Category: Install Help

Ubuntu 14.04: Restoring Files

digitaleagle Install Help, My Inspiron 17R, Ubuntu 14.04, Uncategorized Leave a comment

This is a continuation of my previous post on my install of Ubuntu 14.04.  In this post, I took notes on restoring files from my backup.  You can see the complete list of posts on Ubuntu 14.04 on my main install page.

Before installing, I had used Deja-Dup and duplicity to back up my laptop before I installed it.  I’ll blog screenshots of backing it up eventually.  The first thing after reformatting and installing is to restore my files back onto the laptop.  On my last install, I used the command-line to install.  This time, I wanted to try a GUI method.

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Installing MenuLibre 2.0

sphillips Install Help, Ubuntu, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I just discovered MenuLibre with this last time that I installed Ubuntu 13.10. Tom pointed out on that post that a new 2.0 version is available. It’s not in the Ubuntu 13.10 repositories, but it was easy enough to install (or, at least should have been) …

Here’s the easy way

First, you need to install two prerequisites.

sudo apt-get install python3-distutils-extra
sudo apt-get install python3-psutil

Now download the latest version from the Project Page.

Finally, extract and install like this:

tar -xzvf menulibre-2.0.1.tar.gz
cd menulibre-2.0.1
python3 setup.py install --user

Run it like this (or, from the menu):

$ ~/.local/bin/menulibre

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Fixing the VPN on Ubuntu 13.04

digitaleagle Install Help, My Inspiron 17R, Uncategorized 5 Comments

None my VPNs have worked since I installed Ubuntu 13.04.  Something is missing for some reason.  I found a couple posts that gave some clues, so I thought I would take notes as I walked through it.

The Symptoms

First, when I try to connect, I got an error message about VPN secrets: “VPN Connection Failed: The VPN connection ‘<connection name>’ failed because there were no valid VPN secrets.”

VPN Failed Error Message

Then, when I tried to configure it, I got this message:  “Could not edit connection: Could not find VPN plugin service for ‘org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp’.”

VPN Connection Edit Error Message

Troubleshooting

I found someone who did some troubleshooting on the Arch Linux Forums.  I thought it would be a good attempt to try to figure out if the same thing was happening to me.

First, just out of curiousity, I wanted to see what process instance and what parameters were being used for Network Manager.  Here’s the process:


skp@pecan:~$ ps -ef | grep -i networkmanager
root 1157 1 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:05 NetworkManager
root 1847 1157 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/dhclient -d -sf /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action -pf /run/sendsigs.omit.d/network-manager.dhclient-wlan0.pid -lf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient-a01df2ba-ec6b-4524-bf12-00ca1a01b65b-wlan0.lease -cf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient-wlan0.conf wlan0
nobody 2010 1157 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:01 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.pid --listen-address=127.0.1.1 --conf-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.conf --cache-size=0 --proxy-dnssec --enable-dbus=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.dnsmasq --conf-dir=/etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d
skp 14082 11788 0 08:44 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto -i networkmanager

Then, I stopped the service with “service network-manager stop”:


skp@pecan:~$ sudo service network-manager stop
network-manager stop/waiting
skp@pecan:~$ ps -ef | grep -i networkmanager
nobody 2010 1 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:01 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.pid --listen-address=127.0.1.1 --conf-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.conf --cache-size=0 --proxy-dnssec --enable-dbus=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.dnsmasq --conf-dir=/etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d
skp 14217 11788 0 08:52 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto -i networkmanager

Then, I found the UUID of my VPN connection with this command:


skp@pecan:~$ sudo cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/<Wireless SID redacted> | grep uuid
<em id="__mceDel">uuid=1a31c85c-2808-4bae-8651-2c618f8972e8

Finally, I started Network Manager with debugging enabled like this:

NM_SERIAL_DEBUG=3 NetworkManager --no-daemon 2>&1 | tee /tmp/nmserial.txt

When I try to connect to the VPN, I get this in the debug log:


NetworkManager[14317]: <info> Starting VPN service 'pptp'...
NetworkManager[14317]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' started (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp), PID 15299
NetworkManager[14317]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' appeared; activating connections
NetworkManager[14317]: <error> [1370269072.212221] [nm-vpn-connection.c:1374] get_secrets_cb(): Failed to request VPN secrets #2: (6) No agents were available for this request.
NetworkManager[14317]: <info> Policy set '<Wireless SID redacted>' (wlan0) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS.
NetworkManager[14317]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' disappeared

Reinstalling

I copied the /etc/NetworkManager/VPN directory when I restored my backups.  Looking back, I shouldn’t have done that.

So, I decided to see what package those files belong to:


skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ dpkg -S /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name
network-manager-pptp: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name

To get all of the files, I did this:


skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ for f in `ls /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/*`; do dpkg -S $f ; done
network-manager-iodine: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-iodine-service.name
network-manager-openconnect: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-openconnect-service.name
network-manager-openvpn: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-openvpn-service.name
network-manager-pptp: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name
network-manager-strongswan: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-strongswan-service.name
network-manager-vpnc: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-vpnc-service.name

So, I deleted (or moved) those files and reinstalled the packages:


skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ mkdir $HOME/Downloads/VPN
skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ sudo mv /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/* $HOME/Downloads/VPN/
[sudo] password for skp:</pre>
skp@pecan:~$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall network-manager-iodine network-manager-openconnect network-manager-openvpn network-manager-pptp network-manager-strongswan network-manager-vpnc
[sudo] password for skp:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
 kde-l10n-engb wine-gecko1.9:i386
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 22.6 kB/120 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main network-manager-pptp amd64 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 [22.6 kB]
Fetched 22.6 kB in 0s (78.3 kB/s)
(Reading database ... 266755 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace network-manager-iodine 0.0.3-1ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-iodine_0.0.3-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement network-manager-iodine ...
Preparing to replace network-manager-openconnect 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-openconnect_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement network-manager-openconnect ...
Preparing to replace network-manager-openvpn 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu3 (using .../network-manager-openvpn_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement network-manager-openvpn ...
Preparing to replace network-manager-pptp 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-pptp_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement network-manager-pptp ...
Preparing to replace network-manager-vpnc 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-vpnc_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement network-manager-vpnc ...
Preparing to replace network-manager-strongswan 1.3.0-0ubuntu1 (using .../network-manager-strongswan_1.3.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement network-manager-strongswan ...
Setting up network-manager-iodine (0.0.3-1ubuntu2) ...
Setting up network-manager-openconnect (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2) ...
Setting up network-manager-openvpn (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu3) ...
Setting up network-manager-pptp (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2) ...
Setting up network-manager-vpnc (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2) ...
Setting up network-manager-strongswan (1.3.0-0ubuntu1) ...

That didn’t seem to do the trick.  The VPN directory was still empty and the VPN would not connect.

Completely Removing

So, I used the purge command to completely remove the VPN packages:

sudo apt-get purge network-manager-iodine \
network-manager-openconnect network-manager-openvpn network-manager-pptp network-manager-strongswan network-manager-vpnc

Then, I had to reinstall the packages back:

sudo apt-get install  network-manager-iodine network-manager-openconnect \
network-manager-openconnect-gnome network-manager-openvpn \
network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-strongswan \
network-manager-vpnc network-manager-vpnc-gnome

After that it worked!

What Was the Difference?

I compared the files and they were identical.  The one thing that I noticed was different was the permissions on the files:

</pre>
skp@pecan:~$ ls -l /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/
total 24
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 203 Apr 10 08:06 nm-iodine-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 252 Apr 10 08:00 nm-openconnect-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 264 Apr 10 10:13 nm-openvpn-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 248 Feb 26 04:26 nm-pptp-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 223 Jun 29 2012 nm-strongswan-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 248 Apr 10 10:08 nm-vpnc-service.name
skp@pecan:~$ ls -l ~/Downloads/VPN
total 72
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 203 Apr 10 08:06 nm-iodine-service.name
-rw------- 1 root root 252 May 27 17:30 nm-openconnect-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 264 Apr 10 10:13 nm-openvpn-service.name
-rw------- 1 root root 248 May 27 17:30 nm-pptp-service.name
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 223 Jun 29 2012 nm-strongswan-service.name
-rw------- 1 root root 248 May 27 17:30 nm-vpnc-service.name

Conclusion

First, when restoring network connections from a backup, only restore the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections directory.  The VPN directory gets installed with the VPN packages.

Second, the fix was to completely remove the packages.  I had to use the purge command.  The reinstall option didn’t recreate the files that I was missing.

Finally, my problem was the permissions in the /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/* directory.

Resources

Ubuntu 13.04 and the Fight for the Mouse

digitaleagle Install Help, My Inspiron 17R, Ubuntu, Uncategorized 2 Comments

The mouse is something that should just work.  Is it a bad sign when your mouse won’t work at all?  You can see my problems with UNetbootIn on my previous post.

Even after I got it installed correctly, I still had trouble with all of my mouse input types.  I still haven’t figured out how to get the Touchpad features working (like multi-touch) or the USB to reliably work.  If you have any ideas, please comment.

Touchpad

The touchpad works as far as normal mouse features.  The pointer moves and the right and left clicks work.  The problem is that it isn’t recognized as a touchpad.  Therefore, the scrolling and multi-touch features work.  In the mouse settings, you’ll notice that all of the touchpad features are gone.

Mouse & Touchpad Settings

I tried a couple of quick searches, and I didn’t find anything new.  So, I just followed the same instructions that I used on 12.10.  I used this download link.  Then, I extracted and installed with…

sudo tar -xf ~/Downloads/psmouse-alps-dst-0.4.tar -C /usr/src/
sudo bash /usr/src/psmouse-alps-dst-0.4/install.sh

Unfortunately, the build failed with this message in the middle of it:


cleaning build area....
make KERNELRELEASE=3.8.0-22-generic -C /lib/modules/3.8.0-22-generic/build M=/var/lib/dkms/psmouse/alps-dst-0.4/build/src psmouse.ko....(bad exit status: 2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/usr/share/apport/package-hooks/dkms_packages.py", line 22, in <module>
 import apport
ImportError: No module named apport
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 3.8.0-22-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/alps-dst-0.4/build/make.log for more information.
Build failed

I tried installing the linux-source package.  That didn’t fix the error at all, so I tried installing the python-apport package.  That one fixed one of the errors, but it still didn’t completely compile.

Next, I found the driver on Git Hub: psmouse-alps.  I downloaded the zip file from the front page, and I extracted it to the /usr/src directory:

sudo unzip psmouse-alps-master.zip -d /usr/src/
cd /usr/src/psmouse-alps-master/
sudo dkms add .
sudo modprobe -r psmouse
sudo dkms build -m psmouse -v custom-1.2 --all
sudo dkms autoinstall --force
sudo modprobe psmouse

I got closer, but the autoinstall wouldn’t work.  It couldn’t find the directory.  So, I took the install script from the other directory and updated it to this:


DLKM=alps-master
KERN=$(uname -r)
echo "MAIN: Driver source files by Dave Turvene. Install script by garyF."
echo "MAIN: Install script updated by Stephen Phillips."
echo "MAIN: Removing previous versions of psmouse-alps-dst..."
sudo dkms remove psmouse/$DLKM --all
echo "MAIN: Building current driver from source files..."
sudo dkms build psmouse/$DLKM
if [[ $? == 0 ]]; then
echo "MAIN: Installing the driver"
sudo dkms install psmouse/$DLKM
sudo rmmod -v psmouse
sudo modprobe -v psmouse
echo "MAIN: Done installing. Go to System Settings > Mouse and Touchpad to configure :-)"
else
printf "Build failed\n"
cat /var/lib/dkms/psmouse/$DLKM/build/make.log
fi

I found this error message:

/usr/src/linux-headers-3.8.0-22-generic/arch/x86/Makefile:103: CONFIG_X86_X32 enabled but no binutils support

Update: I finally fixed it.

Bluetooth Mouse

My first attempt didn’t work on my bluetooth mouse.  My second attempt ended up working with no problem.

I went to the bluetooth icon by the clock and clicked Bluetooth settings.  I made sure that it was on.  I don’t think that the visible was necessary, but I turned it on just in case.  Then, I hit the bluetooth button on the bottom of my mouse.  The power light flash green and red to show it was broadcasting.

On the settings dialog, I hit the plus sign to add a device.

Adding a Bluetooth Device

The first time I tried, it wouldn’t find any devices.  I gave up.  Several updates and reboots later, I tried again, and this time, my mouse was in the list:

Bluetooth Device List

I selected the device and clicked Continue.  It was that simple:

Bluetooth Mouse Setup

USB Mouse

In previous versions, my USB mouse had stopped working.  I did some research and found a few bugs, but I never found a solution.  This time it worked at first, but after a minute or two, it just stopped working.  It seems to be hit or miss for some reason.

Here’s the dmesg output:


[12571.959955] usb 3-3: new full-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
[12571.978603] usb 3-3: New USB device found, idVendor=046d, idProduct=c52f
[12571.978610] usb 3-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[12571.978614] usb 3-3: Product: USB Receiver
[12571.978617] usb 3-3: Manufacturer: Logitech
[12572.024103] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb3/3-3/3-3:1.0/input/input14
[12572.024384] hid-generic 0003:046D:C52F.0002: input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Mouse [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-0000:00:14.0-3/input0
[12572.026241] input: Logitech USB Receiver as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb3/3-3/3-3:1.1/input/input15
[12572.026434] hid-generic 0003:046D:C52F.0003: input,hiddev0,hidraw2: USB HID v1.11 Device [Logitech USB Receiver] on usb-0000:00:14.0-3/input1
[12572.026479] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
[12572.026483] usbhid: USB HID core driver

I’ll have to research this more later.