For questions regarding the function of the entire operating system and issues that affect users system-wide.
165
votes
31answers
60k views
How can I improve overall system performance?
What are your tips for improving overall system performance on ubuntu? Inspired by this question I realized that some default settings may be rather conservative on Ubuntu and that it's possible to ...
23
votes
3answers
27k views
Getting “System program problem detected” pops up regularly after upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04
This started to happen immediately after I had rebooted the first time after doing a system upgrade to 12.04 from 11.10. It first starts with a dialogue that says "System program problem detected". ...
17
votes
4answers
5k views
What are the common maintenance tasks?
When i was using windows, i used to run defrags, ccleaner and revouninstaller once a month to keep the system and the registry clean.
I know ubuntu (and all linux distro) has a different system ...
13
votes
1answer
2k views
How many files I can have on a single directory?
This question is related to this one.
I work with animation, which generates a LOT of files (+/- 1,000,000) typically stored on a single directory. On Mac Os X, some bugs came up with more than ...
13
votes
1answer
5k views
What are “/run/lock” and “/run/shm” used for?
i just want to know where & how /run/lock & /run/shm can help our PC .
$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 56G 13G 41G 24% /
udev ...
13
votes
2answers
1k views
Is it possible to add custom items to System Settings window?
For example, how to add a "Startup Applications Preferences" launcher to this Window?
12
votes
4answers
2k views
What is the Linux drive naming scheme?
In Windows; you have the C: drive. This is the primary drive upon which Windows is installed.
However, Linux uses a different naming scheme; sda and sba 1,2,3,4, etc. Can anyone give me a brief ...
10
votes
5answers
2k views
How can I disable Ctrl+Q for all applications (system wide)?
A lot of applications like Firefox, Chrome etc, get closed when I accidentally press Ctrl+Q instead of Ctrl+W because of the proximity of the Q and W keys on the keyboard. Is there a way this shortcut ...
10
votes
2answers
351 views
Does changing the theme improve system performance?
I really have this feeling that after changing the theme on my Ubuntu (10.10 - but it also happened on a different version) the system is much quicker, or to say more precisely, the system is not ...
9
votes
2answers
447 views
Differences between /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/sbin
I'm running an Ubuntu Server 13.04, but I see the same on a 12.04: I have six directories with command files. These are:
/bin
/sbin
/usr/bin
/usr/sbin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/local/sbin
What are the ...
9
votes
5answers
10k views
Easy backup/restore of installed system?
Is there any easy and open source backup/restore solution for installed (after clear install) Ubuntu system, like Acronis Home backup ?
9
votes
3answers
2k views
Will Ubuntu One support OS Settings sync?
Being new to Linux and to Ubuntu, I've taken quite some time to tune it to my needs on my netbook. As I'm now convinced by the OS, I plan to install it on my desktop in the next few days. I was hoping ...
8
votes
11answers
1k views
How to back up a system?
If I want to make a backup of my entire OS (including but not just my home directory), how do I go about this?
Is it as simple as backing up everything in / and then when if I suffer a crash, just ...
8
votes
3answers
5k views
Security camera system server
I'd like to setup a Security Camera system which is captures and stores video streams into Ubuntu Server From 2 wireless Cameras.
Which type of motion-detecting wireless camera you suggested?
Are ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views
Is it possible to do a remote wipe of a system?
My office had a break-in over the weekend, and several laptops were stolen. Mine wasn't one of them, but I'm curious - the owners of the stolen computers (Windows and Mac) are all talking about remote ...
8
votes
8answers
11k views
How to make my proxy settings change depending on the network I connect to?
My company's corporate network requires me to set a network proxy to access the net, but when I am anywhere else, I don't need it.
The proxy settings in Ubuntu (System -> Preferences -> Proxy server) ...
8
votes
1answer
2k views
Is there a way of leveling/compressing the sound system-wide?
As a Laptop user, I'm sure that a lot of people, even the ones using Netbooks would have already gone through this problem. Especially when listening to podcasts, and using it as an example, the sound ...
8
votes
0answers
2k views
Is there a system-wide equalizer for PulseAudio or ALSA? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Is there any Sound enhancers/equalizer?
I often want to tweak the sound quality, but have found no other way than to install plugins for each piece of software. ...
7
votes
5answers
15k views
How I do a system restore?
Problem I Faced
I installed something that crashed my Wifi drivers that I compiled earlier.
Un-installing the same package doesn't helped.
Finally, I re-compiled my wifi drivers and things are good.
...
7
votes
2answers
408 views
Is it safe to resize my swap partition on a production system?
I have a laptop with 4GB RAM, but when I first set it up, I had no plans to hibernate so I gave it 2GB swap. I don't want to use a swap file, so is it safe to resize the swap partition (and of course ...
7
votes
3answers
2k views
System reverts to 87Hz refresh rate at every startup after I have installed nvidia drivers
Every time the system starts the screen's refresh rate reverts to 87Hz which results in a pixelated and flickery screen which I have to manually correct every time by either selecting 60Hz as my ...
7
votes
1answer
459 views
Tons of general protection faults
I recently upgraded my home server from Ubuntu 10.04 to 12.04.1. It runs the linux-image-server kernel, x86_64 arch.
There's nothing particularly unusual running, I think -- a deluge daemon, apache2, ...
6
votes
5answers
1k views
Ubuntu desktop suddenly points to home folder
As of now, my desktop has begun showing the contents of my home folder (~) instead of the contents of ~/desktop. I must have changed something, but I have no idea what, or what I was doing exactly ...
6
votes
3answers
4k views
How many maximum CPUs does Ubuntu support by default?
I think this is kernel dependent and probably will change over time depending on the kernel a release uses, correct me if wrong
I'd like to know two things for all the currently supported Ubuntu ...
6
votes
1answer
2k views
How can I access system mail in /var/mail/ via thunderbird?
I've got cron jobs sending mail to my user at /var/mail. I know how to access that at the command line with the mail command. But, while a big command line fan, I do not like reading mail (even system ...
6
votes
2answers
3k views
How can I read system mail?
Which packages need to be installed in order for system mail to be generated from for example a nightly rkhunter scan run by cron?
6
votes
3answers
2k views
How can I can clone or ghost my system drive to restore it to a bigger HD?
How can I can clone or ghost my Ubuntu System drive to restore it to a bigger HD?
something like norton ghost does with NTFS or FAT on Windows
GREAT Thanks
6
votes
1answer
280 views
Is there a way to move/remove “system settings” from the shut-down menu?
In 11.04 "System settings" is at the bottom of window and when I try to shut down the computer I always click that instead of the shut down button.
So is there a way to remove this system settings ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
System wide browser protocol handlers?
When developing an application for a Windows system, there is a registry entry you can make on the client machine that sets a 'protocol handler' in the system. In the same way that mailto links work ...
6
votes
1answer
735 views
Change Desktop folder path
This is my first question here, I'm trying to create a little script, that change icons shown in Desktop. I mean, when I Click on a button, I would launch this simple script
cp ...
5
votes
4answers
706 views
System Monitoring Tools For Ubuntu
I am looking for System Monitoring tools which are GUI and Cli or Web Based which include Basic Functions such as
CPU Usage
Ram Usage
Swap Usage
Disk Usage ( Space / I/O )
Heat Monitoring
I know ...
5
votes
3answers
857 views
How can I change the OS name from Ubuntu to something else?
I want that applications like System Monitor and Conky display the name MYOS instead of Ubuntu 11.10.
Also, I want lsb_release -a and etc. to show MYOS only.
5
votes
2answers
4k views
5
votes
2answers
1k views
How to see what's going on during shutdown
Since a few weeks, Ubuntu freezes almost everytime when I shut it down.
I know it because the shutdown animation stops and nothing is responsive: Ctrl+Alt+Del or AltGr+Syst+reisub don't make any ...
5
votes
2answers
722 views
Where is the place where actual size of desktop icons is stored?
As one can resize the icons on desktop (not within nautilus) through righ-click menu: "Resize icon..", so where is the size stored for that certain file.
5
votes
2answers
336 views
How to mount all partitions at system startup
Hello I searched for this query(mounting all partitions on system startup) and found answer near to it. I added this command to startup applications "/usr/bin/udisks --mount ...
5
votes
1answer
239 views
Why Ubuntu-Desktop package is allways associated with pulseaudio?
As my question above, i wandered why ubuntu-desktop package is always with full association with pulseaudio packagae? Why can't we erase pulseaudio without erase ubuntu-desktop too?
5
votes
1answer
894 views
How to disable hibernating?
Whereas many questions are geared towards implementing hibernation, mine is how to disable it.
I've just encrypted my swap partition, and I such my system can still hibernate, but cannot resume ...
5
votes
2answers
3k views
How do I create an encrypted file system inside a file?
Recently i've found this interesting tutorial:
http://flossstuff.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/using-a-file-as-a-storage-device/
It explains how to create an empty file, format it as ext4, and mount it ...
5
votes
2answers
3k views
Find (and reinstall) packages with corrupted files (without breaking anything)
I usually prefer to fix a Linux system than to reinstall from scratch. My computers have seen many distribution upgrades and a list of PPAs or third-party repositories. APT usually makes sure that ...
4
votes
2answers
4k views
Why doesn't Ubuntu use YaST?
openSUSE is known by it's YaST control center, a powerful tool that centralizes all the system configurations. It makes it a lot simpler to configure the system, why doesn't Ubuntu make use of such a ...
4
votes
4answers
229 views
What is a good system/hardware utility?
I want some new memory for my computer and I can't find out what type of memory my computer uses and needs. When I was using Windows I used Belarc to find out what hardware was on the computer. Now ...
4
votes
2answers
218 views
Securing system admin account
As it is well known, it is recommended that the system administrator login to the system using a normal user (non-root). When the admin needs to do privileged tasks, sudo can be used to become ...
4
votes
1answer
404 views
System programming in Ubuntu
I'd like to get into Ubuntu systems programming; to be specific - developing and debugging device drivers. However, I'm not sure about how to get started, even though I have prior experience ...
4
votes
2answers
3k views
Appropriate size for / root partition
I'm about to re-install my system. I like to keep a separate /home and / root partitions. I've been using (K)Ubuntu for around a year now and my / partition (almost 36Gb) never climbed over ~13Gb of ...
4
votes
1answer
743 views
How do I apply an Indian language system-wide?
I want to add Indian languages system wide.I see on English and Chinese options .I also updated font cache. The image says it all.
First is the gnome tweak tool and second the font viewer.
How do i ...
4
votes
2answers
593 views
proxy authentication in system settings but with a twist
We have a password policy that enforces the users to use special characters in their passwords. Hence some passwords will be Gt4@gj#k for example.
Now to specify the system wide proxy settings (Why ...
4
votes
1answer
108 views
Can certain system-hungry modules be disabled?
Let me add some context: I am currently using Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit (Desktop) on a relatively powerful stationary PC (Intel Core i7 920, 12GB ram). My purpose is highspeed imaging with a pointgrey ...
3
votes
4answers
474 views
How does rc job work / order of (contradicting) “start on …” and “stop on …” stanzas
I just can't understand how Upstart's rc job definition in Natty 11.04 works. To illustrate the problem, here is the definition (empty lines and comments are left out):
start on runlevel [0123456]
...
3
votes
4answers
6k views
Where do I find system sounds?
After installing gm-notify I see the option of hearing a sound every time a new e-mail arrives in my Gmail inbox, but I don't know where Ubuntu (10.4) stores the system sounds to assign one. Any ...
