Share Something You Learned Today

Today I learned when I try to upgrade from 15.10 to 16.04 my computer restarts in the middle and corrupts ubuntu.

Ouch! Sorry to hear that.

Today I learned/noticed that my install of windows 10 is snappier than my install of Linux mint 17.3

They are both on the same hard drive......win 10 occupying approx 123Gb and Linux has approx 108Gb. The linux install is 'further down' the hdd...I am not sure if that would account for the difference

I also learned that having the same applet on both monitors is difficult to achieve. When I attempt to 'take' one applet from the rh monitor, it insists on picking up a bunch of other applets with it.

I learned that the people on this site have more understanding of raw beginners. They answer questions in detail with explanations and links to really good information.  Thanks guys.

I may have accidently discover the source of many of my recent problems with this live usb install of 17.3 mate.

Main reason may be documentation on the sandisk packageing say the drive only support up to win8 and mac v10.5 no linux mentioned at all.

Second thing these sandisk fit loose into my pc's ports. If I bump the drive, the computer or even the table in the right/wrong way the drive will sometimes un-mount and if it tries to remount it will do so incorrectly causeing other problems.

A 3rd. thing I found was I put the stick in the slot reserved in bios for the cd/dvd rom so it would produce a error message to that affect, no cd rom found aborting.

The really weird thing was if I did nothing and waited a few minutes it would actually install the live session even tho it was in the wrong port.!!!!  How weird was that, not really possible as far as I know.

A 3rd. thing I found was I put the stick in the slot reserved in bios for the cd/dvd rom so it would produce a error message to that affect, no cd rom found aborting.

I am confused.  Are you saying there is a "slot" on your computer where you can plug in the flash drive but it is meant for the CD/DVD ROM?

That is correct boot order in bios is CDrom; usb; usb; hdd.  MY HP will cycle thru the ports looking for something to boot from if nothing is there it moves to the next until it finds something to boot from.  The CD rom is an external plugs in by a cable.

By the way had to boot back into cinnamon to be abl to post this.  My usb with linux 17.3 mate is no longer working.

Edited by dannyboy950, 03 May 2016 - 05:45 PM.

Today I learned that BOOT REPAIR DISC   is pure gold !!

This tidy little program comes as an ISO which I 'burnt' to a thumb drive using RUFUS  which is also absolute gold.

I then restarted, changed the boot order so my pc would boot from the thumb drive.....boot repair did the rest.....quickly !

Very impressive. The whole operation took approx 15 minutes (and i had time for coffee in the middle of that)

Credit to JohnC_21 for the suggestions.

I learned that the people on this site have more understanding of raw beginners. They answer questions in detail with explanations and links to really good information.  Thanks guys.

lacey16, you're quire welcome!

Our mission is to have a family oriented Linux Community for all to join, and discuss & resolve issues.

Rarely does a day go by when I don't learn something, as I assist many on this forum & in person, plus am my own 'IT Pro' & that of close family members & friends.

Today, I learned how to enable TPM protection for Linux, after a two year effort of searching, evidently others are doing the same & wants answers, as a tutorial popped up out of the blue. 

http://askubuntu.com/questions/414747/does-ubuntu-use-tpm-2-0-chip

Related information, a popup for a free materials may show, refresh page if this happens.

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/linux-tpm-encryption-initializing-and-using-the-tpm/

Still playing with it, yet after a two year long chase, feel closer than ever to gaining true hardware encryption & have three PC's with physical TPM's to work with (will be 4 after my first self build). If one is considering a build, choose a MB with a TPM header, the actual TPM can be found on Amazon for many popular brands of MB's for under $20. That may be the best sub-$20 one spends in their life, to lock down our OS's.

And there's tens of millions of former business PC's & notebooks to choose from on eBay & other sites in the $100-200 range (many below $150) that sold for over $2,000 new, most of which are far more rugged than consumer offerings, and many of the PC's are upgradable (modern graphic cards, RAM & CPU's). Late Core 2 Quads (Q9xxx series) & 1st gen i7 business machines still are very powerful PC's today. 

Software encryption is good, yet Hardware is much better.

Cat

Today I learned that BOOT REPAIR DISC   is pure gold !!

 

This tidy little program comes as an ISO which I 'burnt' to a thumb drive using RUFUS  which is also absolute gold.

 

I then restarted, changed the boot order so my pc would boot from the thumb drive.....boot repair did the rest.....quickly !

 

Very impressive. The whole operation took approx 15 minutes (and i had time for coffee in the middle of that)

 

Credit to JohnC_21 for the suggestions.

A nice feature of this is, it can be installed to any LinuxLiveSession also!  I tried to download it once and it was taking forever, so I installed it to a LinuxLiveSession and Repaired both Windows and Linux Install.  It also comes Standard with some distro's.

To install to LiveSession

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

pcp out!

I learned that Mate 16.04 has a fancy-pants looking grub menu after I installed it today.

Along with that, while setting up Firefox in the Mate partition, I learned that I should have written down all the about:config tweaks I made the last time I had to set up Firefox...  

@ 66Batmobile.....try FEBE  .....it is a Firefox add on, used for backing up everything including the profile

@Condobloke

Just what the doctor ordered! Much obliged

@ 66Batmobile.....try FEBE  .....it is a Firefox add on, used for backing up everything including the profile

Thanks for this one!

While I have a Mozilla Account to restore my bookmarks/some other settings when syncing other computers, there's a few minor things that doesn't. Hopefully this will do the trick!

What I learned today.........be sure not to store spare HDD's in an area where these may fall. Have a 250GiB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 (yes 10 years old), was still a nice backup drive to use in docking station. When I was getting something else underneath it today, the drive dropped & the PCB board cracked.......now dead drive, and joining a newer 500GiB Barracuda 7200.11 (very infamous drive in the late part of last decade) as a paperweight.

When it comes to that PCB board, doesn't matter if it's 10 years old or dropped a day after purchase, it's dead. Though if new & no data was written to it, then one has a legit case for a RMA. 

Fortunately, DBAN had been recently ran on the drive & lost no data, though would rather this had happened to a much smaller drive, or better yet, none at all. Even an 80GiB HDD will give room for two or more drive images, depending on compression & amount of data stored. Great for running Timeshift & Aptik backups also.

As a result of this, am actively looking into ordering one lot each (10) of the 3.5" & 2.5" plastic air filled cushioned bags that's used to protect bare or 'OEM' drives after purchase as soon as the eBayer gets back with me (priced at 75 cents per bag or $7.50 per lot), to prevent this from happening again, am trying to negotiate a lower price ($6.50 per lot). When one has many drives laying around, it's impossible & impractical to purchase quality 3.5" enclosures for all, as a 1TiB retail packaged backup drive will cost only a few more dollars. And I have lots of small (sub 320GiB) HDD's laying around that shows the SMART data as fine, some like this one, not protected as should be, yet now these are in safer places. Some are in Tupperware containers, good option, as long as the drives are allowed to fully cool first & not stacked to prevent magnetic damage from transfer. With these, there's lots more space in between & lowered chance of magnetic transfer, as two drives were shipped to me in the same box in this manner, both are still performing quite well today. 

This will be a better option for the 15 or so (combined) 2.5" & 3.5" drives I have on hand that's not in an enclosure & place in a large storage bin. If necessary for the deal, will purchase two lots of the 3.5" HDD shipping protection bags. Must be good, still am using both of the last I received. 

So we usually do learn something every day, whether or not we may recall it.

Cat

I learned that in Ubuntu 16.04 you can finally place menus in the application titlebar AND have them always be displayed. In Ubuntu 14.04 you could place them in the titlebar, but they would only appear when hovering over them with the mouse.

I learned that this tutorial is great. It allows you to install Ubuntu in efi mode.

http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2015/11/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-alongside.html