All My Problems in One Little Place

[wizzlefish]

Well, within the first few days of installing Ubuntu, I ran into a numerous amount of problems, most of them caused because I had no clue what I was doing.

Problem #1: When I copied some data from a CD, it came in as read-only, so I did "sudo chmod -R 777 ~/". I thought I knew what I was doinog, but as it turns out, my .dmrc file needs to have 644 permissions. So I did "sudo chmod 644 ~/". But that gave me even more errors. So I have no clue what to do about this. fixed

Problem #2: (This probably has nothing to do with Linux, but it's a problem). I installed Thunderbird, which went pretty smoothly, although I don't know what directory it's in. So I set my Gmail account up with Thunderbird, and I got 1328 or so messages, which I spent half an hour sorting out and deleting, etc. Then I tried to send a message, and it gave me a "5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first 64sm610030wra." I don't know what that means. fixed

Problem #3: I was customizing the top panel and the GAIM tray icon disappeared, along with the little separator between the clock and the rest of the panel. How do I get it back? Is there any way I can reset the panel to sometime yesterday.

Problem #4: There are these weird minimizing and maximizing animations when I do those actions with any window I do that with. What's wrong? fixed

Thanks in advance.

[aysiu]

Well, within the first few days of installing Ubuntu, I ran into a numerous amount of problems, most of them caused because I had no clue what I was doing.

Same thing happened to me when I first installed Ubuntu--it's all part of the learning process.

Problem #1: When I copied some data from a CD, it came in as read-only, so I did "sudo chmod -R 777 ~/". I thought I knew what I was doinog, but as it turns out, my .dmrc file needs to have 644 permissions. So I did "sudo chmod 644 ~/". But that gave me even more errors. So I have no clue what to do about this.

Even though your .dmrc file needs 644 permissions, I think the rest of your /home directory should be something like 755. I don't know if the sudo command itself might have screwed up your permissions. Try doing this:

chmod -R 755 ~/
sudo chmod 644 ~/.dmrc

Problem #3: I was customizing the top panel and the GAIM tray icon disappeared, along with the little separator between the clock and the rest of the panel. How do I get it back? Is there any way I can reset the panel to sometime yesterday.

Have you tried right-clicking on the panel and selecting "Add to Panel"?

Problem #4: There are these weird minimizing and maximizing animations when I do those actions with any window I do that with. What's wrong?

Go to Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor > Apps > Metacity > General > Reduced Resources. Make sure that box is checked/ticked. Then go to System > Preferences > Assistive Technology Support and enable that.

Edit: Would it be easier to just reinstall?

It probably would, but you wouldn't learn as much.

[wizzlefish]

Try doing this:

chmod -R 755 ~/
sudo chmod 644 ~/.dmrc

I tried that, but maybe doing it again will work.

Have you tried right-clicking on the panel and selecting "Add to Panel"?

Yes, and the little Gaim icon isn't in the list.

Go to Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor > Apps > Metacity > General > Reduced Resources. Make sure that box is checked/ticked. Then go to System > Preferences > Assistive Technology Support and enable that.

Thanks, that worked perfectly.

[aysiu]

Yes, and the little Gaim icon isn't in the list.

Sorry. You should be looking for something called System Tray or Notification Area.

[Nuwanda]

Problem #3: I was customizing the top panel and the GAIM tray icon disappeared, along with the little separator between the clock and the rest of the panel. How do I get it back? Is there any way I can reset the panel to sometime yesterday.

You probably removed the notification area.

From http://gaim.sourceforge.net/faq.php#q32:
"If you're using Gnome you need to make sure that your panel has a Notification Area on it. To add one, right click on the panel, select Add To Panel->Utility->Notification Area. Gaim will insert the tray icon in any System Tray implementation that conforms to these standards, so feel free to write one for your window manager of choice."

[foreverhope]

Just curious as to how you resolved the issue with GAIM and the notificiation area...I seem to be having the same problem. Thx.

[Larry Hand]

I had a problem where gaim would not put its icon in the notification area. This happened after I installed a complete Debian system and loaded a backup of my home directory.

When I installed gaim and selected the system tray icon, a small window would open on the screen with only the little icon in it. I tried restarting gaim, X, completely logging out, even restarting, nothing worked.

Finally I removed all panel notification areas from my screens (I have two monitors), re-added the notification areas, and voilà, it worked.