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Using Ctrl+Shift+Escape for System Monitor in Ubuntu

2019-11-112019-10-31 Josip Medved Leave a comment

Moving from Windows to Ubuntu, there is one shortcut I surely miss – Ctrl+Shift+Escape. On Ubuntu this does absolutely nothing.

Fortunately one can always add a custom shortcut to System Monitor:

Terminal
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings \
    "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/']"
GSCHEMA=org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding
GPATH=/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/
gsettings set $GSCHEMA:$GPATH name "System Monitor"
gsettings set $GSCHEMA:$GPATH command "gnome-system-monitor"
gsettings set $GSCHEMA:$GPATH binding "<Primary><Shift>Escape"

However, this is not quite “it”. The major issue is that, if System Monitor is already open, it will remain in background. As this is Linux, of course there is a command line solution for this.

First we need to install wmctrl package

Terminal
sudo apt install wmctrl

Then we can setup a script to run System Monitor and activate it’s window. Since application itself is single instance, this does exactly what we need:

~/bin/system-monitor
#!/bin/bash
nohup gnome-system-monitor >/dev/null 2>&1 & >/dev/null
wmctrl -Fa 'System Monitor'

To make it runnable, we shouldn’t forget chmod:

Terminal
chmod +x ~/bin/system-monitor

And now finally we can adjust our key binding to call that newly created script:

Terminal
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys custom-keybindings \
    "['/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/']"
GSCHEMA=org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys.custom-keybinding
GPATH=/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/media-keys/custom-keybindings/custom0/
gsettings set $GSCHEMA:$GPATH name "System Monitor"
gsettings set $GSCHEMA:$GPATH command "$HOME/bin/system-monitor"
gsettings set $GSCHEMA:$GPATH binding "<Primary><Shift>Escape"

I call this close enough.

Ubuntu 19.10 Fails to Install Deb File

2019-11-062019-10-30 Josip Medved Leave a comment

As I upgraded to Ubuntu 19.10, I went to install a few of my Linux applications and immediately got Failed to install file: not supported error. Debian packages that worked for me with 19.04 were suddenly causing the issue.

I traced this to my control file:

control
Package:        Bimil
Version:        MAJOR.MINOR
Architecture:   all
Maintainer:     Josip Medved <jmedved@jmedved.com>
Homepage:       https://www.medo64.com/bimil/
Description:    Password manager.
                A small password manager compatible with Password Safe file format.
Section:        misc
Priority:       optional
Depends:        mono-complete (>=4.2), gnupg2

While this worked fine for Ubuntu 19.04, in Ubuntu 19.10, one has to have Build-Depends value too:

control
Package:        Bimil
Version:        MAJOR.MINOR
Architecture:   all
Maintainer:     Josip Medved <jmedved@jmedved.com>
Homepage:       https://www.medo64.com/bimil/
Description:    Password manager.
                A small password manager compatible with Password Safe file format.
Section:        misc
Priority:       optional
Depends:        mono-complete (>=4.2), gnupg2
Build-Depends:  mono-complete (>=4.2)

Once I rebuilt package with it, my .deb files worked once again.

SIGFAULT in QVector size()

2019-11-012019-10-28 Josip Medved Leave a comment

After a long time, I started playing with C++ again – this time in the form of QT. Since I learned C++ a while ago, my code was a bit rustic and probably not following all the newest recommendations, but hey, it worked. Until I decided to change it from using QVector<std::shared_ptr<FolderItem>> to QVector<FolderItem*>. Suddenly I kept getting SIGFAULT in the most innocuous method: size().

As Google is my crutch, I did a quick search for this and found absolutely nothing useful – just other people having the same issue. After finally looking at my code, I figured why – because I was asking the wrong question. Of course there was nothing wrong with size() method in QVector class used by millions. It was me all along.

I had _folder variable in main window that I never initialized and I used it to call its method which in turn used QVector.size(). Forgetting to initialize this variable if you’re using shared_ptr is nothing – it simply ends up being null pointer and I had check for those. Once I changed to raw pointer, I lost that protection and uninitialized variable did what uninitialized variable in C++ does – pointed to “something”. Executing function “somewhere” in memory is what brought SIGFAULT – not the poor size() method.

It was all solved by something I used to do reflexively: initialize any variable declared in C++ to some value – even if that value is nullptr.

PIA in Encrypted Home Directory

2019-10-272019-10-25 Josip Medved Leave a comment

Upon getting Linux Mint installed, I went ahead with installing VPN by Private Internet Access. Went through the same motions as usually albeit now with slightly different result – it wouldn’t connect.

Looking at logs ($HOME/.pia_manager/log/openvpn.log) just gave cryptic errors:

SIOCSIFADDR: Operation not permitted
: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
SIOCSIFDSTADDR: Operation not permitted

Quick search on internet brought me to Linux Mint forum where exactly the same problem was described. And familiarity didn’t stop there; author had one other similarity – encrypted home folder. Sounded like a perfect fit so I killed PIA client and went with slightly modified procedure:

Terminal
sudo mkdir /home/pia
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /home/pia
mv ~/.pia_manager /home/pia/.pia_manager
ln -s /home/pia/.pia_manager ~/.pia_manager

However, this didn’t help. Still the same issue in my log files. So I decided to go with atomic option. First I killed PIA client (again) and removed PIA completely together with all my modifications:

Terminal
rm ~/.pia_manager
sudo rm ~/.local/share/applications/pia_manager.desktop
rm -R /home/pia

With all perfectly clean, I decided to start with fresh directory structure, exactly the same as in the original solution:

Terminal
sudo mkdir -p /home/pia/.pia_manager
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /home/pia
ln -s /home/pia/.pia_manager ~/.pia_manager

With directory in place I repeated installation of PIA client:

Terminal
cd ~/Downloads
tar -xzf pia-v72-installer-linux.tar.gz
./pia-v72-installer-linux.sh

And it worked! :)