Category Archives: Linux

Thunderbird opening multiple windows

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

I have been having a small but irritating problem with Thunderbird.

I use the Nightly (Firebird) version which is currently V21, but I believe this problem is not new.

Whenever I opened Thunderbird, it insisted on opening three or more versions of itself, which meant closing several windows every time.  It started off with three windows, but over time this grew to seven which meant a tiresome session of closing windows each time.

I searched the Internet and this is not a new problem.  The answer generally given is to close the extra windows using Alt+F4 but this didn’t work for me.  It closed the windows all right, but the next time I ran Thunderbird the problem was still there.

The solution is simple.

Delete the file “session.json”.

For the uninitiated, open your file browser and ensure that “View –> Show hidden files” is selected.

Browse to home/.thunderbird (note – dot thunderbird!) and you will find “session.json” in your default profile folder.  If for any reason you have several profile folders, the active one is listed in the file “profiles.ini”.

Well, it worked for me…….

How to cancel a print job

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

Last night I wanted to print off a couple of pages.

I’m using Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) and a wireless HP Officejet J4680.

For some reason, the first page got stuck in the queue and refused to print.  What was worse, I couldn’t cancel it.  I tried all the usual rebooting but to no avail.  The Preferences –> Printers showed the queue but the Stop button had no effect.

The solution, as always is simple.

Open http://localhost:631/jobs/ in your browser.

That’ll do the trick.

Wireless scanner not visible in Mint

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

A problem that crops up fairly regularly after a reinstall or upgrade of Mint is that I can’t access my scanner.

I have an HP Officejet J4680 multi-function device which operates via wireless.  Recently, after upgrading to Mint 14, the problem arose again.  I could print but Mint couldn’t see the scanner.

After a bit of research I discovered the simple solution which I am putting up here to remind myself for the next time.

Instead of the route Menu –> Preferences –> Printers, (which will add the printer but that’s all) it is preferable to use the Terminal command –

system-config-printer

This will pull up a different (and slightly more advanced) dialog section.  Once the device is added via this path, both printing and scanning work perfectly.

Installing Linux Mint 14 (Nadia)

A Pipe and a Keyboard Posted on by

They haven’t officially announced it at the time of writing, but Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) was released a couple of days ago.

Naturally I had to download and install!  I used the MATE 64bit edition and for various reasons I installed Cinnamon on top.

I decided on a complete reinstall including formatting my Home partition, so I backed up everything and formatted.

As usual the process was painless.  Nadia installed without a glitch.  However the process was not without a couple of minor problems which led to a little frustration.

The first problem that I encountered was a strange one.  While running through the list of packages (listed on the Software page of this site) I installed Audacity.  When I ran a test I discovered the problem – Audacity had no menu-bar!  After trying the usual reinstall and the like with no success I resorted to the Internet.  As usual I had to wade trough a series of solutions that didn’t work, but eventually found one that did.

The solution involved a hack to the code using the following:

sudo mv /usr/bin/audacity /usr/bin/prog-audacity
gksudo pluma /usr/bin/audacity

In the above, you may want to change “pluma” to your own editor, such as “gedit”.

In the editor insert the following lines :

#! /bin/bash

export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0
prog-audacity

Save the file and then run

sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/audacity

That sorted the problem and now Audacity runs as normal.

This may just be a temporary glitch such as a missing library, but my Internet searches gave no clues. 

As a footnote, I also ran into problems installing Google Earth.  I remembered seeing a mention of this on the Mint blog, so I tried Clem’s fix.  It worked, so it appears the bug hadn’t been fixed before full release!

–oOo–

Update

Almost immediately I found a major flaw in the fix above.

I use Audacity Nightly which was updated shortly after I posted this.  That of course overwrote my modification.

A bit of further research led to a permanent solution.Apparently it is a wxwidgets problem.

The solution.  Enter the following –

sudo apt-get purge appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt


That seems to have done the trick!

VirtualBox disk size

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I use VirtualBox on an almost daily basis.

As I now use Linux Mint as my operating system of choice, I need some way to run a few programmes that are specific to Windows, such as Windows Live Writer (which I am using to write this!).

A long time ago I set up a Virtual Machine to run Windows 7.  I installed Live Writer and Office (which I never managed to install via Wine despite claims that it can be done).  Since then, I backup my “VirtualBox VMs” folder and restore it after any upgrade.  My Windows 7 therefore remains pristine and fully working.

Lately however I have been running close to full disk capacity in my VM, with only 1Gb to spare.  My first thought was to create a new VM and install a copy of Windows 7 there.  That worked with no problems as I expected, however try as I might I cannot get Live Writer to work properly.  Of the three blogs I work on, one loads with no problems whatsoever, the second connects but refuses to recognise the theme and the third won’t even recognise the fact that it’s a WordPress installation.  All three blogs have identical setups so I am baffled as to the cause of this.

The solution to my problem I have now discovered is extremely easy.  I simply increased the size of my virtual hard drive.

Open a terminal in home/VirtualBox VMs  and CD into the folder that contains the virtual Machine (in my case it was “Win 7”).  Then run the command

VBoxManage modifyhd “Win 7.vdi” –resize 30000

That’s it!

Naturally you need to change the “Win 7.vdi” bit to your own VM name (and the quotes are necessary if there is a space in the name), and set your own new disk size (the number is Mb, so 30000 = 30Gb).  Note also that there are two dashes in “–resize”.

There is one further step though.  Running your VM will still show the old disk size, which may cause a moment of frustration or even panic!  The reason is that you have increased the hard disk but with an unformatted area.

In my case I simply went into Windows’ Disk Management (enter “partition” into Search to find it) and expanded my current disk to fill the new free space.

My Windows 7 Virtual Machine now has an extra 10Gb of free space!