If you are looking at file listings (ls) in Terminal on your Linux system, you may have seen duplicate files that end with a tilde (~). Such as having two files, notes.txt and notes.txt~, in the same directory.
I have found these to be quite annoying and have to manually remove them before I package up the files. I also didn’t know exactly where they came from until today.
Using the Linux terminal is a fantastic thing. It gives you access to hundreds of great commands and programs, can make navigating through complex directories quick and easy, and offers tools like tab auto-complete that make doing all this a breeze. However, there is a caveat for some people: Linux is case-sensitive. Personally, I love how Linux is case-sensitive, but I know that not everyone will agree with me.
There are ways to create case-insensitive partitions, but doing this has its own technical and functional limitations. If anyone is interested, drop me a line, and I’ll work on a post on this topic.
For those that don’t like how everything in Terminal is case-sensitive, there is a solution that will relieve some of the pain. You can configure your system to make tab auto-complete case-insensitive even on a case-sensitive file system.
I recently ran into an issue where a mounted SSHFS filesystem refused to unmount.
I tried to unmount it from inside Nautilus by right-clicking the mount and selecting Unmount, but this failed with an error message. The error told me that it couldn’t unmount the device and gave a reason of “mount disagrees with the fstab”.
I then edited the fstab (sudo vi /etc/fstab) and commented out the entry for the device. I tried to unmount in Nautilus again, but this time it told me that I couldn’t unmount the device because I wasn’t root and the device was not listed in fstab. I then uncommented the previously commented line and saved the file again.
For years, I’ve received emails that have capital ‘J’s thrown in at the end of seemingly random sentences. It’s never been a big deal, but it has always baffled me.
For example, I just received an email that contained the following bit:
Ha, I didn’t mean to reply to everyone! I am glad I didn’t say anything bad. J Thank you for…
Every so often, I see some search result that led to my site that piques my interest. I think I’ll post about these when I see them and add them to my new category: Interesting Search. Every so often, I’ll select one of these search queries and try my best to provide the content that I believe that person was looking for.
To kick off Interesting Search, we have the search query “cleaning soda off a motherboard”. I have to say that I find this search both funny and very concerning at the same time. In all seriousness, having soda on your motherboard is a very bad situation. While I’ll focus on soda and motherboards, the information I provide here is valuable for anyone who has spilled any type of liquid or powdered chemical on an electronic device.
So what dangers does soda pose to electronics?
A visitor to the site mentioned that he has the same laptop as I have yet is running Linux Mint rather than Ubuntu. He said that all the help that I was offering for getting Ubuntu to run well on the Studio 17 worked for him in Linux Mint except the headphone fix didn’t work. So, I dug in to see if I could find a solution.
I installed Linux Mint on my Dell Studio 1735 two nights ago and got the headphone jacks working successfully. Here’s step-by-step what I did:
I just learned that my Contact form wasn’t working. I’m very sorry for this problem. If you have tried to send me a message via Contact, please send it to me again as the form was not sending out messages before.
Last night I needed to modify one of my partitions from inside Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10). I quickly realized that the familiar Partition Editor was nowhere to be found. I was quite stumped and looked through all the menus and didn’t find it. There is a simple reason for why I didn’t find it, it’s no longer installed by default on newer Ubuntu releases.
Fortunately, adding the Partition Editor, its true name is GParted, is extremely easy with package management.
Now that GParted is installed, you can access it via System > Administration > Partition Editor.
Happy partitioning.
Here’s a quick tip on storing a number of files into a single archive file quickly and easily in Ubuntu. The instructions will also work for those who use other distros as long as they are using Gnome and Nautilus.
Depending on the size of the files that you’ve selected, you’ll soon have a new zip file sitting in the folder where the source files are located.
I often enjoy simple games more than complex games. Grid is the latest time killer that I’ve found and became quickly addicted to.
Grid is a spin off of the old style circuit games where you have to get all the pieces connected in just the right order to form a circuit. The exception is that Grid requires you to connect every connector to some other connector. Each “grid” only has one solution, so you have to get it just right in order to move on to the next level.