I needed to install Advanced Diary on an Ubuntu Linux system. for someone who had been using the program for journaling on a Microsoft Windows system. I had previously installed Wine, a program that allows one to run Windows applications on Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD systems. I used AdvDiary.sh, which contains the following lines, to install Advanced Diary:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 AdvancedDiarySetup.exe"
  exit 1
fi

INSTALLER="$(realpath "$1")"
PREFIX="$HOME/.wine-advdiary"

echo "Creating 32-bit Wine prefix..."
export WINEPREFIX="$PREFIX"
export WINEARCH=win32
winecfg -v win7 >/dev/null 2>&1 || true

echo "Installing required components (gdiplus, corefonts)..."
winetricks -q gdiplus corefonts

echo "Forcing native GDI+..."
cat > "$PREFIX/user.reg" <<'EOF'
[Software\\Wine\\DllOverrides]
"gdiplus"="native"
EOF

echo "Running Advanced Diary installer..."
wine "$INSTALLER"

echo
echo "✔ Installation complete"
echo "Run with:"
echo "WINEPREFIX=$PREFIX wine \"$PREFIX/drive_c/Program Files/Advanced Diary/Diary.exe\""

To run it, you need to assign "execute" permission to the file, which can be done in a Terminal window with chmod + x filename or chmod a+x filename to make a file executable by all users or chmod u+x filename to make it executable by just the owner of the file, i.e., the user.

alice@Wonderland:~/Downloads$ chmod u+x install-advanced-diary.sh 
alice@Wonderland:~/Downloads$ 

When I ran the shell script .sh file, I realized I hadn't installed Winetricks beforehand, so I installed it with sudo apt install winetricks after running the script. I then reran the installation script for Advanced Diary. The installation completed successfully — I selected the option to have the program opened automatically at the conclusion of the installation — and it appeared to open normally (I had to press Enter in the terminal window to return to the shell prompt).

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[/os/unix/linux/wine] permanent link

You can run the Big Fish Games Game Manager on an Ubuntu Linux system under Steam. You can install Steam as a Snap package from the Ubuntu App Center.

Steps:

1. Download the Big Fish Games App (Game Manager) for PC
2. In Steam on the Ubuntu system, click on Add a Game, which is at the lower, left-hand corner of the Steam window, then select Add a Non-Steam Game, then browse to where you downloaded the .exe installer for the game manager, click on it, and then click on Add Selected Programs.
3. You should then see the Big Fish Game Manager in the "Uncategorized" list of games at the left side of the Steam window, e.g., you may see bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe listed. Right-click on it and then select Properties, then Compatibility, and then, from the drop-down list that becomes available, select Proton Experimental or the latest stable version — I selected Proton Experimental.
4. You can then close the Compatibility window by clicking on the "X" at the upper, right-hand corner.
5. Then with the Big Fish Game Manager selected in the Uncategorized list, click on the Play button to launch the Big Fish Game Manager Setup and agree to the License Agreement when you see it appear.

When I started the install process, the installation appeared to hang at "Execute: C:\Program Files (x86)\bfglient\epoch.exe". When I clicked on the title bar for the window, I saw "About Wine", so it appeared to be using Wine, which I had previously installed on the Ubuntu system. But I waited and eventually the installation succeeded, though I think it took over 15 minutes. I closed the window and then went back to the Steam window, I saw bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe was still there. This time when I clicked on it, the Big Fish window where I could sign in to Big Fish Games opened fairly quickly.

Note: if the window goes blank or displays just a white background, minimize it by clicking on the "-" in the upper, right-hand corner of the Big Fish window and then switch to it again, which you can do with Alt+Tab — continue to press the Tab key while continuing to hold down the Alt key to cycle between open open windows until you get to the Big Fish window.

Initially, you will see "No games to play," but if you have already purchased games that you've played on another system, you can click on Purchase History and install them on the Linux system. When I installed the Big Fish Games Manager under Steam, I had my wife check one of her games, Aquascapes, and that ran fine. I then closed the Big Fish window and the Steam window and reopened it. Note: if you want to change the name that appears for Big Fish Games in the Uncategorized list, you can right-click on the entry, e.g., bfginstaller32_s1_l1.exe, and choose Properties and then change the "Shortcut" value to something you prefer, such as "Big Fish Games". When I reopened Steam and started Big Fish Games, I saw the Aquascapes game under "My Games".

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

To access a directory that is shared from a Microsoft Windows system in a Windows domain, you can take the following steps on a Ubuntu Linux system. Note: you will need to have a package installed that provides Server Message Block (SMB) support. If the libsmclient0 package is installed, you should be able to use these steps. You can check if it is installed by opening a Terminal window and issuing the command dpkg -s libsmbclient0. If it is not installed, you can install it with sudo apt install libsmbclient0.

alice@Wonderland:~$ dpkg -s libsmbclient0
Package: libsmbclient0
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: libs
Installed-Size: 259
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Multi-Arch: same
Source: samba
Version: 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2
Replaces: libsmbclient
Provides: libsmbclient (= 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2)
Depends: samba-libs (= 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2), libbsd0 (>= 0.0), libc6 (>= 2.38), libndr6 (>= 2:4.17.2), libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libtevent0t64 (>= 0.15.0)
Breaks: libsmbclient (<< 2:4.22.3+dfsg-4ubuntu2.2)
Description: shared library for communication with SMB/CIFS servers
 This package provides a shared library that enables client applications
 to talk to Microsoft Windows and Samba servers using the SMB/CIFS
 protocol.
Homepage: https://www.samba.org
Original-Maintainer: Debian Samba Maintainers <pkg-samba-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org>
alice@Wonderland:~$

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

If you need to list all of the accounts on an Ubuntu Linux system, there are many commands that you can use.

1. cat /etc/passwd
2. grep -oE '^[^:]+' /etc/passwd - for just the account names
3. cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd - for just the account names
4. awk -F: '{print $1}' /etc/passwd - for just the account names
5. lslogins
6. compgen -u - for just the accunt names
7. getent passwd

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

If you need to determine the amount of memory in a system that is running the Ubuntu Linux operating system (OS), you can open a Terminal window from the App Center and then use the free command. If you use the command without any options, you will see the amount of memory displayed in bytes. To display the value in a more human-friendly format, you can add the argument -h or --human, e.g., to see the value in gigabytes.

alice@firefly:~$ free -h
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            14Gi       2.4Gi        10Gi       426Mi       2.3Gi        12Gi
Swap:          4.0Gi          0B       4.0Gi
alice@firefly:~$

Other options for the command are shown below:

jim@Serenity:~$ free --help

Usage:
 free [options]

Options:
 -b, --bytes         show output in bytes
     --kilo          show output in kilobytes
     --mega          show output in megabytes
     --giga          show output in gigabytes
     --tera          show output in terabytes
     --peta          show output in petabytes
 -k, --kibi          show output in kibibytes
 -m, --mebi          show output in mebibytes
 -g, --gibi          show output in gibibytes
     --tebi          show output in tebibytes
     --pebi          show output in pebibytes
 -h, --human         show human-readable output
     --si            use powers of 1000 not 1024
 -l, --lohi          show detailed low and high memory statistics
 -L, --line          show output on a single line
 -t, --total         show total for RAM + swap
 -v, --committed     show committed memory and commit limit
 -s N, --seconds N   repeat printing every N seconds
 -c N, --count N     repeat printing N times, then exit
 -w, --wide          wide output

     --help     display this help and exit
 -V, --version  output version information and exit

For more details see free(1).
jim@Serenity:~$ 

Note:The free command in Linux shows the total amount of installed physical memory in the total column, but this value is less than the actual hardware random-access memory (RAM) installed because the Linux kernel reserves a portion of memory for itself and for hardware devices (like video card buffers) at boot time. The total shown is the usable RAM available to the OS, not the absolute hardware total.

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

On a Ubuntu Linux system, you can determine which users are allowed to use the sudo command by looking at the contents of the /etc/group file. If you grep for sudo you will see which accounts on the system can use the command.

jack@firefly:~$ grep sudo /etc/group
sudo:x:27:jack,jill@ad.example.com
jack@firefly:~$ 

The above output shows that the local jack account and a Windows domain account, jill@ad.example.com, can use the command. You can see what groups a particular user belongs to with the command groups username, where username is the user's account name.

jack@firefly:~$ groups jill@ad.example.com
jill@ad.example.com : domain users@ad.example.com ra_allowmediaaccess@ad.example
.com ra_allowcomputeraccess@ad.example.com ra_allowaddinaccess@ad.example.com ra
_allowshareaccess@ad.example.com ra_allowremoteaccess@ad.example.com wssusers@ad
.example.com ra_allowvpnaccess@ad.example.com ra_allowhomepagelinks@ad.example.c
om
jack@firefly:~$ groups jack
jack : jack adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev users lpadmin
jack@firefly:~$

You can also determine if a user has sudo privilege using groups username | grep -c sudo. If the result is 0, then the user does not have that privilege. If the result is 1, inciding that the grep command found username one in the output of the groups command, then the user has that privilege.

jack@firefly:~$ groups jill@ad.example.com | grep -c sudo
1
jack@firefly:~$

You can grant a user that privilege by issuing the command sudo usermod -aG sudo username from an account that already has the capability to run the sudo command.

jack@firefly:~$ sudo usermod -aG sudo mary
[sudo: authenticate] Password:
jack@firefly:~$

You can remove a user's account from the list of those allowed to run the command using the gpasswd command, which is part of the sysutils package by issuing the command sudo gpasswd -d username sudo.

jack@firefly:~$ sudo gpasswd -d mary sudo
Removing user mary from group sudo
jack@firefly:~$ groups mary | grep -c sudo
0
jack@firefly:~$

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

You can check the health of a NVM Express (NVMe) drive on an Ubuntu Linux system using the nvme-cli command-line interface (CLI) application. The description for the package is as follows:

NVMe management command line interface

nvme-cli is a NVMe management command line interface. NVM Express™ (NVMe™) is a specification defining how host software communicates with non-volatile memory across a PCI Express® (PCIe®) bus. It is the industry standard for PCIe solid state drives (SSDs) in all form factors (U.2, M.2, AIC, EDSFF).

You can install nvme-cli throught the App Center on a Ubuntu Linux system.

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[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

1. In the terminal window enter the command sudo hostnamectl set-hostname newname where newname is the new name you wish to assign to the system. E.g.:

   jim@Firefly:~$ sudo hostnamectl set-hostname Smaug
   [sudo: authenticate] Password: 
   jim@Firefly:~$

   That will change the host name stored in /etc/hostname.

2. Then edit the /etc/hosts file, replacing the old host name there with the new one. E.g., if I had the following lines in the hosts file, I would modify the second line containing the old host name.

   127.0.0.1 localhost
   127.0.1.1 Firefly
   

   The 127.0.0.1 in the above lines is the localhost IP address, a loopback address that can be used when troubleshooting network issues. Ubuntu also adds a 127.0.1.1 address in /etc/hosts with the name you have assigned to the system. The name should match the one in /etc/hostname, so change the name for the 127.0.1.1 address to the new name you wish to use.

References:

1. What is difference between localhost address 127.0.0.1 and 127.0.1.1
   Updated: April 2, 2021
   Ask Ubuntu

[/os/unix/linux/ubuntu] permanent link

To determine what process is listening on a particular TCP port on a Linux system, you can use the ss command. On a CentOS Linux system, the command can be found in the /sbin/ss directory. The utility is part of the iproute, or iproute2 package.

# which ss
/sbin/ss
# rpm -qf /sbin/ss
iproute-3.10.0-21.el7.x86_64
#

To see help information on the utility, you can use the command ss --help.

# ss --help
Usage: ss [ OPTIONS ]
       ss [ OPTIONS ] [ FILTER ]
   -h, --help           this message
   -V, --version        output version information
   -n, --numeric        don't resolve service names
   -r, --resolve       resolve host names
   -a, --all            display all sockets
   -l, --listening      display listening sockets
   -o, --options       show timer information
   -e, --extended      show detailed socket information
   -m, --memory        show socket memory usage
   -p, --processes      show process using socket
   -i, --info           show internal TCP information
   -s, --summary        show socket usage summary
   -b, --bpf           show bpf filter socket information

   -4, --ipv4          display only IP version 4 sockets
   -6, --ipv6          display only IP version 6 sockets
   -0, --packet display PACKET sockets
   -t, --tcp            display only TCP sockets
   -u, --udp            display only UDP sockets
   -d, --dccp           display only DCCP sockets
   -w, --raw            display only RAW sockets
   -x, --unix           display only Unix domain sockets
   -f, --family=FAMILY display sockets of type FAMILY

   -A, --query=QUERY, --socket=QUERY
       QUERY := {all|inet|tcp|udp|raw|unix|packet|netlink}[,QUERY]

   -D, --diag=FILE     Dump raw information about TCP sockets to FILE
   -F, --filter=FILE   read filter information from FILE
       FILTER := [ state TCP-STATE ] [ EXPRESSION ]
#

Or you can consult the manual page for ss using the command man ss.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/network] permanent link

I booted a PC from a USB flash drive on which I had installed Lubuntu Linux. I also plugged another flash drive into the system, but I didn't know where it was mounted. The hard disk drive (HDD) in the system was /dev/sda and I assumed the Lubuntu Linux bootable drive was /dev/sdb and the new drive would be /dev/sdbc. You can type for devlink in /dev/disk/by-id/usb*; do readlink -f ${devlink}; done at a shell prompt, which you can obtain on a Lubuntu system by clicking on the bird icon at the lower, left-hand corner of the screen and selecting System Tools then Qterminal, to see a list of the USB devices attached to a system.

lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ for devlink in /dev/disk/by-id/usb*; do readlink -f ${devlink}; done
/dev/sdc
/dev/sdc1
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$

You can find the location where a USB drive is mounted by issuing the mount command and then piping the output into the grep command to find information on just the particular drive in which you are interested.

lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ mount | grep sdc
/dev/sdc1 on /media/lubuntu/EMTEC C450 type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,rela
time,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=is
o8859-1,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$

In this case, I knew the USB flash drive was a 16GB Emtec device and I was able to see it was mounted at /media/lubuntu/EMTEC C450. I was then able to view the files and folders for the drive from the shell prompt.

lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ ls /media
cdrom  lubuntu  root
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ ls /media/lubuntu
'EMTEC C450'
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ ls /media/lubuntu/'EMTEC C450'
 EMTEC.icns   EMTEC.ico  'System Volume Information'   autorun.inf
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$

References:

1. How do I figure out which /dev is a USB flash drive?
   Date: September 16, 2008
   superuser

[/os/unix/linux/lubuntu] permanent link