer — Mike Pennington 2 days ago

terdon

@Seth I like the original pun better, as in "Each man's house is his Castle"

Seth

5:40 PM

To each his own :)

munches apple

terdon

@Seth oh yes, I'd forgotten the apple pictures :)

Braiam

mmm...

only ~1600 are not deleted... D:

Minato Namikaze

BBT

Good Night

Seth

In other words, the change in the required password is really the only difference. Yet that seems like a flaw in Ubuntu systems, su is harder to use, because one, the root account needs to be enabled, and two, you need to know root's password, yet why would you go to all that trouble when you could just do sudo -i? What do you gain by doing su? — user161589 42 mins ago

no no no! facepalm.

hbdgaf

people don't use su right...

Seth

5:51 PM

Isn't bash_profile a login specific resource too?

Braiam

@Seth ask @terdon... he was pulling his hair off trying to figure out exactly which systems reads what

Seth

Yeah, I tried googling it.. gave up. It was soo confusing.

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