Common Issues

Issues on Precise (nxl67170ux)

• Issue — Git — Cannot install tileqt (tcl theme) to beautify gitk.
• Issue — TeX Live still old version (2009) — This may be the cause of errors LaTeX Font Warning: Some font shapes were not available, defaults substituted. (see [1])
  • fixed — install TeX Live 2012 from backports repository.
• Issue — Annoying file C:\nppdf32Log\debuglog.txt. Caused by acroread plugin (see [2], [3], [4]). A solution would be to edit nppdf.so with hex editor.
• Issue — Acrobat reader leaves ghost process SynchronizerApp-binary. Disable it!
• Issue — Opera fonts too small, not as good as windows.
  • partial fix — Increase default font size to 16 (Preferences → webpages). See also page Make linux looks like Windows/Mac
• Issue — Touchpad scroll not working, detected as ps/2 mouse.
  • partial fix — Install Kevin Cernekee's DKMS package (see below and bug 606238). See also [5] for more solutions.
    

sudo -s
add-apt-repository ppa:cernekee/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install psmouse-dkms
reboot

• Issue — Annoying popup failure to download extra data files flashplugin-installer. See bug 977178 and bug 982684.
  Pop-up is from update-notified. Might be related to sudo ignoring some environment variables / profile.
  • tentative fix — sudo apt-get --reinstall install flashplugin-installer
• Issue — Synergy, still heavy keyboard corruption issue (v.1.4.10), in particular ctrl stuck key (must reboot to fix), and custom layout not honored (my custom belgian on us layout).
• Issue — Virtualbox module not recompiling (broken DKMS)
  • tentative fix — See Virtualbox
• Issue — Can't reconnect to Bluetooth Microsoft Sculpt Mouse.
  • Solved — Install Bluetooth manager (package blueman). See [6], bug 1094744.
• Issue — animated gifs do not work.
  • Solved — This is a feature of privoxy, to ban ads using such animation. It can be disabled (via setting deanimate_gifs), or better yet, temporarily disable privoxy, and clear cache/reload the page.
• Issue — Acrobat reader, errant tooltips
  • Solved — Click on the document area. Tooltips appears when the focus is on the document tab.
  • Other solution, see Banishing errant tooltips (using Xlib and Python)

Issues on Trusty (nxl67170ux)

• Issue — Controlling laptop brightness via brightness keys is very slow (small delta, long latency). See bug 847001 (and possibly related kernel bug. See also X page for work-arounds.
  • Solved — Enable vendor acpi in grub and use the 20-intel.conf script as explained on X page.
• Issue — Fonts in Opera look really ugly. Note that Opera did not upgrade (still v12.16). Other applications do not seem affected.
• Issue — xdotool can no longer move (unmaximized) windows to top left corner (see bug 1312412)
• Issue — lots of failure due to pcscd in /var/log/syslog (see below). apt-get remove pcscd as temporary fix.

Apr 29 14:28:22 nxl67170ux pcscd: ifdwrapper.c:348:IFDStatusICC() Card not transacted: 612
Apr 29 14:28:22 nxl67170ux pcscd: eventhandler.c:313:EHStatusHandlerThread() Error communicating to: O2 Micro Oz776 00 00
Apr 29 14:28:22 nxl67170ux kernel: [  754.501492] usb 1-1.3.2: usbfs: process 1883 (pcscd) did not claim interface 0 before use
Apr 29 14:28:22 nxl67170ux kernel: [  754.501546] usb 1-1.3.2: usbfs: process 1883 (pcscd) did not claim interface 0 before use
Apr 29 14:28:22 nxl67170ux pcscd: pcscdaemon.c:684:at_exit() write() failed: Connection refused

• Issue — XBMC Frodo 12.3 cannot read DVD (from disc media or from hdd). Filed as bug 1315873.
  • Work around — Install XBMC Gotham 13.0 from xbmc ppa (see XBMC).
• Issue — GPU hangs stuck on render ring + dmesg error - see bug 76956 and bug 77104
  • Could be related to the recent switch to SNA acceleration (instead of old uxa). See [7], [8]
  • see here for instruction on how to enable / disable sna)
  • Using SNA might require xorg-edges drivers
  • Or try this ppa grphics-drivers (suggested from freedesktop.org)
  • See Phoronix benchmarks
• Issue — keyboard shortcut for Indicator-synapse does not work.
• Issue — auto-completion works badly with command starting with sudo (lots of false positive).
  • Fix — This is due to doing complete -cF sudo in bash profile, which was necessary since u12.04 or so. However in u14.04 is no longer necessary. Removing it fixes the problem.