Ubuntu 13.10 Permissions Fix: “This operation cannot continue since proper authorization was not provided” Halts Software Updater, Shutdown, Drive Mounting, DVD Playback, etc

If you’ve upgraded your Ubuntu system only to find you don’t have permission to do pretty much anything, as I did after upgrading to 13.10, it can be pretty annoying even for an advanced user, and downright scary for a novice. The symptoms are pretty obvious, as when you go to install updates, all you get is an error message saying “This operation cannot continue since proper authorization was not provided“. And using the Shutdown button seems to do nothing, and even using a terminal command to power off might see the shutdown process halt half-way through, forcing you to use the PC’s power button.

On top of that, even mounting removable drives (or other partitions on your internal drive) ends in being told you can’t, and even trying to play a DVD ends with “Unable to access “DVDVIDEO”. Not authorized to perform operation.”

While there are ways around all of these situations for more advanced users, those less experienced with Ubuntu/Linux would find it all quite daunting, and pretty much look at their system as unusable. And one shouldn’t have to go through the bother of manually mounting drives through the terminal, or invoking the Software Updater as superuser, or any other thing we usually take for granted.

Luckily, the fix – which involves PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) – is actually quite simple, and should have everything back to normal in no time.

In a terminal, enter the following command to edit the PAM authentication file for the LightDM display manager:

gksu gedit /etc/pam.d/lightdm

Under the first line “#%PAM-1.0” paste the following 2 lines:

session required pam_loginuid.so
session required pam_systemd.so

Save and exit the file, then log out and back in again, and all should now be fine (you shouldn’t need to reboot).

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Another method, which fixed the problem for some (but not in my case, and many others) is to run:

sudo pam-auth-update --force

This opens PAM‘s config within the terminal, at which you either check or uncheck items, or just hit Tab to go to OK, and hit Enter.

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If need be, like you have GDM installed and it is interfering with LightDM, run dpkg-reconfigure gdm and select lightdm (you may need to reboot).

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Kubuntu 13.10 Fix: KDE Login Failure “Could not start D-Bus. Can you call qdbus?”

If you’ve tried to login to your KDE desktop but only received an error message saying “Could not start D-Bus. Can you call qdbus?“, like I did after upgrading my system to 13.10, then this guide should help you. While this login failure may look ominous, it’s actually easily remedied by simply installing the package qdbus. If you have other login options than KDE, like Ubuntu/Unity, Gnome or another desktop environment, log into that and in a terminal run:

sudo apt-get install qdbus

You should be able to log into KDE after logging out of the desktop you were in (if not, all should be well after a reboot).

If you only have Kubuntu‘s KDE as a login option, then use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to a different TTY (teletype terminal), where you’ll be prompted to enter your username, then password, and at the command prompt you end up at, run the above command. Once qdbus is installed, enter sudo shutdown -r now (or sudo reboot) to reboot your computer, and you should now be able to reach your KDE desktop.

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How to Log Into Ubuntu Classic Desktop or Gnome Shell Instead of Unity

Beginning with 11.10, Ubuntu no longer ships with the old Gnome 2 “Classic Desktop“, but you can easily install it (or at least the Gnome 3 version) if you prefer it to the default environment, Unity. While Gnome has evolved to version 3 and its sleek and flashy Gnome Shell, the minimalist Classic desktop is still available as the “Fallback Mode“. Or you may be dying to try Gnome Shell, as it certainly gives Unity a run for its money, and the rapid development of extensions makes it better with each passing day.

Check out this guide on how to install Gnome Classic and/or Shell, log out once installed, open the login menu (should be an icon near your name, currently a gear), and choose either:

♣ GNOME: “Gnome Shell”
♣ GNOME Classic: The Gnome 3 version of the “Classic Desktop”
♣ GNOME Classic (No Effects): “Classic” for older PCs & video card issues
♣ Ubuntu: The default “Unity” environment
♣ Ubuntu 2D: “Unity” desktop for older PCs & video card issues

It’s as simple as that! You can now enjoy your new preferred desktop environment, or have fun jumping between them. And don’t forget, you easily can install many more desktop environments, like Kubuntu‘s KDE, and log in between them at will.

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Related tip (Gnome 2 Only): Ubuntu 11.04 Classic Desktop: How to Log Into The Old Gnome Environment Instead of Unity

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Ubuntu 11.04 Classic Desktop: How to Log Into The Old Gnome Environment Instead of Unity

Please note: This tip was written specifically for 11.04, which still came with the old Gnome 2 “Classic” desktop as an alternative to Unity. From 11.10 onwards, you will need to install the Gnome 3 Classic desktop, then choose “GNOME Classic” at the login screen. Also note that for any tips asking you to right-click the panel, in Gnome 3 you will need to hold Alt while doing so. And you can ignore the troubleshooting tip at the end, as Gnome 3 does not use Compiz-Fusion.

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Ubuntu‘s new default desktop in 11.04, Unity, was originally designed for the previous Netbook Edition release, with an emphasis on quickly accessing common tasks. While many absolutely love Unity, others aren’t as impressed yet, but admit it is a bold move forward, and will likely win them over as development progresses.

However, many feel it is too much like an annoying smartphone interface that should have stayed in a separate netbook edition, and others yet really have tried to give it a go, but have found it much too confusing. Then there are the rest of us that simply miss the panels we customised and made so useful.

But like with almost everything else about Ubuntu, you have a choice: you can either boot into the default Unity desktop, or to the old familiar Gnome desktop.

This is true even of fresh installs, as the “classic” Gnome 2.x desktop is also installed. Actually, if you upgraded from 10.10, you may have noticed that while it tried to boot into Unity afterwards, it failed, and that’s because Unity wasn’t even installed. Whatever your situation, it’s actually very easy to rectify this. And if you’ve already figured out how to get to the Classic Desktop, but are wondering what happened to all the panels and menus, then read ahead for the answer to that too.

Boot into the Ubuntu Classic Desktop:

When you get to the login screen, you will notice at the bottom there is a menu with the word “Ubuntu” in it. Click the arrow for the menu and you will notice it has a bunch of different login options, with the default being Ubuntu with the Unity desktop. Simply choose “Ubuntu Classic” instead, and proceed to login as usual.

Once you get to the desktop, you will either see your old familiar top panel with menus (if you upgraded), or pretty much a blank panel without menus (if you have a fresh install). If it is the latter, don’t worry, as this is easily rectified. The same is true in case you are missing the bottom panel or “taskbar“.

Restore Menus, Indicators, etc to Top Panel:

Simply right-click an empty area of the panel, choose + Add to Panel…, then scroll down and select Menu Bar, then click Add (or you can just double-click it to add it).

You will see the menu bar appear, with the 3 menus: Applications, Places and System. If the menu bar is not at the far-left (or beginning) of the top panel, just right-click it, choose Move, then drag it to where you want, and click there to finish the placement.

You system tray should be still be intact, as should your indicators, but if not, use + Add to Panel… to add a Notification Area (system tray), Indicator Applet (indicators next to the system tray), Clock (time and date), and Shut Down… (power down and restart options). Or you can use Indicator Applet Complete to restore much of that, including the status menu for instant messaging, and the menu for changing users.

Restore Missing Taskbar, Trash, etc:

If you’re missing the bottom panel, just right-click the top panel, choose New Panel, and a blank one should appear there (if it ends up left or right, just drag it to the bottom). Right-click that and choose + Add to Panel…, and this time choose Window List to restore your taskbar buttons. You can then also add Trash to the far-right, and also Show Desktop on the opposite end.

That should be it, and you should now be enjoying the classic Gnome desktop, which will be the default login option from that point forward.

Troubleshooting:

Are you in the Classic Desktop, but suspect parts of Unity are still there making things wacky? It could be that the Unity plugin for Compiz-Fusion is still activated. To disable it, open System > Preferences > CompizConfig Settings Manager; if it isn’t installed, just run sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager in a terminal.

Once open, scroll down to the Desktop section, where you will see Ubuntu Unity Plugin is enabled. Simply click the check box to the left of it, and it will disable it.

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Ubuntu Not Booting? Try Repairing Broken Packages in Recovery Mode

If your boot process is halting in a black screen after briefly showing the Ubuntu splash, here is something you can try. Note that because this involves repairing broken packages, this tip will probably be useless to most of you, quite simply because Ubuntu rarely suffers from such mishaps.

Many of you would be used to Windows boot problems due to corrupted files, or incorrectly installed drivers and programs, but this is hardly ever an issue in Ubuntu. However, it can occasionally happen, possibly more related to corrupted files than incompletely-installed packages. Whatever the cause, it’s worth trying to see if you can repair any faulty packages that may be preventing you from getting to your desktop.

It might not work, but it shouldn’t do any harm, so when you get to the GRUB boot loader, choose the Recovery Mode option below the default entry. When you get to a command-line login prompt, simply type your username, hit Enter, then enter your password, and hit Enter.

You will get to the Recovery Menu, on which you choose the dpkg option “Repair broken packages“. Note that you will need to be connected to the internet for it to retrieve the packages it needs.

You’ll see a lot of text fly by as it fetches packages and installs them. When prompted to reboot your computer, do so, and hopefully you end up at your login screen or desktop!

Reoccurring? Read This:

If you find this worked, but then find you have to do it again shortly thereafter, I would seriously recommend you test your hardware for errors. I’ve seen many a Windows installation die from faulty RAM corrupting important files, and while Ubuntu generally just refuses to boot when the memory chips start dying (which is a good thing because it means your system should still be intact after replacing the faulty modules), it’s worth running memtest from the boot menu to be sure. I recommend running the memory check for at least 2 “passes” (series of tests) just to be certain, as chips can pass all tests once, even twice, but in the third pass should show errors (it might help if the computer has been on for a while, as the errors might only occur once the chips are warm).

Also, check out your hard-drive’s health via software you can download at the manufacturers site. If the drive is starting to write data incorrectly, and even corrupting system files when they’re accessed, you’re not doing yourself any favours hanging onto it. Best to get a new hard-drive and see if you can successfully image your old system over to it, or just start again.

Lastly, it could be the CPU that’s having intermittent errors and causing such mishaps, or the motherboard it’s attached to is slowly on it’s way out, so it may be time to upgrade both. At least these days that is relatively cheap, and means you end up with a faster system.

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How to Add Drive/Partition/Device Mount-Point Paths with Spaces to FSTAB

Ubuntu is pretty awesome when it comes to automounting your drives and USB devices; in my experience, it is miles ahead of Windows, and it keeps getting better with each release. But for a greater level of control, you can’t beat the old-fashioned way: mounting your drives via fstab at boot.

While Ubuntu now mounts drives and partitions in folders with names based on the labels, which includes spaces in the names, fstab is a tad more touchy when it comes to this. If you try mounting a drive in fstab to a mount-point with a path name like /media/Windows XP, the mounting will fail because of the space. Usual methods to get around this, like close the path off with / (ie: /media/Windows XP/) or put it in quotes (ie: ‘/media/Windows XP’ or “/media/Windows XP”), will fail – but there is a solution other than replacing spaces with hypens or underscores.

Simply replace any spaces with \040, so your line in fstab should look something like:

UUID=1D666EVIL6661D /media/Windows\040XP

The drive will mount in the appropriate folder from then onwards (ie: /media/Windows XP), and there’s no need to reboot if you’re urgently trying to access a drive – simply open a terminal and run sudo mount -a to mount all devices in fstab.

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Just in case you are unfamiliar with fstab, the way you edit it is sudo gedit /etc/fstab. However, if you needed that bit of info, chances are you really shouldn’t be doing so, unless you’ve first read a little of the abundant info available out there on the subject of fstab and mounting drives in Ubuntu (and other Linux distros). The last thing you would want to do is render your system unbootable because you made an error in editing fstab. While this guide is just for how to deal with spaces in paths, still exercise caution if this is all new to you.

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How to Remove a Name from the User List in Ubuntu’s Login Screen

If you want to remove a specific user from the login (without disabling the whole user list), enter the following into a terminal:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --type list --list-type=string --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/exclude 'insertusernamehere'

Obviously, you’ll need to replace the last bit with the actual username in question.

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How to Disable/Enable the User List in Ubuntu’s Login Screen

Here are a couple of simple commands to use if you want to either disable the user list from the login screen, or enable it again if you have removed it and don’t know how to get it back. (Note that disabling the user list has already been covered in another article, so if the command below doesn’t work for you, try the alternative version).

Disable User List

In order to disable the user list, you’ll need to open a terminal and run the following command:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list true

Enable User List

If you’d like to re-enable the user list, you can revert the above command using:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list false

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Find Out How Many Reboots Before Ubuntu Forces a Filesystem Check (FSCK)

There is a handy little terminal command that can display how many reboots you have till the sytem forces fsck to scan the disk and filesystem for errors, which you can install with:

sudo apt-get install showfsck

Then all you need to do is run the following command:

sudo showfsck

It will output the info like:

16/35 mount(s) until fsck for /dev/disk/by-uuid/daf56d80-15b5-4314-9672-fd91d12a3bd6

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Ubuntu Security: Remove the User List Menu from the GDM Login Screen

A question I have seen around a bit is how to remove the user list from the GDM login screen, as for many supplying the names of users at login on shared computers is a security issue. After all, someone trying to log in just needs to figure out a password (while that’s the hard part, the security-minded look at that as already half way into the system).

For most of us, the user list is not needed anyway, as single users can opt to boot straight to the desktop, and users of shared computers don’t need a menu reminding them of what their names are. So, to remove the user menu from your login, enter the following in a terminal:

sudo gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --type Boolean --set /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list True

No user names will be displayed, and everyone logging in will have to type their user names rather than pick them from a menu.

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Read this for an Alternative Command for Disabling the User List, as well as one to Re-Enable it

… or this if you want to Remove a Specific User

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