I’m roughly 10.009009 times evil *_*

Completely useless, and yet essential. Now you know :evil:

ubuntuforums members Tutorials

K.Mandla (here and there) has been reviewing and collecting tutorials from the ubuntuforums every week. This work is really impressive (both K.Mandla’s and the UF member’s) and is one of the many useful elements a Ubuntu newcomer may find useful.
Please visit the Tutorial of the Week thread, and feel free to suggest UF Tutorials in this thread. Thanks!

Known hardy bugs and workarounds

frodon has started a thread on UF to collect hardy bugs and workarounds. If you stumbled upon a bug and found a workaround, feel free to post in the thread so that the sticky can be improved.

• sudo unable to resolve host: Workaround, Bug Report 1, Bug Report 2.
• Excessive disk I/O in Firefox 3b5: Workaround, Bug report.
• Samba Shares: Workaround, Bug report.
  -Note : Basically right click on a directory and share it -> Install the needed samba server -> log out and back in -> Repeat right click on directory to share.
  Do Not Share $HOME : See Deeta’s post #7 in the “Workaround” above.
• ATI & Compiz: Rocket2DMn’s Workaround, Bug report.
• GVFS and disk usage: Workaround, Bug report.
• SATA drives not detected in IDE mode (DELL users mainly): Workaround, related thread, Bug report.
• Install VMWare Server: Workaround, not really a bug, more of a FAQ.
• VirtualBox OSE: Problem : VBox status code: -1908 (VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED). Workaround : Remove VirtualBox OSE and install the PUEL version, Bug report.
• System -> Quit takes a long time to appear: Workaround: Re-enable the gnome-power-manager in Administration-Sessions, Bug report.
• Shut down screen problem?: Workaround.
• Downgrade to Firefox 2, add-ons will not install: Workaround.
• Edit /etc/sudoers with gedit: Workaround, Bug report.
• High CPU usage in system monitor: Workaround – use top or htop in the meantime, thanks vor, Bug report – fixed upstream and currently in -proposed (may 08th 2008).
• Bluetooth headsets not working: Workaround, Bug report.
• USB devices and permissions: Workaround, Bug Report.
  - The syntax used in the 40-permissions.rules has changed with 8.04. In addition, any user changes now need to be in a user-numbered-and-named.rules file higher than 40.
  Thanks anewguy.
• Crash after installing system-config-samba: Workaround : sudo touch /etc/libuser.conf, Bug Report. Thanks kikke.

Reference

UF thread.

Update

May 08th 2008: High CPU usage in system monitor.
May 10th 2008: Bluetooth headsets not working, USB devices and permissions, Crash after installing system-config-samba.

Edit /etc/sudoers with gedit in Ubuntu Hardy Heron

I came across a UF thread that p_quarles pointed at us in the Staff area. Thanks p_quarles :).
The classic:

export EDITOR=gedit && sudo visudo

will open /etc/sudoers with visudo, which does not behave like nano any more. I’m not a vi fan, please accept my apologies, Ive said it. I’m a nano fan :)
But I understand some users feel more comfortable with gedit or other GUI text editors.

The way to go now is:

export EDITOR=gedit && sudo -E visudo

where the -E option preserves the user environment variables.

Reference

Launchpad Bug Report

.7z archives on Ubuntu hardy

I just stumbled upon this one yesterday. .7z archives were given to me but impossible to extract them on a basic hardy install. A little googling led to p7zip. The package is in the universe repositories. Just install it, and there you go, compress and extract in 7-zip format :)

Medibuntu: non-free-codecs for hardy

Due to the interest to my previous post on gutsy, here is the procedure to install non-free-codecs on hardy:

• Add the Medibuntu repositories to your sources.list:

  ## Medibuntu.
  deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free

• Add the key to your keyring, reload the sources.list file and install the package:

  wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add - && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

You need to add the key if you got to this article searching for the following error:

W: GPG error: http://packages.medibuntu.org hardy Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 2EBC26B60C5A2783

Here is the package description for the *codecs from Medibuntu:

bapoumba@scorpio:~$ sudo aptitude show non-free-codecs
Package: non-free-codecs
New: yes
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
Version: 1.1
Priority: extra
Section: non-free/metapackages
Maintainer: Medibuntu Packaging Team <admin@lists.medibuntu.org>
Uncompressed Size: 32.8k
Depends: w32codecs
Description: Non-free codecs
 This package depends on the binaries codecs package matching your architecture
 (w32codecs for i386, w64codecs for amd64 and ppc-codecs for powerpc systems). 

 It can be safely removed.

Enjoy!