Linux masterminds. Get in here.

[BobK]

LXLE.net is the place.

Yep, that's where I ended up. As it turns out I'd downloaded lxle-eclectica-16.04.1.iso back on July 30th last year. I installed it last night and although I had a number of issues with it, booting to a Grub command line wasn't one of them. However it seems another version of 16.04.1 was released the next day (July 31). Later on today I'll try that one.

 

[Epic B]

Yep, that's where I ended up. As it turns out I'd downloaded lxle-eclectica-16.04.1.iso back on July 30th last year. I installed it last night and although I had a number of issues with it, booting to a Grub command line wasn't one of them. However it seems another version of 16.04.1 was released the next day (July 31). Later on today I'll try that one.

The one I downloaded was the latest version on the site, which would probably be from later on. I had a copy of the ISO from a few days ago but I deleted it.

 

[Dennisch]

Gents. Help.

I've installed Minecraft and now I want it to work with my PS3 controller.

JSTEST sees it as the Xbox controller, in that program it works but when I start Minecraft it doesn't.

What step am I missing?

 

[Nexus]

So I tried setting up Google Drive on Linux Mint 18 by following this guide, but when I go to open the Drive folder, it won't finish loading. Any ideas?

Edit: Nevermind, it seems to have fixed itself. I have another question: how would I go about making the Drive mounting script in that guide run at startup?

 

[BobK]

In KDE you'd put a .desktop file which runs the script in $HOME/.kde/Autostart . I'm not familiar with Cinnamon but it likely has a similar facility.

I'll see if I can remember to fire up a copy of LM/Cinnamon later on today and see how it's done.

Incidentally $HOME means your home directory.

 

[BobK]

I have another question: how would I go about making the Drive mounting script in that guide run at startup?

I just tried this and it worked:

Open a terminal. Note: I do pretty much everything from the command line. Yes there are other ways of doing what I'm about to describe but for creating single-line files I'd just as soon do it from the command line as fire up a text editor, type whatever, save the file, close the editor, open the file manager, navigate to the file, mark it executable, yada, yada...

Create a directory in your home directory called "bin":

$ mkdir bin

Create a file called "gmount" with one line: the command which mounts the Google drive:

$ echo "google-drive-ocamlfuse ~/googledrive" >bin/gmount

This assumes you used "googledrive" for your mountpoint; I called mine Google.
Make the file executable:

$ chmod +x bin/gmount

While we're at it, let's create an unmount command:

$ echo "fusermount -u ~/googledrive" >bin/gumount
$ chmod +x bin/gumount

Now you can mount and umount the Google drive simply by typing "gmount" and "gumount".
Note that the directory $HOME/bin is automagically added to your search $PATH when you log in, if it exists.

Now let's automount this when you log in:

Go to Menu --> System Settings --> Startup Applications
Click on "Add"
Click on "Custom command"
Choose whatever name floats your boat for the Name field
Click the "Browse" button next to the Command field
Navigate to ~/bin or whatever directory you placed the gmount command in
Select gmount, then "Open"
Click "Add"

All set. Exit the system settings app, and reboot to test.

Tested on Linux Mint 18 "Sarah" with the Cinnamon desktop.

Edit: fixed typo

 

[Nexus]

Thanks @BobK, I'll try that out later today and report back. 👍

 

[BobK]

Thanks @BobK, I'll try that out later today and report back. 👍

Okay, great!

Note that I've assumed you'd already followed the steps in your link so you already have google-drive-ocamlfuse installed.

Also, I made a typo in the above, when I said 'echo "fusermount -u ~/googledrive" >bin,gumount' I should have said 'echo "fusermount -u ~/googledrive" >bin/gumount'; fixing in the original[/url]

 

[Nexus]

Thanks the help @BobK, it's working perfectly. 👍

 

[Dennisch]

@BobK

I have a small issue with the new laptop. After every reboot the status of the graphics card changes to unknown. I have selected the recommended driver.

After selecting the Nvidia Card I log out to apply the changes, the Nvidia is selected but as soon as I turn it off and on again I can do it all again.

Google isn't really helpful.

Edit.

Fixed!

Full removal of everything Nvidia, including Prime, Bumblebee? and reinstall seems to have done the trick.

Nope.

 

[BobK]

@BobK

I have a small issue with the new laptop. After every reboot the status of the graphics card changes to unknown. I have selected the recommended driver.


After selecting the Nvidia Card I log out to apply the changes, the Nvidia is selected but as soon as I turn it off and on again I can do it all again.


Google isn't really helpful.

Okay, my approach would be to find out which kernel modules are getting enabled/disabled when you enable he graphics card. Device drivers in linux are generally implemented as kernel modules. The system can load/unload modules on the fly. I'd go about it like so:
Boot up the system, open a command prompt/xterm/terminal/whatever, and type this command:

lsmod >before

This will list all loaded modules and send the list to a file named "before". You can browse the file if you're curious; it's plain text. I'd guess you have probably 50-100 modules loaded, if my systems are any indication.

Now, set up the graphics driver with the driver manager so it's working the way you want it. Go back to the command prompt and type this command:
[code/lsmod >after[/code]
So now we have a list of modules from before and after, we need to see what's changed. the obvious way is to diff them:

diff before after

The diff command compares two files and displays the differences. If there is no output, the filers were identical. But a better way is this way:

sdiff -s before after

That might give you an easier to read list. "man lsmod", "man diff" and "man sdiff" might be very useful here; on the left will be modules that are in the "before" file but not the "after" file, and on the right will be the list of what's in the "after" file and not the "before".

Try this and let me know if it generates any good information, if so then we'll see about using the modprobe or insmod (more man pages for you ) commands to configure the video, and once we do that we'll try to automate the process at boot time.

DISCLAIMER: There is probably a much easier way to accomplish this, but this is an area I've never really messed with before.

 

[Dennisch]

@BobK

nvidia_drm             53248  0                     |    nvidia_drm             53248  3
nvidia_modeset        790528  1 nvidia_drm             |    nvidia_modeset        790528  4 nvidia_drm
nvidia              12144640  1 nvidia_modeset             |    nvidia              12144640  70 nvidia_modeset
i915                 1208320  4                     |    i915                 1208320  2
drm                   364544  7 i915,drm_kms_helper,nvidia_dr |    drm                   364544  6 i915,drm_kms_helper,nvidia_dr

That's the output of the file.

Edit

I've just noticed that when the Nvidia is enabled, I have a different menu in Nvidia X Server settings compared to when the Onboard is enabled.

In my first post about this you can see the other menu.

 

[BobK]

@BobK

nvidia_drm             53248  0                     |    nvidia_drm             53248  3
nvidia_modeset        790528  1 nvidia_drm             |    nvidia_modeset        790528  4 nvidia_drm
nvidia              12144640  1 nvidia_modeset             |    nvidia              12144640  70 nvidia_modeset
i915                 1208320  4                     |    i915                 1208320  2
drm                   364544  7 i915,drm_kms_helper,nvidia_dr |    drm                   364544  6 i915,drm_kms_helper,nvidia_dr

Okay, so the only thing changing is the number of processes using the modules. In other words, it's already loading them at boot time. So the "module" approach is going nowhere. The best thing I've found on reading lsmod's output, by the way, is here.

At this point all I can think of is, is there an option to save settings or anything like that? I don't have any proprietary modules in my Mint system so I can't play with the driver manager myself; my Slackware box doesn't even have a driver manager.

 

[Dennisch]

At this point all I can think of is, is there an option to save settings or anything like

I've found something about this laptop being a Hybrid graphics laptop. Apparently if you want to permanently use the Nvidia there must be an option in the bios to disable the onboard. This does not have that option.

But.

You can make a settings file to have the Nvidia kick in with whatever program I want to use.

To add. I no longer have the unknown graphics notification, why I don't know. I'm going to check that file creation to see if that works. I'm going to let it kick in with Gimp.

 

[Dennisch]

@BobK

Lubuntu or LXLE?

 

[BobK]

@BobK

Lubuntu or LXLE?

My inclination would be towards Lubuntu but although I've worked with a few other *buntus I haven't tried Lubuntu yet. Sounds like a good project for today; setting up a Lubuntu VM.

LXLE bills itself as being easier for those migrating from Windows but I'm not really seeing it. One difference (from Win7 anyway) is that it puts the start menu, quick launch icons, etc in a bar at the top of the screen and a menu bar at the bottom; I'd prefer to have them all in a single panel.

Let me play a bit more with LXLE and Lubuntu and I'll get back to you.

 

[BobK]

@BobK

Lubuntu or LXLE?

I installed Lubuntu 16.04 (yes I know 17.04 is available) and played around with it a bit. LXLE comes with more stuff that a prospective ex-Windows user would want. Lubuntu is by design a fairly minimal distro. So for someone who is just making their first foray into Linux, I'd go with LXLE.

If I, personally, were thinking of using one or the other for more or less full time use, I'd have to do more tinkering than usual to set either one up to my liking. Other than that, both are quite newbie-friendly.

 

[Dennisch]

I can say, a SiS integrated graphics chip is somewhat poop with Linux.

Tried several different versions of Lubuntu and Xubuntu before settling on Lubuntu 14.04 as I found several people telling the Internet that it would work with that after some tinkering.

After several frustrating hours of editing Xorg.conf files and really odd outcomes resolution wise on the monitor, I got it working on 1650x1050, as that is the max resolution for the monitor, and it seemed that videos also had proper playback.

That's where I should have stopped opening the Xorg file. But no, I had to add one more option with a different refresh rate and apparently I did a booboo somewhere because when I rebooted Lubuntu had enough and just froze on start up.

Ah well. Tomorrow is a new day of a fresh install, and test if it will emulate.

 

[Grayfox]

I am having my own issues with linux.
Nemo is freezing on me.

Seems linux is not fox proof as I have gone through Kubuntu, Zorin, Ubuntu and now Mint and they each get some form of issue.

 

[Epic B]

So a while back I got LXLE running again for the first time in a while. But I still need to figure out one thing that I found easier with Mint's Cinnamon desktop. I can't figure out how to get HDMI audio output. PulseAudio volume control doesn't have an option for it even when I connect my laptop to a TV with HDMI.

 

[sesselpupser]

I could use some help with a Linux problem!

So I've got a webserver that I've never seen before and didn't set up, it has an expired Let's Encrypt SSL (right?) certificate using Certbot and it's predictably causing issues. If I run "./certbot-auto certonly --webroot -w /home/Web/default/httpdocs -d [domain]", it fails and prints a pip error log, the ending of which is
'File "usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 52, in copyfileobj
fdst.write(buf)
IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device'

So I df -h to find:
rootfs and /dev/disk/by-uuid/[lots of characters] are both mounted on / and 96% used, while everything else listed here is relatively low (/dev/sda6, mounted on /var, is next highest at 71%).

I've been trying to find where all the space is being used in /, but there's nothing in the root directory that is particularly big and when I used 'du -a / | sort -nr | head -n 10' it pointed me at a directory in /home, but that's a different mount point... Right?

I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm very tired but if someone could throw me a bone I'd be very grateful!

 

[BobK]

I could use some help with a Linux problem!

So I've got a webserver that I've never seen before and didn't set up, it has an expired Let's Encrypt SSL (right?) certificate using Certbot and it's predictably causing issues. If I run "./certbot-auto certonly --webroot -w /home/Web/default/httpdocs -d [domain]", it fails and prints a pip error log, the ending of which is
'File "usr/lib/python2.7/shutil.py", line 52, in copyfileobj
fdst.write(buf)
IOError: [Errno 28] No space left on device'

So I df -h to find:
rootfs and /dev/disk/by-uuid/[lots of characters] are both mounted on / and 96% used, while everything else listed here is relatively low (/dev/sda6, mounted on /var, is next highest at 71%).

I've been trying to find where all the space is being used in /, but there's nothing in the root directory that is particularly big and when I used 'du -a / | sort -nr | head -n 10' it pointed me at a directory in /home, but that's a different mount point... Right?

I don't really know what I'm doing and I'm very tired but if someone could throw me a bone I'd be very grateful!

The /home directory isn't necessarily a different mount point. Mty choice to find out what's mounted where and the space used is the lsblk command. You can also use df (which you're using) but you have to filter out pseudo-fs entries.

 

[Dennisch]

As it turned out, this thingy was/is kack. THE chip set is worthless, and without any decent support.

So. It was time to go shop and steal again!

3rd gen i3, Nvidia chipset, 4gb ram, 120gb ssd.

Price? €30,-, 36,50 including shipping.



RetroPie is going to run so smooth.

Installing Lubuntu from a USB is so deliciously fast. I don't even have time to go sit on my couch.

 

[sesselpupser]

The /home directory isn't necessarily a different mount point. Mty choice to find out what's mounted where and the space used is the lsblk command. You can also use df (which you're using) but you have to filter out pseudo-fs entries.

Thanks Bob, in the end I actually read the pip error report and found it downloaded 34 packages but only had space to install 7 of them, there were a number of references to /opt so I ran another shell to see what happened to /opt while certbot tried to renew the certificate, it grew from 3k to 30M before failing. Resizing sda1 fixed it so all is well for now, but I'm going to look into what caused it to run out of space. That said, it operated for about 6 years on 333MB and we expanded it by another 1GB so it'll probably be fine for a while!

 

[Dennisch]

Somewhere in the updates of Mint, they snuck in a piece of software that recognises my Eos camera. On my old laptop, with the same Linux Mint, I had to download and install different thingies to get it working, and now with the newer laptop, I plug it in for the first time and Mint asks me Ala Windows what action to perform.

Giggity.

 

[Matej]

Can anyone recommend a good microphone compatible with Linux? I'm considering something that isn't on expensive side and can deliver better quality than that you get while recording on smart phones or mini cameras.

 

[Dennisch]

@BobK

W: The repository 'http://mirror.1000mbps.com/ubuntu xenial Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
W: The repository 'http://mirror.1000mbps.com/ubuntu xenial-updates Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
W: The repository 'http://mirror.1000mbps.com/ubuntu xenial-backports Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
E: Failed to fetch http://mirror.1000mbps.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial-backports/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found
E: Failed to fetch http://mirror.1000mbps.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found
E: Failed to fetch http://mirror.1000mbps.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial-updates/main/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found

This prevents me from updating. Help.

edit.

I am a bit further. I narrowed it down to one file.

Mir is a display server running on linux systems, with a focus on efficiency, robust operation and a well-defined driver model.

Contains the shared library containing the Google Protobuf definitions required for Mir clients and servers.
This update contains 2 packages: libmirclient9 libmirprotobuf3

Edit nr 2!

It's fixed. I changed the download mirrors for the Software sources and now it's all up to date again.

 

[Dennisch]

I have been random freezes on the Desktop. Can't pinpoint an actual issue as it happens, well, random. Is there a way to find out what is causing the issue?

I've so far deleted the insides of the tmp and the /.cache maps, but it doesn't help.

Before I go and just wipe the disk and reinstall Mint, @BobK do you have any brilliant insights that you can provide, which Google can't?

Edit.

I have a sneaky suspicion that my psu in getting ready for the recycle pile, issues seem to be related to the 1050 drawing power.

 

[BobK]

I have been random freezes on the Desktop. Can't pinpoint an actual issue as it happens, well, random. Is there a way to find out what is causing the issue?

I've so far deleted the insides of the tmp and the /.cache maps, but it doesn't help.

Before I go and just wipe the disk and reinstall Mint, @BobK do you have any brilliant insights that you can provide, which Google can't?

Edit.

I have a sneaky suspicion that my psu in getting ready for the recycle pile, issues seem to be related to the 1050 drawing power.

Wish I could supply some insight, but I'm having the same or similar problem on both my main linux boxen. The machine will occasionally freeze for a few seconds, not even updating the clock in the corner of the panel, then continue as if nothing happened. It seems to happen only after longish periods of inactivity. Since it only happens once or perhaps twice a day I haven't bothered to track it down; my suspicion had been a networking problem since I make heavy use of NFS,

 

[Dennisch]

Wish I could supply some insight, but I'm having the same or similar problem on both my main linux boxen. The machine will occasionally freeze for a few seconds, not even updating the clock in the corner of the panel, then continue as if nothing happened. It seems to happen only after longish periods of inactivity. Since it only happens once or perhaps twice a day I haven't bothered to track it down; my suspicion had been a networking problem since I make heavy use of NFS,

It got to the point where it happened 3 times an hour, but it wasn't Linux related. Installed windows and it froze during the updates. Fairly certain it was the psu as I have now swapped it and the pc is still going strong.

Also.

How much better is Windows 7 compared to 10. Holy crap.

It's so great to be in the position to have a dedicated gaming rig.