Increasing window resize corner in Ubuntu 12.04

Resizing a window in Unity/Ubuntu 12.04 is quite a pain as one needs to target the 1 pixel border of the lower right corner. Fortunately the width can be increased: Edit /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml and increase the widths, i.e.: <distance name="left_width" value="8"/> <distance name="right_width" value="8"/> <distance name="bottom_height" value="8"/> Log out and in again.

Ubuntu: physical power button not working

At some point the physical power button on my file server (ubuntu 12.04) stopped working and I had to do a software shutdown everytime. The solution is to (re) install acpi: sudo apt-get install acpi sudo apt-get install --reinstall acpi-support

mdadm woes

After migrating a software RAID 5 to Ubuntu LTS 12.04, the system wouldn't come up again after rebooting. I believe Chris Siebenmann to splendidly have analysed [1] the problem: a race condition with udev losing the race. His solution is to: Change /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/mdadm-functionsas follows: degraded_arrays() { + udevadm settle mdadm --misc --scan --detail --test >/dev/null … Continue reading mdadm woes →

CRTL+Space not working in Ubuntu applications

For some time now content assist and the command panel have been broken in Eclipse and Ubiquity running under Ubuntu; they wouldn't trigger the pop-up menues when pressing CRTL+Space. The reason is ibus intercepting that key combination and it's just as easily solved [1]: Open gconf-editor. Choose desktop -> ibus -> general -> hotkey. Open … Continue reading CRTL+Space not working in Ubuntu applications →

Changing sub-pixel rendering in Ubuntu 12.04

In older Ubuntu releases one could change the sub-pixel rendering in the system settings, but that option was unfortunately removed in newer releases. Fortunately it is still accessible via gnome settings [1]: Open dconf-editor In the left pane, go to /org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/xsettings In the right pane, change the value of the rgba-order key to bgr: or … Continue reading Changing sub-pixel rendering in Ubuntu 12.04 →