Linux, Elementary and the problem with temp files

One legacy of more than fifteen years using Linux is complacency.  some of us are so used to Linux being pretty well bulletproof that we forget it has changed.  And it has grown.  I fall for this all the time.  A root file system of a grew hundred megabytes used to be plenty.  Later as Linux distributions grew I started making root about two, then four gigabytes.  Over the last few years I installed into root partitions of fourteen and twenty gigabytes.  Now I find my Elementary OS Freya is taking all but three and a half of the fourteen gigabytes allocated to root.

This was not much of an issue in the past, but with NBN in Australia we have significantly increased our ability to move data around.  And as someone who likes playing with operating systems and graphics, not to mention editing video, I end up with large files in my /tmp directory.  This creates fairly regular warnings that my hard disk is low on space.

As an example, just now I decided to pull in a 1.6GB iso.  It wants to transit /tmp on the way to its eventual destination.  And there is only about 2GB space in /root.  Next time there's a major release of Elementary I will probably reformat my hard drive and allocate about 30GB to root.  For now though the simplest option is to make more room in /tmp.

Luckily in Linux the problem is relatively easy to solve.  First I need to redirect all saves to /root/tmp to my home directory.   So first I make a new /tmp under /home/user.   Then I send all 'current' tmp stuff there.  This applies to operations after Linux has actually booted.  There will be some files still going to /root/tmp, but most of them will be zero bytes in size.

Opening my text editor as root I can edit the environment file.

$  sudo kate /etc/environment          And on a new line enter the following:

TEMP=/home/user/tmp

Then save the file and reboot the computer.   whatever text editor you use can be substituted for kate.  gedit, kwrite, vi, whatever is in use at the moment.

Something to be aware of though is that things like lock files for the word processor and other functions will also be redirected to this /home/user/tmp directory.  So it is easy to kill stuff that shouldn't be 'made dead'.   If that is a concern, make the tmp directory hidden by putting a dot in front of it.  But remember to make the environment path read    TEMP=/home/user/.tmp      so the system can find it.

Elementary OS Freya and Docky - (by Ross Devitt)

I like Docky better than Plank.  And I do all sorts of things to Docky including making my own custom additions with their own icons to make it do stuff, because, well, it is simple.

But no matter that I have used it for years, occasionally I will find something it does that I simply didn;t know.  And a few minutes ago I found one trick.

I like to have the icons ZOOM larger as I move the mouse over them.  The normal way to change the zoom amount is to go into Docky Settings and select a dock, then adjust the zoom amount for that dock.  You can zoom up to 400% above the base icon size you have chosen.

Today I discovered quite accidentally that scrolling the mouse wheel over an icon on Docky while holding down the CTRL key will also allow you to change the zoom size.

No only that, but I can zoom far further than 400% as you can see in the screen shot!  Obviously this is a ridiculous amount of zoom, but there are times when I do adjust the zoom amount and this is a nice easy way to do it without going into settings.

Elementary across two monitors - Docky zoomed on primary screen with CTRL and mouse wheel
Wallpaper - One of the wallpapers that comes with Elementary OS

Elementary OS Freya - Desktop Switching with Two Monitors

Elementary OS Freya on Two Screens - Dolphin File Manager - and KIM (Right Click Image Menu)
Wallpaper - The Rocks - Nara Inlet, Whitsundays, Queensland Australia

Another one of my little annoyances with Elementary OS Freya has been solved.  I use two monitors and I often have related tasks across two screens on each workspace.  So my main workspace for example might be running my web browser on one screen, and either a video or a music player on the other.

Then I might switch to another workspace where I do my writing in Libre.  A third workspace might have whatever graphics I am working on, so GIMP or XARA or Inkscape might be on one screen along with Libre Office Draw, and my file manager and perhaps an image viewer on another screen.

The default setup with Elementary OS Freya was driving me nuts, because when I switched workspaces, only the primary display switched.  

Now, there are advantages to this, and one of them is that I can leave something like my to do list open all the time.  bt that can easily be accomplished by right clicking the title bar and choosing 'Always on visible workspace'.

Our friends at Reddit.com however have discovered the solution, and I'll paraphrase their answer here, because I am sure to forget it myself some time.

That behavior changed on Freya.  You can set it with dconf-editor. 

Go to org.gnome.mutter and uncheck workspaces-only-on-primary.

If you are using Elementary OS Freya and don;t see dconf-editor you should be able to find it in Software Sources, alternatively Google it and install it.

Once installed, if it doesn;t show in your menu, simply type dconf into the search box in your menu and it should appear.

Obviously if you want to switch back to having only the main screen swapping workspaces, just go into dconf-editor and check the box again.

Why NBN Fibre?

Ok, I've been a bad blogger again.  But this is not written for public audience.  It is written to remind me of 'stuff' and as a reference for a few friends.  If others find things that are useful - great.

In Australia we are undergoing the process of replacing our old copper wire based communication system with optical fibre, wireless and satellite.  The overhaul will do a number of things. 

Firstly, and most important, it will remove the issue of privacy across the communications network.  Anything and everything will be able to be tracked, traced, recorded and stored for future reference.  It is not as if this was not done in the past.  but the new technology makes it easier and faster to access and store pretty well everything that happens in a the life of a person or organisation.  George Orwell's 1984 just happened to mature thirty years later than it began.

People think the loss of individual privacy has been sneaking in for the last dozen or so years, especially with the advent of smarter phones and devices which provide location information about users.  But even before we had the Internet, it was possible to track users of computer systems using more primitive means to connect to each other.  Internet Protocol simply made it easier and the availability of Internet services to the general public, which happened in Australia around 1991, has opened up our daily lives to snooping.

Ok, so much for the privacy issue.  What about the good things NBN will bring.

Mention the NBN and people almost immediately think 'faster Internet'.  But that is the tail end of the puppy.  The first thing that the NBN should do is provide clearer and better voice connections.  There is a trade off in that because where the copper network will continue to run in an emergency as long as the exchange is operating, the NBN only has backup power for about 5 hours.  That can easily be remedied by connecting a 10 Watt solar panel to your backup battery.  Quite illegal, but easy enough to do.

It is on the Internet side of things though, where it gets interesting.  ADSL2+ was a great leap forward, because over the years the Internet has grown so much it began to slow down.  With the emergence of Google's advertising system, it has slowed to a crawl. 

Google is the biggest bottleneck in Internet speed.  Every time you open a web browser and look for or at a page, Google and various other advertising entities are there trying to find out where you are, where you have been, and guessing where you might go.  There are programs and add-ons available for your browser that allow you to see this happening, and it is scary to watch all the computers connected to yours at any one time.

So as the Internet is choking, speeds are increasing.  Our ADSL2+ was supposed to take us from 1.5Mbps to 20Mbps, but the best we ever saw from it was around 11Mbps.  Moving to the NBN, we pay the same amount for Internet and voice line rental.  By moving to a 100% Australian company called AUSBBS, we habe also more than doubled the amount of data we can use, again, for the same price we were paying for a 50GB download limit.

Now two things that stand out in real terms in our plan, are the speed and the data flow.  First, the speed we can connect is fairly consistent. and second, the data is there to make use of the new exciting things that the Internet can now be used for.

Speed:
The NBN does not magically make web pages appear instantly.  In fact many people are disappointed when they first open their browser and see that pages still load slowly.  This is not the fault of the NBN connection.  It is mostly a function of the servers you are connected to and how fast they can get the information out to you.

But as soon as you connect to a fast server you will see the difference.  For example, I often download iso files of operating systems.  Each file is about 1.2 Gigabytes in size.  on ADSL2+ at supposedly 20Mbps, it takes around 20 to 30 minutes to download one of these  files.  On NBN supposedly at around the same speed, the reality is that the fibre network lets me download that file in around 7 to 10 minutes!

It doesn't stop at file downloads.  Using things like YouTube to watch video suddenly becomes practical at higher definitions.  And having more than one person watching a video and downloading stuff is suddenly viable.

All this is at the relatively low 25Mbps download speed.   The Internet now becomes a proper entertainment delivery service.  Computer to computer communications using tools like Skype are much clearer (as long as both parties are on NBN fibre).

There's another bonus.  Upload speeds are, in y case, about 10 times as fast as they were on ADSL2+  That means if I still had my web building business, I could maintain customers' sites far more efficiently.  And in a private home situation, I can make use of those handy things like cloud storage at last, because I no longer have to wait half a day for a file to upload!

Overall, the NBN experience is worthwhile.  You can get a lot more than you have been paying for by switching from ADSL to NBN.

The Magic Bullet Solution

There is a popular small kitchen appliance called The Magic Bullet.  It is supposed to be a compact and powerful food processor, able to do wonderful things.

Brekky Time Musings

Away from the subject of computers for a moment and back to day to day life.  I've written before about coffee and how I prefer my cheap boiler coffee machines to the expensive ones.  The little Krups 871 Espresso Bravo, even though it is old, makes espresso that tastes thick and sweet, even before milk is added and the espresso from that boiler type machine can always be drunk black with no sugar.

Odds

This blog is not being used much.  For that matter neither are my Whitsundays blogs at present while I am not sailing.  So maybe I will just write some random stuff here to make use of the space.

Finders...

In the early 1990's I had a web space called Whitsunday Wandering on what was then a GEOCITIES community called, appropriately The Tropics.  There I wrote about living and sailing in Australia's Whitsunday Islands aboard my catamaran, Storm Season, and in Leisurely, my Hartley 18 Trailer Sailer.