Ask Ubuntu General Room

Marco Ceppi

17:01

Too bad traffic is dipping

Jorge Castro

grrr gaming!

Mahesh

@jrg on chromium, all i get is two options. Everywhere.

jrg

did you import the comments?

Mahesh

yup. i did

jrg

might be a bug in the actual script then

Mahesh

17:05

and all i get are 'half answer' and new question things.

@jrg i want to help solve it. is it scary?

Jorge Castro

@Marco I heard you had ubuflu

Mahesh

what is ubuflu???

Marco Ceppi

@JorgeCastro Pneumonia actually :)

Jorge Castro

!!!

the sickness just caught up with me, I'm taking the afternoon off

catch ya tomorrow!

Marco Ceppi

o/

Mahesh

17:10

@Mahesh ok, post UDS sickness? understandable. (Thanks google)

George Edison

@MarcoCeppi Feeling better today?

Questions Feed

Bounty offered: How do I investigate boot and partition issues? http://askubuntu.com/questions/90045/how-do-i-investigate-boot-and-partition-issues?atw=1 #boot

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on May 17, 2012 at 5:14 PM

Mahesh

17:36

@jrg I have something for u

youtube.com/watch?v=1suMmW76t90

trying to get that working. seems kind-of broken atm.

jrg

@JorgeCastro wait, you've been at the pub since 2? ;)

Mahesh

@jrg man, rescatux is working!!!

/sorry :|

looks like i found an answer to the just-bountied question. accidentally.

jrg

Go write that answer then!

Mahesh

my conscience is kind of... not accepting that.

coz then it would be like, i got it bountied to answer it myself, or so.

jrg

Well, mine is fine, if it's a good answer.

Mahesh

17:49

so i'll give you the answer, u answer it yourself, or get it answered by someone else, ok?

jrg

no, you did the work, you do it.

look: The entire purpose of the 'canonical answer required' bounty is to make stuff better.

Mahesh

wont argue.

i blindly follow u @jrg! :D

jrg

And I don't care who writes it - that nazi troll from last year could write a good answer, and I'd blink at him, but I'd award his bounty if it was a good answer. So... :)

2

Mahesh

Its gonna take an hour b4 the answer appears below that question, so in the meanwhile, to satisfy ur curiosity, the short answer is: use rescatux.

jrg

heh

Mahesh

17:53

@jrg that doesn't look like a complement.

Ask Ubuntu Meta

18:04

0

Q: Reputation lost on downvoting otherS

Possible Duplicate: I observed that my reputation decreases when I downvote answers, why? Why do i loose 1 reputation point for downvoting others answers?? I even provided a reason..!!! I just lost 1 reputation because i downvoted an answer of a user who had not read the OPs question...

Mahesh

Anyone running windows here?

/ducks to escape whatever that could possibly get thrown

jrg

I can be, yes

Mahesh

whats the default iso burning thingy provided?

jrg

one moment

do you want screenshots or something in particular?

Mahesh

/me loves jrg

screenshots would be awesome.

but i'm afraid that'll make my answer too long

ok, names suffice.

Ubuntu Questions on U&L

18:16

0

Q: Need to delete a directory with name '~' created accidentally

I don't remember exactly how this directory got created. It's name is ~, the alternative we all use for home diretory. I also see a sticky bit attached with this directory. How shall I delete it? I fear running a normal rmdir would delete all the files from the home directory recursively. Here ar...

ubuntu directory rm

jrg

It's just "Burn disc image"

the window title is "Windows Disc Image Burner"

@Mahesh that work for you?

Ctrl-Q doesn't work for M$ paint. :\

this is madness

Mahesh

Thanks. That works.

btw, just for record, NEVER FIRE UP 2 VMS ON A MACHINE THAT PROBABLY CANT HANDLE

had to kill everything to get things under control. :(

ctrl+alt+sysrsq+k

Alvar

18:31

@fossfreedom I didn't forget this time! :D askubuntu.com/a/138555/10698

jrg

@Mahesh for the record, don't do any VMs on a netbook.

Mahesh

@jrg It has 4 gigs ram! wait! i remember giving 2 gigs to each of them. :P

jrg

Oh, yeah that'd do it

only ever give out 1

unless you have 8, in which case you can give out 4

Mahesh

lol. k. learnt a lesson.

you know, random freezes have become so common that i have a entry in .bash_aliases

alias refreshBuggyDisplay='unity --replace &'

jrg

oh, i just type that from memory.

LIKE A TRUE NECKBEARD

Mahesh

18:37

i'm too lazy

Alvar

I just made a cw answer :)

0

A: Old laptop freezes with 12.04, which kernel parameter could fix it?

look in /etc/default/grub change the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=off" and now just update grub with sudo update-grub. Source.

Mahesh

ok, lemme get back to work. /me loves mozillas cache. :D

gentmatt

18:53

I finally managed to create bootable Ubuntu USB for the Mac. But after Grub, the screen is all black. #megoesnuts

fossfreedom

19:05

@Alvar cool!

ruffEdgz

19:19

@Alvar nice answer there!

Mahesh

19:29

@jrg Answer posted, finally

and i'm about to go offline in some 120 sec, so be quick if you have any comments.

0

A: How do I investigate boot and partition issues?

When you are able to boot into your installation, the way to go is given in Jorge Castro's answer. When your system is totally broken, and refuses to boot at any cost, here is an alternative. Rescatux to your Rescue!! Ok, now that we have a title, the procedure follows. Experiment with e...

David Pfeffer

19:49

I used to use qemu-img to convert a vmdk file to a raw image, and directly writ eit out to a partition. I can't seem to do it anymore though, I get a No space left on device error. Does anyone have qemu experience?

aking1012

I've done that before, but not recently

David Pfeffer

I don't think I even upgraded anything. I'm not really sure what happened.

jrg

Is the device full?

David Pfeffer

I'm writing to /dev/sdb directly

There's no such thing as full/empty

jrg

ok

aking1012

20:00

you said you were working on embedded stuff. do you have a write blocking SD-Card toggled to read only? that might do it

David Pfeffer

nope, sadly not

its a CF card

Alvar

20:26

@fossfreedom well it's cool to make nice answers :) also that question wouldn't help anywone if the answer wasn't there.

Shyam K

20:36

12.04 is full of errors(atleast they say there are errors :) ) can't wait for the next update

Questions Feed

How to understand the Ubuntu file system layout? http://askubuntu.com/questions/138547/how-to-understand-the-ubuntu-file-system-layout?atw=1 #filesystem

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on May 17, 2012 at 8:14 PM

aking1012

20:47

@ShyamK I can't speak to your issues, but it's worked okay for me since alpha and well since beta2

David Pfeffer

i found my issue

now i'm just angry

aking1012

??

David Pfeffer

a group of 10 CF cards bought at the same time differ in size by as much as 900 MB

the image literally doesn't fit, which is causing the error

aking1012

ooh. well that would do it too

David Pfeffer

i thought the marketting guys got away with calling 7.3 GB an 8 GB card because they used 1,000,000,000 bytes = 1 GB

this "8 GB" card has 7637704704 bytes

jrg

20:53

@amithkk Yo, ping me tomorrow morning, I need to talk to you. (not in trouble)

George Edison

21:08

@DavidPfeffer GB != GiB

David Pfeffer

Yes, and this card is not 8,000,000,000 MB

err

bytes

and a byte is a byte

Shashank Sawant

I needed help in understand the top-rated answer to this question:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/60218/how-to-add-a-directory-to-my-path

What is .bash_profile?

George Edison

@ShashankSawant It should be a file in your home directory.

aking1012

Here's an odd one...pygtk3 won't let you set both expand and fill attributes on most widgets. if you use GtkBuilder ui files, it will. shaking head

Shashank Sawant

@GeorgeEdison I went to the location /home/my_name/. But I can't see the file.

aking1012

21:18

it doesn't exist by default. if you make one, it will use it

Shashank Sawant

What I am trying to do is to permanently set the environment variable to include a latex (Tex Live) installation that I plan to use regularly.

@aking1012 Oh!

George Edison

@ShashankSawant You won't be able to see it - it's a hidden file.

You can display hidden files in Nautilus by pressing Ctrl+H.

aking1012

this is also true. i was just getting at this:

Shashank Sawant

@GeorgeEdison wow... I do see the hidden files now. But I still don't see the file .bash_profile. As @aking1012 says, I think I need to make it.

aking1012

George Edison

21:21

Yeah, @aking1012 is right.

You'll need to create it.

@MarcoCeppi: Just a quick question... did you get my email the other day?

I wasn't sure if you received it - just want to make sure you did.

Shashank Sawant

Coming back to the question: http://askubuntu.com/questions/60218/how-to-add-a-directory-to-my-path
The top answer says that editing the .profile file is the way to go for making the variable available for the complete desktop session.

I did not understand the way he has suggested making changes to the file.

How do I add a path to the PATH variable permanently.

Marco Ceppi

@GeorgeEdison I did, I have Pneumonia and over 1200 emails to read (and I'm still recovering)

Second time in three days I've been able to make it to my computer

George Edison

No, no - don't worry about it.

I just wanted to make sure you got it.

(1200 emails??? I hardly get 20-30 a day and that includes all of the mailing lists I'm subscribed to.)

jrg

@MarcoCeppi get off.

@GeorgeEdison I get easily 70.

George Edison

Well I'm not complaining or anything...

I once made the mistake of subscribing to qemu's mailing list.

I woke up the next morning with over 100 new emails.

aking1012

21:30

@ShashankSawant what about that answer is unclear. it seems really clear to me

jrg

I made the mistake of subscribing to openstack

Marco Ceppi

I don't subscribe but to a handful of mailing lists and they're all sorted out of my inbox

jrg

that's the majority of my email - [openstack]

Shashank Sawant

@aking1012 yeah... sorry about that... I am too accustomed to Windows I guess. In windows there's one location "system properties>>system variables" where I go to edit the path variable.

I wanted to better understand how PATH variable works in Ubuntu.

aking1012

linux is mostly flat text files. it simplifies a lot of things, and exposes all the internals to you. so edit like in the example with whatever(gedit if you want a gui)

Shashank Sawant

21:35

I added a directory to the PATH variable
namely "/usr/local/texlive/2011/bin/i386-linux"
but the sudo command resets it.

aking1012

there's another question on that. look at the difference between sudo and su question on SU

Shashank Sawant

@aking1012 You were talking about the top answer right? The other confusing aspect is that there're many good answers.

What is "SU"?

aking1012

3

Q: What's the difference between sudo su - and sudo -i?

It is my understanding that they do the same: they ask for my password (if I am allowed in /etc/sudoers), and give me a login shell as root. Is there any difference between them? sudo su - sudo -i Also, what's the difference between sudo su sudo -s I think that they both ask for my passwor...

linux command-line sudo su

htorque

SU is for su questions only!

aking1012

maybe there should be a question here like that too, but crossposting is discouraged

@htorque you're funny. i wasn't directing him away. i was directing him to a specific question i reference all the time

htorque

21:38

:D

btw: "mostly flat text files" vs. dconf → makes me cry :D

aking1012

i -want- would be really pleased if i saw a translation layer for people that want all flat text files back. like a dconf to .conf adapter or something

htorque

"i want" - that doesn't work most of the time in the foss world :P

Shashank Sawant

Guys I am complete noob. I am not able to follow most of what's going on. To begin with: what are flat text files?

jrg

@ShashankSawant so a flat text file

is just a normal, no frills text file

Shashank Sawant

So is there a file where the PATH variable is stored?

jrg

21:42

yes. that's generally ~/.bashrc

htorque

.profile :P

jrg

or that.

i'm a zsh guy now, i haven't touched bash stuff in months.

so i don't know

htorque

i only have "LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=" added to my .profile :P

Shashank Sawant

What's a "login shell"?

aking1012

it sets new environment variables instead of carrying the old ones over

Shashank Sawant

21:45

Sorry for too many questions... I am using Google alongside to find answers myself, but I still fail to see the clear picture of what Ubuntu is trying to do when I log in as a user.

@aking1012 @GeorgeEdison @jrg
Thanks a lot guys! I think I will call it a day. I will explore more about Ubuntu tomorrow. Logging into my Windows OS. :(

aking1012

I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say we try to help. I'm speaking only for myself when I say it's more than a little upsetting when people tack on logging in to windows on the end of a thank you.

George Edison

Lol... but I'm using Windows right now :)

(Of course I have Ubuntu running in a VM.)

aking1012

@GeorgeEdison This is true...You know what I meant

htorque

@GeorgeEdison try it the other way round ;)

George Edison

That won't work - Win8 won't run in a VM without hardware virtualization.

aking1012

22:00

:( that was a purchasing decision on my desktop. Sadly, I forgot when purchasing my laptop.

jrg

Weird. it wasn't a purchase decision on either one for me, it just worked. ;P

aking1012

@jrg I'm a cheapskate...so I have to check the specs on the cheap hardware to make sure it will just work.

jrg

@aking1012 Ah, gotcha.

lazyPower

23:22

I gave up on mailing lists after i realized its volumes of signal/noise and i get more meaningful results searching through the indexed archive than through my label...

George Edison

Its only real value is if you need to ask a question or get help :)

...and even then...

lazyPower

if the help doesnt exist on stack exchange - i didn't need help.

Questions Feed

Is there a shell-independent HUD-like menu search tool for Gnome? http://askubuntu.com/questions/138657/is-there-a-shell-independent-hud-like-menu-search-tool-for-gnome?atw=1 #menu

Tweeted by StackUbuntu on May 17, 2012 at 11:14 PM

lazyPower

how ya been @GeorgeEdison?

George Edison

@lazyPower Pretty good thanks.

And you're doing well?

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