Sorry for the late response; I don’t check the comments on my blog very often.

You said that you had been using Ubuntu on your laptop for over a year and the problem has had to do with your wireless adapter. In my own personal experience I’ve found that applying updates clears issues like this up about half of the time, but of course the question is how do you access these updates.

You have a few options. Considering that this OS has not been updated in over a year (?) I would suggest you consider backing up your entire Home folder and reinstalling from a copy of the latest version, or at the very least run the Live CD to see if it has out of the box support for your wireless adapter before deciding to backup and reinstall.

The next option is to use the Ethernet port on your laptop to directly connect your laptop to the router. Ethernet ports are often better supported out of the box and should allow you the ability to check for and download updates. With the number of distribution updates that may span between your current version and the latest distribution version of the OS, the time it takes to download and install all these updates could span over half a day of your free time. So word of caution.

The last option is the same as the second, or an alternative to the second if it’s not an option, and that is to purchase an USB wireless adapter that is known to work well with Ubuntu. Your options will depend on where you’re shopping and what they have to offer. I would advise shopping locally so if the adapter you get doesn’t work you can return it quickly and exchange for another. Unfortunately all adapters are not alike so compatibility is a coin toss (but the odds are in your favor).

Have you tried visiting http://www.ubuntuforums.org? It’s free, there’s hundreds of thousands of users there and its an excellent place to go for free help online.

Best of luck to you!

Anyone have a solution?

Thanks for the reply. I know very little about linux, so I didn’t realize that Ubuntu has been able to “see” NTFS formatted drives for 4 years now! Last night I did as you suggested and used an NTFS formatted external drive for backing up data on the Mac HD, as well as BootCamp partition I used for Windows XP. All worked great. The one intersting thing I found was that the data moved from the Mac OSX partition to the eternal drive much more slowly than from the BootCamp partition. Not sure why that was the case. Regardless, I’m thrilled everthing’s back to normal again with all data salvaged – thanks to you!

John W

You are correct that FAT32 is a better choice if you’re looking to pass files between MacOS and other operating systems, but the guide was written solely for the purpose of backing up under the Ubuntu Live CD environment as well as putting the data back in place after the OS is reinstalled. The main reason I chose NTFS over FAT has to do with FAT32′s max file size limitation of 4GB (FAT16 is 2GB). NTFS also supports Unicode characters in the file name.

I have a question regarding your suggestion to have the external HD formatted in NTFS. Should I expect problems if the external drive is formatted in FAT? I thought FAT was the safe format to use when looking to have data accessible from multiple OS types.

THANKS AGAIN!!

Your comment has prompted me to write a little addendum to my original post here that will describe mounting partitions manually within a terminal window. It may be that there’s some aspect about the partition that has become corrupt and is causing Ubuntu to ignore it’s presence.

Thanks!

For me, NOT password-protecting my wi-fi keys is a security feature. This could help me track my laptop in the event it’s stolen, using Prey:
http://preyproject.com/

By the way, the technique works with no modifications on Xubuntu 10.04 (Ubuntu 10.04 with an XFCE desktop instead of Gnome).

Tony

I hope it could help. Thanks a lot for your tip.

Thanks

Thanks for visiting my blog.

One of the things you should do after installing Ubuntu is connect it to the Internet and download all the latest updates for the OS. I know that you said you only have a wireless adapter on the system now so what you should do is find some way to physically connect it to the router using an Ethernet cable, just for the time being. Sometimes wireless adapters will suddenly work after installing all of the latest updates. If not, the next thing you can check after upgrading and restarting your system is the Hardware Drivers manager. If you are using 10.10 or older, you can find this in the System>Administration menu. If you are using 11.04 or newer, just click the top left menu button and begin typing “hardware” into the search box at the top and you should see a shortcut appear. Inside this utility you may find that there are proprietary drivers available for your wireless adapter that can be “Enabled”. Once you enable a driver, Ubuntu will download and install it for you.

If none of the above works you can also try using a program called ndiswrapper. This utility will allow you to use Windows-based drivers to use the wireless adapter. You can learn more about ndiswrapper here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper

That’s great news! I haven’t used fprint for a long time though because I never got into the habit of using it after having to put up with a few little glitches here and there. Perhaps things have improved in the last few years.

Once I ran fprint as sudo, I was able to enroll my prints. Thanks!

P.S. I know the instructions above were for previous versions of Ubuntu.

Go to:
Accessories/Password and encryption

2 folders in there
1 login
1 default.

You need to change the default folder following dave’s instructions.

your instructions worked fine for me, thanks! I had to run fprint_demo as root in order to enrol.

1 – Go to Applications > Passwords and encryption keys
2 – You should see a list of keyrings. If you already have a default keyring set up then your wireless password will be stored in it. Delete the wireless password by expanding the keyring so it shows all your stored passwords and right clicking on the wireless password and selecting delete. You might have to unlock the keyring first if it is already locked by right clicking on it and selecting unlock.
3 – Create new keyring by going to file > new… > password keyring. Give it a name (I named mine wireless). When prompted for a password don’t enter one and select ok to enter a blank password. You will see a warning against using a blank password, just click on “use unsafe storage”
4 – Right click on your new keyring and select “set as default”
5 – Now attempt to connect to your wireless. You will be asked for your password since you deleted it from your default keyring. The password should now be saved under your new unprotected keyring (the one I named wireless) instead of the original password protected “default” keyring.
6 – Go back to your keyrings and set your original password protected “default” keyring back to default by right clicking on it and selecting “set as default”. Now passwords will again be saved under your default keyring, but your wireless password will remain in your new unprotected keyring meaning you will automatically connect to your wireless network on login without having to enter a password.

Hopefully this was clear enough.

Thank you again for pointing out this simple–yet evading–solution.

1000 thanks for this tutorial. I works great on a Fujitsu Lifebook E8210, with a AES2501 sensor. Thanks a lot!

Avant Window Manager

Playonlinux

Netbeans 9.1

Remove the bottom panel

Shift the trashcan, workspace switcher, add “kill program” to the top panel

Make avant autostart.

Make it so my windows and other partitions auto mount during install of ubuntu by placing a mount point.

Sorry for your troubles.

This is an old post, and nobody I know of still uses wifi-radar to establish a connection. The built in “nm-applet” utility that auto-runs on the latest version of Ubuntu works fine for most.

If you are trying to connect wirelessly, several things might be stopping you but the biggest ones are:

1. Proprietary drivers for your wireless adapter need to be enabled/installed.

2. Your laptop (if it is a laptop) has a on/off button or switch for your wireless antenne that needs to be ticked in order for Wireless connectivity to be made available.

3. Related to the second item, your computers BIOS may have a feature in it that defaults the wireless adapter to be off when you turn the computer on, requiring the Operating System to take control of turning the device on and off. You want it to Always Be On.

To check and see if you have drivers available for your wireless adapter, you should take the computer to a hard-line (Ethernet) connection for the Internet and run System>Administration>Update Manager. Then download all available updates. Then visit System>Administration>Additional Drivers (in versions older than 10.10 it’s called System>Administration>Hardware Driver Manager).

Also, simply applying system updates alone may do the trick. If all else fails, please email me directly.

Reading package lists…Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information…Done
E:Unable to locate package wifi-radar

What am I suppose to do from here? I am soo lost.

Hope you can help.

Verity Johnson

If you have SSH access, then you can get a terminal interface up immediately from another Ubuntu machine by opening a terminal and simply typing this command:

ssh username@hostname

Replace “username” with the user name on the other machine, and the “hostname” with either a dynamic hostname address or the actual IP address.

I don’t use putty often; in fact I think I’ve only used to to just do SFTP file transfers on rare occasion… and I have used it to act as a proxy server, but all the settings were in the GUI; I didn’t need to type in a special command to do anything. Just sort of setup a profile and saved it for re-use later. Perhaps there is an “SSH” executable that you can use in the DOS/Windows terminal that will work the same way it does in Linux.

All I can say is that it’s easy to see the acceleration of complexity and novelty building up exponentially with no sign of it ever slowing. Its hard to imagine what the distant future of mankind will be like in even 50 years let alone 10,000. Our views about the past are also foggy because of the magnitude of time behind us as an established species (billions of years we haven’t witnessed). Just as the Earth as served as a foundation for all the different forms of biological life we know of (including ourselves), so too will we (the human species) serve as a foundation for a new technologically, genetically and psychically profound species that we are too primitive and/or naive to comprehend and acknowledge right now.

The word singularity is, I think, a reference to a theoretical event in the future (and perhaps in the past) that symbolizes the point where technology will enable us to control time and space in the way we might imagine a metaphorical god-person to be capable of doing. If that ever happened (and the odds of it actually happening are against us) the universe, reality, time and space would be like a lump of clay on the wheel to us. Our only limitation would be our collective imagination. When we reach the point where time is no longer a limitation against our imagination and we are able to concretize anything into the physical world with the literal blink of an eye or snap of the finger, we will have reached the singularity. When we no longer identify ourselves as separate entities but instead as parts of the same life force/energy, we will have reached the singularity.

To me, thinking (or dreaming) about the future like this is almost like asking a blind person to describe the floor plan for a building they’ve not yet stepped foot inside of and his (our) resultant conjecture about what might be inside could be regarded as mythology. I say that because when it comes to attempting to describe the far distant future and what it could be like, we end up being reduced to using metaphors to describe the indescribable and incomprehensible. It might as well be a dream or fairy tale, like any other great myth or folklore, and so I don’t take any of this stuff too seriously.

What are the applications that ask to setup default key ring password

Thanks,
Satyadeep

What caused the Great Singularity, and what caused it to explode?

1) Go to Applications -> Passwords and Encryption keys
2) The should be entries there listing an array of keyring password.
3) Right click on them and select change password
4) Enter the old password if you have one then leave the new passwords as blank. (A warning message should appear)

That’s it! The dialog that keeps on stalking my login is good as dead.

To all of my fellow Netbook Remix installers who had the same issue as I, where it didn’t remember the WiFi password when you start up your computer, the solution (for me) is as following:

Right click the WiFi icon in the menu bar
Click “Edit connections”
Go to wireless tab
Edit your network
Go to wireless safety tab
Write in your password and save

When I did this, I had to type in the super admin password, created when installing Ubuntu, but after that, it works every time!

Your statements about Dell’s infected motherboards, again, try to place blame on the Linux without citing explicit sources and ignore the fact that Dell used infected Windows software during hardware testing. If you take a look at these links:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/21/dell_server_warning/

http://www.channelinsider.com/c/a/Dell/Dell-Replaces-Server-Parts-Infected-with-Virus-709631/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/dell-accidentally-sent-out-malware-riddled-motherboards/

You’ll find that:

1. The virus is old; as old as 2003. This means any person running even outdated anti-virus software on a Windows system will be protected.

2. The virus was located in Flash memory of the motherboard and it got there as a result of Dell’s use of hardware diagnostic software on a system that had become infected with the virus in question. If Linux had any part to play in this its job would have to have been to function as a middle-man between the infected Windows-based benchmark machine and a new motherboard. This is very much similar to connecting a Windows machine to a motherboard over a network switch or some other dumb device whose sole purpose is to pass traffic/data between two devices. If you got a virus from another computer on a network, would you blame the Ethernet cable and the network you’re attached to, the other computer that got your computer infected, or your own computer for not having proper protection in the first place? Linux has protection in place for itself; it has no obligation to go out of its way to protect Windows machines unless an administrator sets it up to do just that. Besides this scenario seems a little far fetched; to use two computers IN SERIES to run benchmarks on hardware, what would be the point? And again, why blame the messenger/middle-man who’s just passing traffic?

3. They clearly state in the third link that it does not pose any threat to non-Windows systems, meaning it cannot execute itself on a Linux system (because it wasn’t compiled for Linux) and use it as a platform to attempt to infect non-Linux systems. So you cannot say that a Linux system actually had this virus running on it or that it used a Linux system as a platform to stage another attack against a Windows based machine.

I patiently await any rebuttal you have and ask that you source your claims.

In one case, Dell had an issue with infected motherboards shipping. Guess how the software got onto the mother boards? Hint: they weren’t using Windows interfaces to provision their system-boards.

So while Linux isn’t as susceptible to viruses as Windows is (Again, Linux can still get sick), there is always the issue of Linux passing a viruses along to other machines.

CJ

Just came across this by Mark Twain, and it made me go in search of “bubba stuff”. Wish I’d “discovered” this oddly gentle Twain-ism in time to put somewhere in Bob’s book.

“Warm summer sun, shine kindly here.
Warm southern wind, blow softly here.
Green sod above, lie light, lie light.
Good night, dear Heart, Good night, good night.”
~Mark Twain~

Hope you all are well.
Hugs to all
Nan

Thanks!

Your solution worked for me anyway!

Thanks!

The best thing …Very Helpful

My suggestion is windows is very limited

Ubunto is very Rich media Experience

thanks

Even if you do contents control in Windows, the system cannot live without an anti-virus. I think he is not conscious that he’s mixing up virus with spyware, scams and malware. That is what Windows is able to offer at its best, no matter what kind of secure practises you are accustomed to. In the other hand, many Linux based systems *can be made very fool proof.

The only way for isolating a Windows machine is not using it at all (No Internet/Intranet, no data exchange with friends, nor executing/opening anything).

In a final comment, I don’t use Ubuntu because I think it is going the wrong way in the “fool-proof” race. Over-complicating simple things is the worst you can do in any environment (Have you checked out most default system settings carefully?)

I do agree with you; many computer users out there fall victim to little traps and schemes and so on. I didn’t mention that in the post here because it was a quick copy and paste from something I wrote in a forum thread that already had others saying the exact same thing and I didn’t want to sound redundant.

That being said, I would wager that the novice user likely doesn’t feel up to the task of messing around with software outside the official repos. Those that do probably have an understanding that says if you’re going to download a piece of software or some handy-dandy script from an untrusted source on the Internet then they’re kind of inviting trouble. There is rarely if any need for a new user to wander beyond the official repositories for their software needs, and if there ever were a need I can only hope they would venture to use something outside the boundaries based on the knowledgeable recommendations of a friendly expert. I mean, a simple rule of thumb any user should use is that if you’ve never heard of the software and you can’t confirm through others whether or not it’s worth a shit, then you should leave it alone. There is no way to completely safeguard any computer system from user negligence.

I really like your header image, but the .htm file extension is for Windows servers that (for historical reasons, aka DOS) were limited to a three-letter extension. Apache and other FLOSS apps aren’t limited with this, so they use .html file extensions.

God Bless

In short: What you say is mostly true but your conclusion that users don’t need an antivirus is completely wrong.

A distribution is fairly secure because, as you say, it has crowdsourcing to detect things like this. What you’re forgetting that behind every Linux desktop (just as with Windows) is a user… And users are idiots. As users, we’ve all done something stupid at some point.

Security is a skill. Without an active antivirus you can stay safe (even in Windows) by just acknowledging the providence of the things you install and run.

Some people might stick to what you can install from the repos but plenty of people install from PPAs, download little scripts like winetricks, add extensions to their browser… Crowd-sourcing does very little to protect these users.

The standard Linux user relationship with the rest of the system (that is: you run as your user 99% of the time) does help but if you’re in the position where you have a nasty file, it won’t need root permissions to completely ruin your day.

What if you downloaded and ran a script that bottled up your home contents, encrypted them and deleted the originals for a ransom. It wouldn’t need root permissions. This has been done on Windows.

Or a trojan. It only needs to run as the user to have full access to the user’s session and files and do things like SubSeven (BO, BO2K, etc) did for Windows.

Things can even propagate from the user to other computers over network shares, infect the users files…

My point is Linux doesn’t do that much to protect you from yourself. Sure you can’t wipe the whole system without root but installing Linux takes 30 minutes at a push. Years of photos/music/work/documents can’t be replaced as easy.

To stay safe, you either need to recognise the risks of untrusted sources, PPAs, random binary downloads (and put some research in) or, just as within Windows, have something there looking out for you.

You also seem to be under the misapprehension that most Windows users get infected through indirect means (ie through service worms)… Putting aside the fact Linux servers get worms through exploits this exact way, a huge number of infections are contracted through user idiocy: downloading what they think is a screensaver or a video Britney Spears blowing KFed.

If these idiots ever migrate, what do you suppose they’re going to do if they’re offered a screensaver as a .deb package? Yeah download, run, put their password in and hey! It has root access to their system. It could easily be a +x binary inside a zip with the instructions to run it.

The reason we’re not swamped in this crap is there isn’t the market to write it. As soon as it becomes viable our world gets a whole lot less secure.

Thank you!!!

Thats it, after all the bollocks on all the forums and this is all I wanted as did so many others.
You Sir are a genius

many thanks for the post.

+1 for john’s post:
“In 9.1 you can merely edit the connection setting to allow everyone access to the network. Then when Ubuntu starts you are not asked for your password”

i could see wanting to not use the password manager, but if the only problem is the network connection, then the connection setting would seem to be easier/safer solution. works great for acer aspire netbook with ubuntu 9.1.

Thanks,
–V

I have tried your cure but it does not seem to work. Are things different with Ubuntu 9.10 netbook remix?

What is happening is that after automatic logon I am asked for the Password or Encryption Keys’ for my wireless network. This is despite the fact that under ‘Keyrings’ I have the two folders ‘Default’ – containing the one word ‘Default’ – and ‘Default.keyring’ containing my network password/encryption key. I often have to renter this before my network is connected, making me suspect that the folder ‘default.keyring’ is not being read. Perhaps the ‘default’ folder should be blank?

This is driving me mad and I hope you can help!

[Portion removed by by David Steinlage]

so is it still encrypted?

David Steinlage: NO, as stated in the post, the keys will not be encrypted. They might LOOK encrpyted, but that’s actually the “real” key your computer transmits to your wireless router when it authenticates itself. For example, when you create a WEP key, you usually start off with a passphrase but it’s converted into a hexidecimal string, so it may not look like plain text in it’s raw format, but should still be treated as such. Good thing I edited your comment before posting it or I would have given your wireless rouuter’s password away on the Internet.

Cleans up all types of protection, eliminates ODP, allows you to shrink or to split DVDs.

However, it is a Windows program.

Your call.

Bad ass cool, loved it, can’t wait for more. Like really!!!!

David

a) You can fix your house, your car, your computer, your television, your clock, your chair and a guitar (in other words, everything you own)
b) You wouldn’t get angry when a person who you paid to fix it doesn’t fix it

Quit being such a prick. Not everybody is perfect like you.

Tractor Therapy is time well spent.

Keep up the tunes bro,

Z

does anyone know a fix for this?

Anyone know of a possible work-around?

Just to clarify, the — in front of the word “configure” in the above command should be two individual hyphens. WordPress presents it here differently.

sudo dpkg –configure -a

Recently, I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on a different computer and tried to use the same 7-character password. To my surprise, Ubuntu stopped me from using such a short password, and insisted I use a longer one!

I thought nothing of it, until I tried upgrading Ubuntu on this computer to version 9.04. After the upgrade (which proceeded without a hitch), I could no longer log into my account. I then realized that Ubuntu wasn’t accepting my previously generated 7-character password! I used some information found on-line to remove my old password, and replace it with a longer one. Now, I could log in to Ubuntu on this machine, but was prompted for the keyring password (which happened to match my “old”, shorter login password).

Using the information in this how-to, I was able to remove the login.keyring file. After rebooting, I was asked to supply the WPA pass phrase (just as your article stated), but after doing so, the keyring manager DID NOT APPEAR!!

I checked my hidden folder, and found that a new login.keyring file had been created. However, the next time I rebooted, my wireless network connected automatically, AND I WAS NOT PROMPTED FOR A KEYRING PASSWORD!!!

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the best of both worlds. My passwords are still encrypted, but (by default?) the keyring password seems to have been set to match my login password.

Again, many thanks for your help.

There is no such thing as a DVD that can hold 65GB. Most DVDs are single-sided dual layered and only hold 8.54GB of data. The max capacity of a Dual-sided + Dual-layered DVD is 17.08GB. Even a Dual-layered Blueray disc can only hold no more than 50GB. The deceased HD-DVD format would only hold 30GB max. My only guess is that you obtained this disc from someone who is in possession of a flux capacitor, a DeLorean and 1.21 jigawatts of electricity and took the wrong disc back to the rental place by mistake. Call the place you got this disc from and notify them of the perilous situation we’re all facing, as the very fabric of space time is at risk of being irreversibly damaged!!!!

@Mark: You might search Ubuntu Brainstorm to see if anyone has suggested this yet, and if not, throw a well written idea in that you think would get a lot of votes. I wish it were easier than this, too… but it’s just the way things go when it comes to “wishlist” fixes.

This information should be shown at create keyring time. “Note: Creating a blank password keyring will blah blah”

The subtitles (although I admit I’ve not tested this) SHOULD be preserved if you use the copy DVD method described in the very end of the at the link below (that is, instead of ripping a DVD title to an AVI file, rip the entire DVD to an ISO file that can fit on a blank DVD).

http://davestechsupport.com/blog/2009/02/04/how-to-backup-a-dvd-with-ubuntu-linux/

Just to cross reference, this post explains the problem in great detail.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/ubunti_wi_fi_password_problems?page=1