Category: Linux

Extend Ubuntu 18.04 LTS updates?

How do I extend updates for my Ubuntu 18.04 LTS? I don’t want to reinstall a new one.

ANSWER

Yes, Ubuntu LTS versions have a standard support period of only 5 years. The 18.04 will have that on April 2023 May 31, 2023. Coming very soon.

If you are not yet ready to install a new one, but still get the official updates from Ubuntu, then you can sign up for Ubuntu Pro. Register here – https://ubuntu.com/pro.

How to do that? Follow the guide here – https://ubuntu.com/pro/tutorial.

Once you have signed up and enabled Extended Security Maintenance, or ESM, then you are good for another 5 years of security updates. That will end on April 2028. A long way off, but plenty of time still.

Stress on the word security. It doesn’t mean you will get the newest versions of software installed on your computer for the next several years. That’s different. An alternative is to install the Snap version of a software to get the latest that the package maintainer offers. And if you don’t fancy Ubuntu Snaps, there may be Flatpak or AppImage versions of the same software.

Why no fullscreen after Vmware install?

The linux desktop live preview I tried is fullscreen when it boots up. This is via the Vmware Workstation Player tool. I am play around with it as like a normal desktop. After I clicked install and let if finish complete, the next boot only makes the desktop very small. It won’t stretch the full width, height of my screen. The small screen is centered and maximizing the window several times has no effects.

ANSWER

Make sure that the VMware Tools are updated/installed after the installation of the Linux desktop is completed. Go to the menu of the VMware Player window while the virtual desktop is active/running. Then find the Install VMware Tools menu entry or something with a similar text. Try to resize the window again. Go fullscreen (also from the same menu). Restart the virtual desktop if necessary.

If it still does not resize to adapt to the screen’s full width and height, try to restart the vmtoolsd service. Open a terminal. Then type the following command.

sudo systemctl restart vmtoolsd

This might have to be done each time the screen doesn’t adjust to the screen size automatically.

Screen record to gif on Linux

I would like to record my desktop screen. Maybe a portion of it not the entirety of the screen. Then convert that into an animated GIF image. Would like to use less or none at all on image editing software where possible. What are the tools I will use in a Linux desktop?

ANSWER

My go to tools for this are Kazam and Gifcurry.

Kazam for screen recording my desktop. It is a simple tool. Has options to target fullscreen can include all screens, a window or an area on the desktop. The latter may be exactly what you need. The results are saved into a MP4 file.

Gifcurry can then load that video file, make edits, save it into animated gif.

I can also skip Gifcurry. Use ffmpeg directly instead. It can do a lot of things to handle video, audio, other media files and streams. But a simple command such as this one will do for starters:

ffmpeg -i video-file.mp4 -f gif output.gif

Install app latest version with Ubuntu Snap

I want to install application most recent version on Ubuntu. With this command snap refresh <app name>, but it doesn’t work.

Getting a ‘snap “<app name>” has no updates available’ message instead.

There is a higher version from snap info <app name> for example below.

channels:
  latest/stable:    12.5 2021-09-23 (50) 516MB classic
  latest/candidate: ↑                          
  latest/beta:      ↑                          
  latest/edge:      12.5 2021-09-19 (50) 516MB classic
  12.0/stable:      12.0 2020-06-12 (30) 462MB classic
  12.0/candidate:   ↑                          
  12.0/beta:        ↑                          
  12.0/edge:        ↑                          
  11.0/stable:      11.0 2019-09-04  (6) 399MB classic
  11.0/candidate:   ↑                          
  11.0/beta:        ↑                          
  11.0/edge:        ↑

What I need do to force the update to latest version?

ANSWER

If you look at the “tracking” value after the snap info command, you will see the channel the app is currently on.

That’s the same channel listed in the “channels” information. To get that latest version you want, change the channel accordingly. Let us say you are at 12.0/stable now. You want to download and update to 12.5. That means you need to change to latest/stable channel in this case.

For that we will need to add an option that is --channel=<channel name> to change the target channel.

The command it will look like this in the terminal:

:~$ snap refresh <app name> --channel=latest/stable

This will immediately begin the download process to update to that version of that channel specified.

Add sudo optionally. Optional because Ubuntu will prompt you for your password if you don’t. A pop-up dialog window will appear for you to enter the password.

Alternative to Cron

For Linux systems what is a good alternative to cron?

ANSWER

(1) systemd

A lot of Linux distros are already using systemd. I’d say the major ones have been on systemd for a long time. It is capable of scheduling tasks just like cron, and has other features such as setting CPU/memory limit, randomized schedules to name a few. I haven’t used it yet. But I’ve seen some and creating a task is very different from what you may be used to with your traditional cron. It’s verbose. The good thing is there’s a lot of examples and documentation about it, plus it is built-in to your Linux system already.

(2) jobber

There’s an alternative to cron that I like to use called jobber. You can find it here: https://dshearer.github.io/jobber/

Quoting from the jobber website:

Jobber is a utility for Unix-like systems that can run arbitrary commands, or “jobs”, according to a schedule. It is meant to be a better alternative to the classic Unix utility cron

I’ve used jobber several times in little projects and some even in production. It is pretty robust and stable. As with anything new, using it requires some reading. The time format to schedule a task, or job, in jobber is not at all different from cron. It has other features such as error handling and reporting, as well as execution history.

jobber tasks are defined in a YAML file. That file can be placed in a user’s home directory. It’s not so hard to create a task for jobber. Their site has a good documentation found here: https://dshearer.github.io/jobber/doc/v1.4/#

There are pre-packaged binaries officially available to download for Debian/Ubuntu, and Red Hat. Or check your Linux distro’s application repository if it’s there. If not you could always compile it yourself. The last time I used this tool I also compiled it on the server. Easy to do that, and is explained also at their website.

What Password Managers available in Linux

List of Password Managers that are available in Linux?

Aside from BitWarden. I want to know some alternatives you guys are using. Prefer it’s standalone program instead of browser plugin or extensions.

ANSWER

I am using KeePassXC personally for some time. 1Password for work-related stuffs.

The first one is a KeePass variant and open-source. It has a Qt-based application that has been available for Linux for a while. Then, 1Password support in Linux was in beta since last year. Recently it has been moved out of beta.

Others I know off the top of my head,

  • AuthPass
  • Password Safe (for Gnome DE)
  • KeePassX (where KeePassXC was forked)

How to fix error: snap “telegram-desktop” has “install-snap” change in progress

I enconter this error message when installing a Snap app Telegram for Desktop from the terminal command line. I followed instructions on how to do this from the Install button of the snapcraft.io website.

First one I select is use the GUI app store. But nothing happens when click install button. Installing progress starts but go back to install. Click again and same thing is happens.

When using the command line that is I got the error of:

error: snap "telegram-desktop" has "install-snap" change in progress

How to fix?

ANSWER

The error is because you are telling Snap to install an app that has already been scheduled for installation. It’s in the queue. The GUI app store is not very informative about this scenario. Hence, it will seem like the installation process failed when in fact that is not the case.

My guess is it is put on schedule for installation because a higher priority install needs to be done first, most likely Snap core updates that have not yet been applied to the system yet.

Either wait for the core updates to finish and wait for Telegram to get installed after, or force it to update right away.

At the command line, do:

:~$ snap changes

It will show something such as:

ID Status Spawn Ready Summary
101 Done yesterday at 20:33 PST yesterday at 20:34 PST Auto-refresh snap "intellij-idea-community"
102 Doing today at 11:36 PST - Install "slack" snap

Abort the scheduled install for the app listed there, in your case “telegram-desktop” snap using the following command:

:~$ sudo snap abort 102

In the example above, I chose to abort install scheduled with ID 102. Choose the ID of the app you are trying to install that you will see on your terminal after the command above.

Then install the snap app manually:

:~$ sudo snap install telegram-desktop

This should force snap to go ahead with the install, but first it may start with its core updates, followed by the telegram-desktop snap app.

It can be done for other Snap applications too where you’re facing this scenario. Just replace with the correct application name (use snap list to get the name of that application). The same can be said when instead of “install-snap” it’s the opposite – “remove-snap” – instead.

error: snap APP_NAME has "remove-snap" change in progress

If the abort option does not work, one other thing that has worked for me is by using the purge method,

:~$ sudo snap remove --purge APP_NAME

Change default app to open torrent magnet link

I installed a Popcorn-time desktop software on my Ubuntu linux to try that out. It appears to use a torrent technology to stream content as it downloads at the same time. Somehow that now gets the default to open magnet links for torrent files. Have not remembered any setting asking me to make the app open by default during installation or at download.

I don’t want this, don’t know how to change to my default torrent software – Transmission BitTorrent.

How to change back?

ANSWER

Add/edit it into the following files. Either or both is fine, but better to have it in for the system-wide list if you have multiple users.

  • System-wide: /usr/share/applications/defaults.list
  • User-specific: ~/.local/share/applications/mimeapps.list

The value of this entry – x-scheme-handler/magnet – needs to be set to the application you prefer.

For example, since you want it to be Transmission it will be similar as shown below:


x-scheme-handler/magnet=transmission-gtk.desktop

Just make sure the .desktop file for the desired application is correct. Again you can check for that file in the same directory where this list is found.

As an alternative, the following terminal commands will also help.

Find out what is the existing default app that will handle such mime-type for your existing user:

:~$ xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/magnet

Replace that by using the next command:

:-$ xdg-mime default transmission-gtk.desktop x-scheme-handler/magnet

Lastly, you can check again if the last command was successful by running the first one.

There any free, lightweight app to merge PDF files as one?

As the name of the title in this post says it all. Okay, maybe not all it says because I want it on Linux desktop.

Looking for a tool that can combine different PDF into one big PDF file. I don’t need to modify the content of the PDFs. All important is merging them together as a group.

Sorting it probably comes as second important feature. But I can get on without that as long as it stays in sequence however I added each PDF file.

Lastly simple. No over the top effects. Prefer GUI app. Open to command line.

ANSWER

For that purpose, I have personally used PDF-Shuffler, It is a GUI desktop application on Linux. I used it back then on Ubuntu, but it should be available in all other major distros. Google for it. I know it is included in the official package management repositories of Ubuntu.

PDF-Shuffler can collate, sort (through drag and drop) and rotate the PDF files individually. As an added bonus, it can crop PDFs too.

It is a straightforward app. Stable for all those times I’ve used. But my usage is fairly moderate only.

I also suggest using pdftk for command line if you fancy that kind of stuff. You can combine PDFs into one as simple as:

:~$ pdftk file-1.pdf file-2.df file-3.pdf output my-merged.pdf

This tool can do other stuff. You can read its manual for more information. Google about pdftk too for more examples.

Support for Ubuntu Unity Desktop after 16.04 LTS

Can still use the Unity Desktop after Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus? Is it still supported?

I like the Unity desktop way of things. Been using it many years now. Read about and tried the new Ubuntu that with Gnome Shell, but I don’t like it much at all. It look clunky with many of missing things from it.

Come April 2021 Ubuntu 16.04 will EOL. Starting to find alternatives, but if Unity is still out there, I’d pick it over the others.

ANSWER

In one word, Yes.

Still can run on both LTS versions of 18.04 and 20.04. Go ahead and install it with:

sudo apt install ubuntu-unity-desktop

Choose Lightdm display manager when asked during install. Best to restart your computer afterwards. Then enjoy.

Consider that many people have said some weird looks of Unity when installed on said LTS versions appear. I forget, but I think its the window decorations and such. This is supposedly caused by the newer Gnome versions, and unpatched by Ubuntu. Unlike before.

You may also like to try out an alternative in the Ubuntu Unity Desktop spinoff. Can be found at this website – https://ubuntuunity.org/

It is not official Ubuntu flavor, but being maintained by some other 3rd party group. The experience is different from just installing 20.04 and then install Unity DE afterwards. Try it out if it suits you.

How to Fix Gradle Wrapper Permission Denied Error

I am getting this “gradlew permission denied” error after pushing my code to my GitLab repository. The build is not able to continue because the gradle wrapper is not able to run.

What is causing this and how to fix it?

ANSWER

From a local terminal/command line, use the Git command that follows to fix this issue:

git update-index --chmod=+x gradlew

Continue to commit the modifications to the gradlew file.

Push the changes to your Git repository.

You can read more at this page: https://www.joseyamut.xyz/2020/08/15/fix-gradlew-permission-denied-on-openshift-deploy/

Reference request for permissions needed by linux commands

Good day,

I want to ask if there is a comprehensive reference for permissions needed by each linux command and on which directores (ex : source/target) to do its primary role … something like a list, I wasn’t successful to find that in the manual but if it exists , please help me know in what part it resides in the manual

I am preparing a summary of that during my self study thats why am asking so if any one could help me it will be appreciated
Thanks

Go to Source
Author: AbdAllah Talaat

Can security modules completely override Linux Kernel’s access model?

I am aware of Apparmor and specifically how it can be used to limit a program’s access rights where of the file-system permissions otherwise allow. What I’m less clear on is whether it’s possible for Apparmor or any similar security module to completely override a program’s access rights. Can they grant a program access to read/write/execute files that the user otherwise has no access to.

I’m asking for what the Linux Kernel will allow such a security module to do, not what existing security modules can be configured to do.

Can security modules completely override Linux Kernel’s access model?

Go to Source
Author: Philip Couling

How to show Snap app icon properly on Ubuntu Unity desktop

Had this issue where after I logged into my Ubuntu desktop all Snap apps icons do not show properly. Instead I see a plain icon in place of what the app icon should be. Have you the same experience?

This might have been fixed in later Ubuntu LTS releases, I really don’t know. But I am still on 16.04 Xenial Xerus until its EOL. Also, the reason is that I love the Unity Desktop. The Gnome Shell replacement just doesn’t cut it for me.

I have been looking for a solution on this issue for some time. The 2 main things people point out are:

– Add /snap/bin to the /etc/environment file, and;

– Something to do with the profile.

Neither of those solutions worked for me. But it did work for others according to what I have read so far.

ANSWER

To fix this icon issue, create a symlink of the Snap’s .desktop shortcut file to your user’s .local/share/applications directory.

It is as simple as that. Once done the problem will go away, and you will be left with a nice-looking icon that came with the Snap installation. This won’t go away on following restarts.

For more details on how to do this fix exactly, refer to this article – https://www.joseyamut.xyz/2020/08/13/getting-that-ubuntu-snap-icon-right-on-unity-shell/