Saturday, January 18, 2014

How to Fix Windowless / Buttonless Windows in XFCE


If XFCE is not displaying window borders or buttons, give the following command a try:

sudo xfwm4 --replace

If this doesn't help, try this:

sudo rm -rf ~/.cache/sessions

Then restart xfce (or the system, if you prefer).

Tested on ubuntu 12.04.3

Fixing Slow Thunar in Ubuntu-based distros

If you are using XFCE on an ubuntu-based distro (e.g. Xubuntu, Linux Mint), the thunar file browser might take a very long time to load when first run. After the first run, it will probably perform normally.

To fix I found a solution online that was very simple:

Edit /usr/share/gvfs/mounts/network.mount and change the line AutoMount from true to false.

The flipside is that network drives (e.g. samba) will not auto mount. These can be accessed with the network:/// location in the left pane.

YMMV!

How to Mount and Recover an encrypted home folder in Ubuntu Linux

So you've broken your linux install and can't get at your /home folder because it's encrypted? All hope is not lost.

1. Boot an ubuntu 11.04 or higher LiveCD.

2. Open a terminal and figure out where the /home folder resides (this will most likely be /dev/sda1).

3. Mount the drive - sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

4. Run sudo ecryptfs-recover-private

You will be prompted for your passphrase.

If all goes as planned, will provide you with a mount point (e.g. /tmp/ecryptfs.YttGfdzx)


If you wish to browse the /home directory, run your file manager as superuser from the terminal prompt - for example:

gksu thunar /tmp/ecryptfs.YttGfdzx
gksu nautilus  /tmp/ecryptfs.YttGfdzx