Ubuntu GNOME Advanced Howto

Wiki Specific

1. Howto Get Involved with the Ubuntu GNOME Team.

2. Howto Get the Best out of the Ubuntu GNOME Wiki Area.

3. Howto Create a Wiki Page.

Device Management

Mount a USB flash drive via Terminal

Via the graphical user inteface of Ubuntu GNOME you can easily mount and then use a USB flash drive by plugging it in one of your computer's USB ports. In some special cases this task can be done throughout the command-line (via Terminal).

First of all, you need to create a mount point for the device (a directory where the device will be mounted). To create a new directory, run the following command:

• sudo mkdir /media/Label

You can change Label with the name you want your mounted device to appear in the /media folder. It is recommended not to use spaces, because things get complicated. In order to separate words, spaces can be substituted with a underscore.

To mount the device, run the following command:

• sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /media/Label

Where sdb1 stands for the plugged in the USB port device. But what does actually sdb1 mean?

• hda – the first installed IDE device (hard disk drive)

• hda1 – the first partition of the hda device

• hda2 – the second partition of the hda device, etc.

• hdb – the second installed IDE device (hard disk drive)

• hdb1 – the first partition of the hdb device, etc.

• sda – the first installed SCSI device (SATA hard disk drive or USB flash drive)

• sda1 – the first partition of the sda device, etc.

If you have only one SCSI device installed (SATA hard disk drive), its generated name is probably sda and your Ubuntu GNOME working partition is sda1. When you insert a USB flash drive in the USB port of your computer (e.g. it is another SCSI device), its name will be sdb and its working partition's name will be sdb1. If you add one more USB flash drive its names will be sdc for the device and sdc1 for its working partition respectively.

Unmount a USB flash drive via Terminal

To unmount a USB flash drive via Terminal, run the following command:

• sudo umount /dev/sdb1

Format a USB flash drive via Terminal

Most USB flash drives are formatted under the FAT32 filesystem. To format a USB flash drive in FAT32 via Terminal run the following command:

• sudo mkdosfs -n 'Label' -I /dev/sdb1 -F 32

Change File Permissions

When you start compiling source code, or even downloading .JAR files that you want to execute, you will need to learn to change file permissions. File permissions simply tell your computer who is allowed to do what to a certain file or folder in the file system. To learn more about permissions have a read on Wikipedia.

Via the GUI

For most beginner users, changing permissions via the graphics user interface (GUI) is the easiest. To do this, simply right click on the file whose permissions you want to change, and switch to the Permissions tab. From here, you can change individual users', groups', and others' read and write permissions, as well as allow the execution of the file as a program.

Via Terminal

In order to proceed, you will need to have an adequate understanding of both symbolic and numeric permissions notations. There is an in depth but brief explanation of this on Wikipedia.

To change file permissions via Terminal, first navigate to your target by running:

• cd /path/to/your/file/

Then,

• sudo chmod 0### yourfile.extension

where ### are replaced with the appropriate permissions for your needs.

User Account Management

If you are planning on having multiple users to use the operating system, it's a good idea to have several accounts. This can be accomplished by using the GUI or Terminal with equal effectiveness.

Create or remove a user account via the GUI

To add a user accout:

• Open System Settings from the shell, and click User Accounts.

• Then, click Unlock in the upper right-hand corner, and enter your root password.

• User accounts can be added using the + button in the lower left-hand corner.

To remove a user account:

• Select the user account you want to remove and click on the - (minus) button in the lower left-hand corner.

Create or remove a user account via Terminal

To add a user account, run the following commands with appropriate information:

• sudo adduser -d /home/newuser/ -m newuser

• sudo passwd newuser

• The password you want the user to have

• The same password again.

This would create a new account with the name newuser, and a home directory at /home/newuser. For more information on setting different parameters to your user account (e.g. root privilegies) visit this page.

You can also create a user account by running the following command:

• sudo useradd -c "newuser" -m -s "/bin/bash" newuser

For more information about advanced parameters of the useradd command visit this page.

To remove a user account, run the following command:

• sudo userdel newuser

This will remove the user account newuser from your operating system, but will not delete its home directory. If you want to keep the files of newuser, that’s good, but if you want to delete both the user account and the home directory, run the following command:

• sudo userdel -r newuser