Ubuntu: Trash can support on NTFS volumes
As Wyatt Smith said on https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/52985 :
To enable a trash can on a NTFS partition you will have to make an entry in your /etc/fstab file. You must specify the drive by UUID and assign a userid.
To discovery the UUID of the external drive. Please plug the drive in and then type
sudo blkidTo edit your fstab file with root permission
gksu gedit /etc/fstabHere is an example of how the entry should look. Please replace the UUID and mountpoint with the appropriate values from your system
# NTFS Partitions
UUID=19031A6158945892 /media/DATA ntfs-3g defaults,uid=1000,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0Save and exit.
To remount (unmount then mount) all drives listed in /etc/fstab
sudo umount -a
sudo mount -aYou should then see a hidden trash folder on your ntfs drive.
After this deletes are not permanent and they should be visible in the trash.
Annoying nonbreakable space character by accident
Have you noticed that when you press alt gr + space in terminal window, a non-breakable space character is outputted? It looks just like normal space but it prevents commands from working.
From example ‘[alt gr + space] ls’ cannot be interpreted but ‘[space] ls’.
Solution is to change keyboard behaviour:
From here
This feature can be configured in:
System
->Preferences
->Keyboard
->Layouts
->Layout options…
->Using space key to input non-breakable…
Change the setting to ‘usual space at any level’ setting.
Please note that this problem may not occur in some keyboard layouts.
Default terminal size in ubuntu
PPTP VPN connection from ubuntu
Connecting to windows pptp (VPN) server can be done from Ubuntu too! All you need is pptp-linux and network-manager-pptp packages.
After installing the packages, PPTP support is integrated nicely in the ubuntu UI. To see the VPN settings, click on the network icon in the tray bar and choose VPN Connections -> Configure VPN…
Gateway should be the ip address (or host name) of the vpn server. User name doesn’t have to contain the doman. I don’t like to use the password remember feature because then it is so easy to find out the password using the ’show password’ checkbox.
I found out that advanced settings need some adjustment for optimal performance. I disabled PAP and EAP authentication methods by unchecking them. I use Point-to-point encryption (MPPE) with 128bit security and allowing stateful encryption. I’ve also checked BSD, Deflate and TCP header data compression. Send PPP echo packets is also enabled.
Now we still need to configure routing settings for the vpn connection. Without configuring routing I found out that the connection was very slow when surfing the internet. Routing settings can be found from the IPv4 Settings tab and click “Routes…” button. I’ve added route with following properties:
address 192.168.1.0
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
Using anacrontab in ubuntu (backintime as example)
Anacron is similar to cron, a tool to schelude programs on linux systems. The only difference is that anacron does not assume that computer is online all the time. Anacron executes missed commands on boot. Anacron requires root access, unlike cron which can schelude tasks for non root users too. Anacron cannot schelude recurring tasks with a period less than a day. For example, anacron cannot be used to schelude a recurring task with a period of an hour (hourly task).
Anacrontab has anacrontab, similar to crontab, located in /etc/anacrontab. My ubuntu installation has the following contents as default
# /etc/anacrontab: configuration file for anacron # See anacron(8) and anacrontab(5) for details. SHELL=/bin/sh PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin # These replace cron's entries 1 5 cron.daily nice run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily 7 10 cron.weekly nice run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly @monthly 15 cron.monthly nice run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly
First column means period, 1 equals daily, 7 equals weekly and @monthly equals monthly. Second column means delay which is the delay (in minutes) the commands will be executed after system start. For example daily commands will be executed 5 minutes after start each day.
We can see that anacron is configured to launch scripts in /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.weekly and /etc/cron.monthly folders. Simple enough.
If we want to add a daily script, we just make a new script in /etc/cron.weekly folder (you can use other scripts as examples) and give it execution permissions by
sudo chmod +x /etc/cron.xxxx/scriptName (xxxx replaced by daily, weekly or monthly)
One important thing to remember is that script name cannot contain periods! This is a known anacron bug.
For excellent backup program, Back In Time, following script (/etc/cron.daily/back-in-time) will schelude the daily back up daily:
#!/bin/sh nice -n 19 /usr/bin/backintime --backup-job >/dev/null 2>&1
Anacron is a perfect scheluding tool for desktop ubuntu systems.
EDIT:
I was wondering one day why anacrob ‘replaces’ crontab when it comes to daily, weekly or monthly jobs. Ubuntu default system-wide crontab looks something like this:
# /etc/crontab: system-wide crontab
# Unlike any other crontab you don’t have to run the `crontab’
# command to install the new version when you edit this file
# and files in /etc/cron.d. These files also have username fields,
# that none of the other crontabs do.SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin# m h dom mon dow user command
17 * * * * root cd / && run-parts –report /etc/cron.hourly
25 11 * * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts –report /etc/cron.daily )
47 11 * * 7 root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts –report /etc/cron.weekly )
52 11 1 * * root test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts –report /etc/cron.monthly )
#
Crontab cleverly uses test -x to find if /usr/sbin/anacron exists and has executable bit set. If true, nothing is done. If anacron is not installed, all scripts in /etc/cron.xxxx are executed. This is why (system-wide) crontab does not nothing when anacrontab is installed.
Beagle no space left on device error on ubuntu
If you get ‘no space left on device’ when opening beagle settings, the reason might not be disk space. Beagle uses inotify service if it’s available. Inotify notifies beagle on file system changes. The problem is too low number of inotify watches.
The fix for the problem is quite simple and documented. We need to increase inotify watches by executing following command as root:
echo 16384 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
Source: http://beagle-project.org/Troubleshooting (Beagle loops on directories)
Above command increases the limit to 16384 which is usually enough. Unfortunately max_user_watches limit is reseted on computer restart. The solution is to make a start up script which executes above command automatically.
Start up script can be created by
sudo gedit /etc/init.d/beagleFix
and entering following to the text file
#!/bin/sh echo 16384 > /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
After this, we have to make the script executable:
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/beagleFix
To make the script start every time we must run the following command as root
update-rc.d beagleFix defaults
