Forgotten Sudo (su) And User Password For App Install Etc...

I compose on a Dell laptop model #Latitude D505. I have Xubuntu 12.04 (it won't upgrade) on it. Here are the Dell's specs:

Quote:
Dell Inspiron 8600 (Pentium M 710 1.4GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB HDD)
And it has 20 GB free space. I guess on paper it should run the Xubuntu easily but it is deadly slow. Most of the things I do in the terminal don't complete (I tried to install Dropbox--no luck.). Sometimes I can't even open the Ubuntu Software Center, let alone install stuff from there.

I have LibreOffice 4.2 something on there and that is all I need. Like I was saying Dropbox would be nice though.

So I stared checking out lighter distros. (I was told Xubuntu was one of the lightest--btw I have two desktops with Xubuntu on them as well--distros out there but was shocked when I started investigating.) (see screenshot)

So as long as I can install a relatively recent version of LibreOffice (and like I said Dropbox would be nice) I will be happy.

To reiterate: I'm just using the laptop as a word processor. Yes, I would have to be online (and can be) to use Dropbox but Dropbox is not essential.

Btw. The libreoffice on there now works well (once it gets going) as a word proccesor, but with all those distros that are so much smaller I was thinking that I could even improve on the word processor's speed.

Thanks.

Hello, I'm sort of a novice Linux user and was running into an issue with user migration. I'm trying to migrate users and groups from a RHEL 5.11 install to a CentOS 6.6 install, both systems are 64 bit. Initially I tried to do an rsync of the passwd, shadow, group and gshadow files with no luck. When trying to login with an existing account on the new server I get access denied. I tried to change the password on the new server, but even then it doesn't seem to change the password and I still get access denied. I then tried to tar up the four above files and then extracted them on the new server, but the same issue existed. I also created a new account on the old server, copied all the necessary files over to the new server and still have the same issues. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong or what I can try next? This is getting frustrating!

Thanks!

Hi there. I'm new to Linux. My son installed it. First, I was pleased. Then I was angry: we have three printers in the house. It was incompatible with them all (when I connected the printer, it did not automatically install it. Now I'm frustrated. I have been to sites to find out what version of Linux I have. I am not a techie. I worked out how to get into the black terminal screen. I worked out how to write the command uname -a and got the answer Ubuntu 109. I don't know what this means but I then worked out how to put a command in $ sudo apt-get install cnijfilter-ip4500series to install the printer. It asked me for my password. I entered the password I use to open the user interface when I turn on the laptop. No dice. I need to distribute posters this pm. I will have to spend more money, going into town to get them from there. Not great. Any help appreciated. Advice, guidance, kind words of encouragement....

hello everyone.,
i am using linux Centos 6 machine, i have downloaded "back in time" through command line.
but i dont know how to install "back in time" from the command line.
i found some commands but that for UBUNTU and not running on Centos 6, giving error.
so , without GUI. can be possible to install and use it?????

thanks in advance..

Hi

I'm a telecom/IT contractor and my work laptop died so instead of buying a new one, I decided to give my spare laptop a try. It's a cheap Lenovo G585 with only 2Gb ram and a AMD E1. Needless to say this is a real slow laptop. W8 was preinstalled and barely runs. Even for simple work related tasks its too slow.

Instead of wasting money on it, I am contemplating the idea of installing a Linux distro. I manage via ssh a few linux servers for my customers (centos, red hat, ubuntu server) but actually never used it as my main OS.

I just want something lighter than W8 so the laptop will be faster. Which distro should I get? I was thinking about LXLE but there's too much distros I can't choose.

Speed is the priority in this case. I also like a good looking UI.

Also, how's Microsoft Remote desktop from a Linux client? Is it fast and well optimized?

Thanks!

how many distros can i install on one machine and are there any technical difficulties that appear when there are more than one disto on the machine. does it slow the machine down?

Hello there! I'm completely new to linux; I've used ubuntu and other distributions but just at user level.
The problem is, I've got a Sony laptop with the inside H2O (3.9) BIOS, don't have the complete specs right now, but i can check them when i'm back at home. It has a NVIDIA 640M LE, 8gb ram, an Intel Core I7 processor, and a 750gb HD.
The screen, although working well enough, is broken, some plastic parts are broken also and it's not in good condition overall. It worked well in every aspect aside from those.
As i have a desktop, computer to work already, I don't need the laptop for working anymore, so I thought it could be a good idea to use it as an entertainment center in the living room, you know, for watching movies, playing some old-school games in local coop with and without emulators and so on.

I thought the still in beta SteamOS (Think it's a Debian-based distro) could be a nice option, so I've installed it. The installation process ran without issues till the first reboot; after that i only get "operating system not found" error and nothing else.
I unplugged the HD and made a complete installation from scrap with every reboot needed in my desktop computer and everything worked out fine: installing games, browsing the web, playing music, etc.
But, after plugging again the HD with the OS installed in the laptop I still get the same error; operating system not found.

Any ideas of how to solve it? Thank you in advance, and sorry about my english

Hi there!

After my NVIDIA card died I decided it was time to buy an AMD card again (R9 270X), but I didn't think AMD drivers were such a pain in Linux as people said. Of course, in some distros anyway. On Arch, for example, there's no official release because Arch's developers would have to hold Xorg in order to make a closed-source driver available, because AMD's pace isn't in pair with Linux. So in order to install AMD's drivers on Arch I must rely on some guy's unnoficial repositories, but that isn't the whole problem. Even though I'm cool with adding repos and downgrading Xorg, I'm not cool with it not working for a lot of apps, so that's where I decided to try a few distros. Manjaro is a no-go because it installs Flash as default. openSUSE although is a very good distro, is a complete mess when it comes to repositories, specially multimedia ones. Ubuntu/Mint are also a no-go, Ubuntu because after 12.04 they have a spyware by default, and Mint because it contains non-free stuff by default.

So here I come! I ran Debian in the past for a long time (aside from a breaf period last year) and it was lovely, I could easily set up a custom encrypted install, but now I don't remember how to, and it's killing me. I don't like how the installer doesn't show the partitions size as they actually are, and I don't like how the automated encrypted LVM setup doesn't let me chose the encryption algorithm or the timeframe between each passphrase attempt. That's why I must create my install, and here's what I used to do on Arch (the part that really matters), converted to what I use on Debian:

Code:

# modprobe dm-mod

(create one 1GB partition for /boot, unencrypted ; create another big 930 GB formatted as "8e" - LVM - on dev/sda2)
Code:

# fdisk /dev/sda

(chose my ciphers and iter time)
Code:

# cryptsetup -c twofish-xts-plain64 -y-s 512 --iter-time 5000 luksFormat /dev/sda2

(open the luks container on "sda2_crypt")
Code:

# cryptsetup open --type luks /dev/sda2 sda2_crypt

(create physical volume on sda2_crypt)
Code:

# pvcreate /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt

(create volume group "debian" on sda2_crypt)
Code:

# vgcreate debian /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt

(create volumes)
Code:

# lvcreate -L 8G system -n root
# lvcreate -L 60G system -n swap
# lvcreate -l 100%FREE system -n home

After this is done, I go to the "partition disks" page where I select each partition/volume to it's correct destination. I then procceed to installing the base system, configuring apt, and all that. Now, before I install Grub I used to execute the following commands on shell:

Code:

 # nano /etc/crypttab

I used to put something there, but I don't remember what exactly. It's been a long time since I used Debian for long! But here's what I put the

Code:

sda2_crypt /dev/mapper/sda2_crypt none luks

Then I procceeded to instal syslinux (I REALLY don't like GRUB)

Code:

# chroot /target
# apt-get install syslinux

But I get the following error:

Quote:
E: cannot write log (Is /dev/pts mounted?) - posix_openpt (2: No such file or directory).
I'm assuming this is just a non-critical error. But this is not the problem, the problem is when I try to install syslinux:

Code:

# syslinux-install_update -i -a -m

The output:

Quote:
/bin/sh: 2: syslinux-install_update: not found
Then I type "syslinux --help":

Code:

# syslinux -h

Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
I tried literaly every possible combination that would make sense in Arch and yet I can't install it. The Debian documentation on syslinux doesn't help at all, and the Arch's Wiki on Syslinux... well, tells how to make it work on Arch It used to work the same way on Debian, but now it doesn't.

Here's a little list of the errors I get:

Code:

# syslinux -i -U

Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
Code:

#syslinux --install --update

Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
Code:

# syslinux --install --update -i -a -m

Quote:
Usage: syslinux [options] device
--offset -t Offset of the file system on the device
--directory -d Directory for the installation target
--install -i Install over the corrent bootsector
--update -U Update a previous installation
--zip -z Force zipdrive geometry (-H 64 -S 32)
--sectors=# -S Force the number of sectors per track
--heads=# -H Force number of heads
--stupid -s Slow, safe and stupid mode
--raid -r Fall back to the next device on boot failure
--once=... Execute a command once upon boot
--clear-once -O Clear the boot-once command
--reset-adv Reset auxilliary data
--menu-save= -M Set the label to select as default on next boot
--force -f Ignore precautions
Oh, and also users are still not able to press TAB to get the full command without typing it? And we can't even press the up arrow key that we get "^[[A"? :P Whaat?

What am I doing wrong?

I'm really not with the time to mess with these kinds of things, so either I figure this out REAL SOON or I'll be forced to get back to Windows

Hello Everyone,

I have a question about how to give sudo privileges to a user that log in via public key without password.

I created a normal user and I added this user to the "visudo" folder with ALL privileges.

when the user is logged in the system via public key and the user wants to become a root, a password is requested but i don't want to type the password.

Also to add the public key to the root it is not possible because i track the user log in in the system and if they log via root i cannot do that.

Thank you in advance.

okay, forgot the passphrase for the encryption, now i cant get pass the unbunto start screen. Started this project for my little girls computer and had to leave town for job. now cant remember the passphrase, and cant get the recovery to work. Do i have to install new, and if so, how?? disk is locked and i need to get this up and running to learn how to use it. I have hit the shift key, started it in grub, advance options for unbunto, selected Unbunto, with Linux 3.13.0-45-generic (recovery mode), get to flashing commands and it stops...wait a about 20 seconds..[76.096156] random: nonblocking pool is initialized, and nothing more. screen dosnt change, and the recovery screen i seen on vids dosnt appear. any help would be helpful