Category Archives: Linux

When Linux slows down

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

while back I had a problem with my Linux Mint.

Programmes took an age to shut down, sometimes taking several minutes. It wasn’t confined to one programme. Any programme seemed to be affected. Also I would occasionally get a screen full of code on shut down [or boot, I can’t remember!] that flew past too quickly to read.

Then I started getting messages that my disk was full. This was worrying as I have a 1Tb HDD with windows/Linux dual boot. The Linux root partition was 50Gb and the home partition was 500Gb, both being big enough to avoid problems. Or so I thought. It was the root partition that was nearly full.

A quick check with Disk Usage Analyzer showed that the problem was log files. Tons of ’em. I deleted them [carefully].

Next I took a photo of the scrolling text. That at least allowed me to read some of it.

I selected a likely looking piece from one of the lines – “PCIe bus error severity=corrected” – and did a search on the web. I quickly found a solution.

Edit the file “/etc/default/grub” as Root user [making a backup of it first, of course].

Change the line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash”

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash pci=noaer”

Save it and run update-grub.

Everything now loads and shuts down smoothly and quickly.

Updating Linux Mint 21.1 Beta

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I have been using Linux Mint 21.1 Beta since it was released.

Everything ran very smoothly and I certainly had no problems or complaints.

However, the production release of 21.1 came out today. According the the Mint blog, all I had to do was run the Update Manager. That sounded easy enough? But the Update Manager failed to work. It repeatedly hung up on me even after a reboot.

I tried an update to the manager via the terminal. That didn’t work. I tried a few other suggestions that I discovered on the Web. Still no go. I decided the simplest solution was to reinstall 21.1 from the new ISO. I downloaded it and stuck it on a USB key.

Before booting into the key I went to backup my software selection. The Backup Tool didn’t work either. It just didn’t list any software. I resigned myself to a system reload. But before I started I thought I’d test Software Manager. That seemed to work so as a last resort (just for the devilment) I installed Gnome Update Manager. That worked, though it was a different program from the normal! It suggested a load of updates but I just selected Update Manager and Backup Tool. That worked.

In my Administration Menu I now had Software Updater and Software Manager. I tried the latter again.

It worked perfectly this time, as did Backup Tool. I applied all the updates.

It took somewhat less time than a total reload!

Failed to mount Windows share

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I run a small network here with several remote drives.

For a while I have been having problems accessing those drives and getting various error messages, the most common being –

Failed to mount Windows share

Sometimes I would connect but I was then told that the target drive “contains no files” (where I knew it did).

This was frustrating as I had to physically move the remote drive and plug it directly into this machine via USB.

Eventually I found the fix. I edited my /etc/samba/smb.conf file and added two lines in the [global] block after the Workgroup entry –

force user = plex
client min protocol = CORE

That seems to have fixed it!

Installing Linux Mint 20

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I installed the Beta version of Mint 20 some time ago and updated it over time.

However, for various reasons I decided to do a complete reinstall on a newly formatted partition.

The first thing I noticed was that the Boot Loader screen was different from the Beta version. I had heard that this was the case and was prepared for it. However I liked the Beta screen and decided to run with it even though it is a very trivial matter.

apt install --reinstall -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confmiss" grub2-theme-mint

or if you have a HiDPI screen

apt install --reinstall -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confmiss" grub2-theme-mint-2k

The second slightly more serious problem I had discovered in the Beta version – Shutter is no longer available in the repositories. It’s a screen-grab programme that I had been using for years and would like it back. Fortunately I found an excellent solution over on Linux Uprising –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/shutter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install shutter

Enjoy!

Thunderbird mail link opening new browser instance

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

For a while I have been having an irritating problem where I would click on a link in Thunderbird and instead of opening in a Tab (which I wanted) it would open a new blank browser.

Some time ago I wrote about a similar problem but this time that solution didn’t work.

After much searching and head scratching I found the solution….

Open the Menu editor.

(Right-click Menu -> Configure… -> Select Menu tab -> Click on “Open the menu editor”)

Select your browser entry ( click Internet to find the list)

Click on Properties, and in the pop-up screen that opens add ” %u” at the end of the command as shown –

Launcher Properties

This will work for Firefox or Waterfox.

Click OK and the job is done.