Linux-specific Questions

Firefox won’t start (and it’s not already running)

Firefox probably didn’t close gracefully. You need to remove the lockfiles that were created before you will be able to start it again:

$ find ~/.mozilla/firefox/ -iname *lock*

Remove any relevant lockfiles and try starting Firefox again.

Firefox throws a weird error that starts with something like this

ASSERT: *** Search: _installLocation: engine has no file!
Stack Trace:
0:ENSURE_WARN(false,_installLocation: engine has no file!,2147500037)

This sometimes happens when you have Firefox running during an update. Restarting your browser should fix the issue.

PDF’s won’t open when I try to open them through Firefox

Set Firefox to use the Default PDF viewer in the file type options.

Prompt for password for GNOME keyring

Occasionally you might see an error when trying to do an ‘svn update’, you might see a prompt like the following:

Password for '(null)' GNOME keyring:

Remove the following file:

rm ~/.gnome2/keyrings/login.keyring

I can’t SSH to machine “X”; it tells me the connection was closed

Contact Sysnet and have them remove you from the hosts blacklist. Most often this occurs if you mistype your password too many times. Please refer to our Accessing hosts guide to prevent this from happening in the future.

Which machines am I allowed to use?

Access to Linux workstations are restricted by group. Determine which groups your account belongs to by running the id command. For each group listed, query the netgroup name service:

getent netgroup <group>

I was not required to use Linux before I arrived at Oden Institute. Is there a guide to help me understand how to use Linux?

In general, Google is your friend. The GNU/Linux distribution used at Oden Institute is Ubuntu. Therefore, most information about Ubuntu is available online will be applicable at Oden Institute. For information which is specific to the customized Oden Institute distribution, have a look at our Linux Guide.