COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

I made a decision this morning. My system has been doing strange things since I downloaded Drop-box. I deleted what I could of it and restarted and there is an improvement. There are some redundant files left on the system but it tells me I "don't own them" so I have had to leave them alone. When I restarted after the deletions Drop-box tried to reload. Am I going to have this dialogue box as a constant annoyance? Not happy with programmes that try to take over the system! Any advice as to what else I can do?

[Stanley]

Came back on to leave a message for Tiz. Speed etc. back to normal. I'm convinced Drop-box was affecting it. Question is, what was it doing?

[Tripps]

"Any advice as to what else I can do?"
Just delete it.
Plenty of other places to share photos etc. I am on Photobucket, Evernote, Filedropper, and I have had family photos on Webshots without any problem for ten years or so.
Audioboo is Ok as well.
Yes - I need to get out more - I'm working on it.
Here's a demo, and practice for me....
Tarquin

[Stanley]

David, I've deleted the important bits, it is no more and my FM2 is behaving itself again... My question was how to delete the rubbish files it has left behind which I don't think have any executive function.

[Pluggy]

Did you un-install it from Synaptic Package Manager ?

It isn't too difficult to delete system files, it won't normally let you, but its too easy to kill the thing altogether if you're not sure of what you're doing. But Synaptic should be first port of call for removing software. Most software can be installed from there too.

[Tizer]

I've been away and missed the Dropbox problem. I don't install any software on my Ubuntu PCs except that which is in the Synaptic Pacakage Manager list which I know I can trust to be safe, install easily and uninstall completely.

[Stanley]

Didn't know it existed! Went in and I think I've zapped what was left. Flying Machine is back to normal, I can't think of any other reason it could have been acting up. Better out than in I reckon.....

[Tizer]

Oh Stanley, you've been missing one of the greatest things about Ubuntu! Synaptic is a treasure chest of free software for all kinds of applications and it's all been tested and checked to be suitable for Ubuntu and tweaked if necessary to make it run properly. It can all be safely loaded or uninstalled through Synaptic. Always make it your first port of call for software (System | Administration | Synaptic Package Manager), or you can go into the Ubuntu Software Centre in the Applications menu and load software from there (it's more `graphical' in presentation but I don't know if it has all that is in Synaptic and it's not as powerful).

Anyone out there interested in using Ubuntu for schools and education should take a look at these pages:
http://www.canonical.com/about-ubuntu/for-education
http://gcompris.net
http://tux4kids.alioth.debian.org/

Gcompri and the individual Tux for Kids packages are available in Ubuntu via Synaptic.

[Stanley]

Yes, I know.... Too busy doing stuff to explore. It's been the same with every programme I have ever had!

[Tizer]

Prompted by all that talk about sharing photos I have a question. I attended a funeral last week in Buckinghamshire of a family friend who sadly died at age 61 and it prompted me to look up old photos of him from the 1980s that his relatives won't have seen. I found about 30 old `Instamatic type' photos and made new digital copies of them. I was going to put them on a CD and send a copy to his father in Felixstowe but now I wonder if it would be better to upload them to a site and let all the relatives get access to download them. I haven't needed such a service before. Any recommendations? It would have to be free (both ways, upload and download) and I don't want the the rellies being pushed into paying for hard copies etc by the owner of the site. And it must be accessible to me on Ubuntu and them on Windows.

That also raises the question...can it be done here on OGFB? As I understand it, we each have a personal gallery as well as the public gallery. Could I upload the pics to my personal gallery and then let the rellies download them? I suppose they would have to register as OG members but that's free and would only need an email address. I suppose I might be able to set the gallery to only allow access to certain usernames. I wouldn't need the photos on there permanently and they could be deleted after, say, a couple of weeks either by me or automatically by OG software.

[PanBiker]

From reading the admin and moderator manuals, I know the Gallery is a separate module to the site. You will need an answer from Doc on that one Tiz. I have posted a Gallery question re category management in one of the admin threads on the site but he has not got back to me yet.

[Stanley]

Tiz, I can't see that there would be any problem, no different than posting family photos for the genealogists. If I was you I'd go ahead and do it but get one of the lads to make a separate section for you but publicly available to avoid access problems.

[Wendyf]

We use Picasa. You can upload your pics to a web album and then send an email link to those people who you want to share them with.It works well for us, but uncertain if it would run on Ubuntu.

[Tizer]

Thanks for the suggestion Wendy. I had a look at these sort of sites some years ago but gave up on them because they seemed designed more to draw people into paying for printed copies of the uploaded photos rather than free downloading. Perhaps they are better now, I'll have a look.

Stanley, I wouldn't want to put the photos on `public access' in the sense of available to everyone on the Net because they are personal such as weddings, christenings etc and are of other people, not me. I want to put them where only chosen recipients can access them. I've had a look at the Personal Albums/Gallery in my User Control Panel and it looks like I could restrict access to my `Friends' but I think it's probably going to be easier to use a dedicated service such the Picasa one suggested by Wendy.

[Stanley]

One of the few things I regret losing when I switched to Ubuntu was ACDsee. It had a splendid little facility whereby you could harvest a selection of pics, automatically reduce them in size and email them direct. If there is a facility in Gimp that does this I haven't found it.

[Tizer]

Stanley, you can batch resize in Gimp using Filters | Batch | Batch Process (you might need to install a plug-in for the Batch function, I can't remember now) and do lots of other batch processes, but I don't know of any way that you can export the resulting files directly to an email. However in the Batch Process software you can set it to dump the resulting files in a new folder which would make it easy to find them for attachment to a message in Thunderbird. More about Gimp batch processing here: LINK

On the other hand, you'll find that the whole job can be done easily and quickly by using F-Spot image handling software. Go to Applications | Ubuntu Software Centre and click on the Graphics icon then on the Photography icon. You'll see F-Spot listed, so highlight it and click Install. It should now be listed in your Applications | Graphics menu. Open the software, click the Import button and choose the files you want to resize and send so that they appear in the main F-Spot window -- I find the Import dialog box a bit quirky but you'll soon get the hang of it. Click on the file icons to highlight them and go to the top menu for Photo | File | Send by Mail. A Create Mail dialog box comes up and you choose the size of file you want - it doesn't give pixel dimensions so you'll need to go by the change in memory size but you'll soon work out what's best for your needs. Click Create Mail and a Thunderbird new message should pop up with the resized files as attachments. If it doesn't, you may not have TB set as your default email client - if necessary, go to System | Preferences | Preferred Applications to change settings. I have to admit I didn't know F-Spot could do this until reading your post today, so thanks for the prompt!

[Stanley]

Thanks for that Tiz but my daughters and I are solving the problem by them letting me know which pics they want, I shall put them all in a dedicated file and Susan will call round with a data stick and I'll pop them all on it at high res, then old fashioned post to Oz.

[Tizer]

On each of our two Ubuntu computers we make a regular backup of the Home folder (including the hidden profile files) as a .tar archive file using the Archive Manager (in menu under Applications | Accessories) then we save it in a backup partition on a second disk. We also exchange the files between the backup disks of the two computers so that if one fails the other has its backup file. Recently we have had a problem with Archive Manager - instead of ending quietly in the usual way it threw up a warning message saying that an error occurred and this made me unsure whether the backup file was complete and intact. The obvious way would be to check if the backup file worked if reinstated but that might be dangerous!

I searched for alternative ways of archiving and eventually resorted to using the Terminal. Once I sorted out the exact commands and file paths it was easy and (with the verbose command, v, included) I could watch the files race past in the Terminal screen. I was surprised by how much faster it is this way, just a fraction of the time taken in Archive Manager, and it didn't give any error messages. I compared the size of the files made in the two methods, thinking that if the Archive Manager file was smaller it would indicate something missing. Lo and behold, the Terminal file was smaller. After some head scratching I highlighted all the files and folders in my Home folder (inc hidden files), viewed Properties and got the same memory size in GB as for the Terminal backup. So this .tar archive file made in the Terminal seems to be correct - but why is the one in Archive Manager bigger? (I should mention that the error messages in Archive Manager have stopped on one PC but not on the other, even though they are the same and have had the same Ubuntu updates!) And why does Terminal make the file so much faster than Archive Manager? So many questions!

[Stanley]

You are more brave/clever/adventurous than me Tiz! I attack it by maintaining an external hard drive with all the data on it.

[Tizer]

Not more brave/clever/adventurous than you Stanley, just doing it a different way. Effectively, each of my PCs acts as the equivalent of your hard drive for the other PC - as if you were making your backup on another PC rather than an external hard drive. But where we probably differ is not in where the backup resides but how we make it. How do you create your backup of all the data, do you simply copy & paste folders to the other drive? My first approach to making backups on Ubuntu was by copy & paste but the copy function kept stopping at certain folders or files and I had to skip them to continue, thus ending up with an incomplete backup. I couldn't trust the backup to be 100%. That's why I looked for other ways and found out about the Archive Manager which is in the Applications | Accessories menu or, if not already shown, can be added to the menu using Applications | Ubuntu Software Center | Accessories. This has been very easy to use and you can create compressed or uncompressed files in a number of different formats, the main ones being tar (.tar, uncompressed), gzip (tar.gz, compressed) and zip (.zip, compressed). I use .tar because the files that take up most of my disk space are .jpg and these are already compressed. The advantage of using the archive manager is that you end up with the desired folders and files all locked up within one big file, and compressed if you prefer it.

It's only in the last week that I've encountered the error problem with Archive Manager and I'm now finding that doing the same thing (creating a .tar file of my home folder) is much faster using the command line in the Terminal and it doesn't give any error problems. And I like seeing all those file names whistling by when I do it in verbose mode!

By the way, if you use copy & paste for your data in the home folder are you also copying the hidden profile folders and files which also reside there? These contain all your customisation and personalised files that would be needed to get your PC (or a new PC) back to the same state if necessary. To view them, open the File Manager and press Control H. Then repeat Ctrl H to hide them again. But be careful when you have the hidden files revealed because it's easy to accidentally delete an important file or folder (which is why of course they are usually hidden!) (Sorry if all this is like teaching grannie to suck eggs but there will be other people reading this who won't know as much as you do.)

[Stanley]

Tiz, my archive is split into folders for each year so when I back up I simply overwrite the out of date version of the current year's data. The archive folders don't need to be touched. As for the profile information etc. I don't worry about that because if I had to start again I would do the same as I did when I first went to Linux, copy the whole of the data to a dedicated hard drive in the computer. It worked then and I have no doubt it would work again. Of course I could be living in a fool's paradise but at least I can sleep at night!

[Tizer]

Has Pluggy gone on holiday? I'd have thought he would be rushing into this discussion!

[Pluggy]

No, not on holiday. Business has been pretty brisk for a week or two and you seem to be getting on without me when I have looked in. Just making a little hay while the sun is shining, but it doesn't leave much time to 'play' on forums........

[Stanley]

Glad to hear it! Let's hear it for Windows!

I wonder whether our upgrade to mend the Orange 'improvement to service' in Barlick of July last year is getting closer? The last news reported on here was end of May.....

[Pluggy]

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LCBAN

Still the end of May 2012.