Linux

While using Google Chrome on Kubuntu 14.10, the display hung for about 5 seconds before unfreezing with the following notification:

Once this began occurring with an increasing frequency, I began to do a little digging. Looking through /var/log/kern.log brought the following up:

After installing the shiny new version of Eclipse entitled 'Luna' on a Kubuntu 14.10 box, I found that it crashed/hung when trying to import/clone a Git repository. Starting the application from the command-line triggered the following notice before the crash:

The title sounds like the name of a fantasy novel ... but I'm of course talking (or, as you, stranger of the Internet, will find out, ranting) about the KDE audio player. Amarok is the default audio player for KDE which makes it the default audio player of Kubuntu, my Linux distro of choice. Now, some history before I begin spitting all over you. I usually use Windows as my primary desktop.

So I wanted to upgrade my Sony Xperia Ray from its now old (and official) Gingerbread version of Android to the relatively more modern Jellybean. The most reliable alternative out there is Cyanogenmod.

While the Cyanogenmod wiki was generally useful, here's what I think is a cleaner guide. I performed the upgrade via a Kubuntu Trusty (14.04) laptop.

In Kubuntu/Ubuntu (and presumably Debian and other derivatives), the CTRL + ALT + F4 (or any other function key) keyboard shortcut switches from the desktop to a virtual terminal while CTRL + ALT + F7 brings you back to the desktop. However, I want to disable this as it's messing up my HTPC thanks to its dodgy remote control. While I could find a solution for Gnome/Ubuntu readily enough, KDE/Kubuntu was not immediately apparent.

I ran into the following error while running a script that was performing backups of files via rsync over ssh.

I ran into the following spiel when I attempted to SSH to a host just now:

Setting the timezone of an Ubuntu (14.04, Trusty) or Debian (7, Wheezy) server from the command-line is simple. Just run dpkg-reconfigure tzdata and follow the on-screen prompts. However, if you are running an unattended installation, you might want to avoid interactive prompts and just gets the job done. To do this, simply run

Browse through /usr/share/zoneinfo/ to locate your timezone.

So, here I was writing a script that would automate the installation of a package in Ubuntu 14.04 and all was going swimmingly. Until I ran it. You know how some apt-get installs sometimes involve a technicolor pop-up that asks you for stuff? Well, those pop-ups interrupted my script which didn't proceed further. After much digging, I found that there are a couple of solutions for this:

On a new Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty) LTS server, I ran into the following:

$ su -c /bin/bash foo
bash: cannot set terminal process group (3987): Inappropriate ioctl for device
bash: no job control in this shell

However, the su procedure worked and I was logged in as user foo.