General desktop questions

[Alex]

Hi,

I have  few questions about how to accomplish some things on the
desktop, and hoped someone could help.

- How can I change the highlighting of text using the mouse in a
Terminal to automatically copy without having to right-click then
Copy, and paste automatically by clicking the right-mouse button,
similar to how putty works?

- How can I attach a file to an email in Thunderbird that is on a
samba share? I've mounted the share in the file browser, then dragged
it over to the email, but Thunderbird responds with a permission
denied type of error, like the file either isn't accessible in
Thunderbird, or is only shared from within the File Browser. I've also
tried going through Thunderbird, but there doesn't appear to be a way
to connect to a network share, only the local disk.

- How can I create the ability for a normal user from within GNOME to
either be prompted once for the root password for administrative
tasks, or be able to start X11 as a normal user, yet have the ability
to perform root administrative functions like mount devices or create
new printer shares?

Thanks,
Alex

[Chris Tyler]

On Mon, 2010-08-23 at 21:47 -0400, Alex wrote:
> How can I change the highlighting of text using the mouse in a
>
> Terminal to automatically copy without having to right-click then
> Copy, and paste automatically by clicking the right-mouse button,
> similar to how putty works?

Almost all X applications handle fast-paste, a simple yet gloriously
useful feature:
(1) Select the text using the primary (usually left) mouse button. This
makes it the "primary selection" (which is separate from the clipboard).
(2) Paste the primary selection by pressing the middle mouse button at
the destination. If you have a scroll-wheel mouse, press the scroll
wheel in; if you have a 2-button mouse, press both buttons at the same
time (may not be configured for all hardware).

Note that this is not limited to pasting in text -- for example, most
browsers accept fast-paste of URLs anywhere on the page that's not a
link or input field, in which case they will open the URL.
> How can I create the ability for a normal user from within GNOME to
>
> either be prompted once for the root password for administrative
> tasks, or be able to start X11 as a normal user, yet have the ability
> to perform root administrative functions like mount devices or create
> new printer shares?

You don't want a normal user to be able to do 'root administrative
functions' -- that road leads to grief and malware.

However, see 'man pam_timestamp' for information on adjusting the
administrative authentication timeout.

-Chris

[Alex]

Hi,
> > How can I change the highlighting of text using the mouse in a
> >
> > Terminal to automatically copy without having to right-click then
> > Copy, and paste automatically by clicking the right-mouse button,
> > similar to how putty works?
>
> Almost all X applications handle fast-paste, a simple yet gloriously
> useful feature:
> (1) Select the text using the primary (usually left) mouse button. This
> makes it the "primary selection" (which is separate from the clipboard).
> (2) Paste the primary selection by pressing the middle mouse button at
> the destination. If you have a scroll-wheel mouse, press the scroll
> wheel in; if you have a 2-button mouse, press both buttons at the same
> time (may not be configured for all hardware).

I changed the Keyboard Shortcuts "Paste" function to Shift-Insert, and
now copy doesn't appear to work correctly. It may be coincidental, but
now the only way to copy is to right-click and select copy, after
highlighting text.

I should be able to highlight text with the mouse and immediately
paste, correct?

How can I disable email addresses from becoming hyperlinks?

Thanks,
Alex

[Ted Roche]

Alex:

I don't have the answers to your questions, but a couple suggestions
on how you might increase your chances of getting the right answers:

1. Post a new message to the list with a subject that relates to the
question you're asking. "General Desktop Questions" is an
un-informative subject line. Many people may have passed it over just
for that reason.

2. One question, or at least related questions, to a message thread.
The questions you've asked on this thread have been answered, and now
you have new ones. Let this thread close, and start a new one. Someone
searching the archives will be grateful for short threads with few
questions and their answers.

3. Be very specific and supply all the relevant information you can.
Folks are not interested in having to ask you a batch of questions
about your question: what operating system are you using? what kind of
a machine are you running? What application are you running? What did
you try? What did you see? What were you expecting to see? What have
you already tried to solve your problem?

While you may think you're running "Fedora" and so is everyone else,
you'll be surprised how different many people's configurations are.
Help us to answer your questions by telling us what you're doing.

"How to ask questions the smart way"
http://catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html is an essay all of us
should read and review regularly. Take a look and see if it can help
you get better answers.

Good luck!

[Alex]

Hi Ted,
> I don't have the answers to your questions, but a couple suggestions
> on how you might increase your chances of getting the right answers:

Thanks for your input. I'm very surprised my questions were such that
you believed pointing me to the CATB doc was necessary; I'm not new at
this. I still think back to how cool it was to hang out at a bar with
ESR, Alan, David Miller, Maddog, and Linus after the Linux Expo in
Raleigh back in probably 1994. Doesn't make me a hacker by
association, but sure was a cool time.

I am new at the FC13 desktop -- I'm only now trying Linux on the
desktop for the first time in quite a few years, after having given up
on it many years ago do to lack of the functionality I needed.

Perhaps "General Desktop Questions" is a bit too broad, but creating
five different posts for basic questions about the desktop that I
wasn't sure were my usability difficulties or otherwise.

For example, in Windows Firefox I can type a Google search term in the
location bar, but not in FC13. Is this configurable?

I've got a basic font question, but will open a new thread for that :-)

Thanks,
Alex

[Suvayu Ali]

On 30 August 2010 13:01, Alex  wrote:
> Hi Ted,
> > I don't have the answers to your questions, but a couple suggestions
> > on how you might increase your chances of getting the right answers:
> > Post a new message to the list with a subject that relates to the
> >
> > question you're asking. "General Desktop Questions" is an
> > un-informative subject line. Many people may have passed it over just
> > for that reason.

e.g. I did.
> For example, in Windows Firefox I can type a Google search term in the
> location bar, but not in FC13. Is this configurable?

You can set keywords for your search engines and do searches like this,

google <search_phrase>
yahoo <search_phrase>

(assuming google and yahoo are the keywords for ww.google.com and
www.yahoo.com respectively)

Or, you can hand edit the config variable
"browser.search.defaultenginename" in about:config to your preferred
search provider.

There are probably many more ways to do this, hence a separate thread
would be so much cleaner for the archive and easier for the next
person with a similar question.
> I've got a basic font question, but will open a new thread for that :-)
>
> Thanks,
> Alex

[Ted Roche]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Alex  wrote:
> Thanks for your input. I'm very surprised my questions were such that
> you believed pointing me to the CATB doc was necessary; I'm not new at
> this.

I'm a greybeard, too, but it doesn't hurt to consider many tactics to
get the answers you want. And if your question and its answer(s)
contribute back to the community pool of knowledge, all the better. No
offense was meant.

Well, some questions were related to "I'm trying to learn this darned
GNOME desktop thing." and some were Thunderbird and some are probably
related to the GNOME VFS thing I know little about and some are
related to the Nautilus UI. All related, but perhaps more or less so.
I guess I missed the common thread.
> Perhaps "General Desktop Questions" is a bit too broad, but creating
> five different posts for basic questions about the desktop that I
> wasn't sure were my usability difficulties or otherwise.

It's a fair argument, I agree. I was just suggesting how you might get
broader response. I could be wrong. It wouldn't be my first time ;)
> For example, in Windows Firefox I can type a Google search term in the location bar, but not in FC13. Is this configurable?

I'll betcha it is. What have you tried? Where have you looked?

I typed "configure Firefox address bar for Google search" into my
address bar, as apparently I've already done the thing you're looking
for. The first link,
http://www.techzilo.com/search-google-address-bar-firefox-google-chrome/,
which brought me an alternate suggestion to what suvaya ali suggests.

My about:config setting for keyword.URL is set to:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&am...

and that works for me.
> I've got a basic font question, but will open a new thread for that :-)

Great idea! Good luck with that!

[Chris Smart]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 11:47 AM, Alex  wrote:
> How can I change the highlighting of text using the mouse in a
>
> Terminal to automatically copy without having to right-click then
> Copy, and paste automatically by clicking the right-mouse button,
> similar to how putty works?

This is automatic - just highlight and click *middle* mouse button (or
left and right together).
It frustrates me when I have to use Putty 'cause it's all wrong! :-)

Keep in mind that if you re-highlight something, it will overwrite
what you had highlighted previously. If you use Firefox, add the
"Xclear" extension which is super helpful in this regard.
> How can I attach a file to an email in Thunderbird that is on a
>
> samba share? I've mounted the share in the file browser, then dragged
> it over to the email, but Thunderbird responds with a permission
> denied type of error, like the file either isn't accessible in
> Thunderbird, or is only shared from within the File Browser. I've also
> tried going through Thunderbird, but there doesn't appear to be a way
> to connect to a network share, only the local disk.

The file browser (Nautilus presumably) is using some fancy virtual
mounting (GVFS) to make your shares available. Thunderbird probably
doesn't use this, but GNOME's email client, Evolution, will probably
work the way you want it to.

For something to work in Thunderbird you'll probably need to mount the
remote share the old fashioned way. It'll be something like the
following (from memory, so might be wrong):

su -
mkdir /mnt/samba
mount -t cifs -o username=blah,password=blah
//[server-ip]/[share-name] /mnt/samba

Obviously, replace "blah" with the username and password for
authenticating to the remove server, and replace [server-ip] with the
real IP/resolvable name, like "samba-server" and [share-name] with the
real name of the share (possibly case sensitive), like "data".

If that works, you should be able to access the contents of the share
from the mountpoint you created, /mnt/samba. Therefore, point
Thunderbird to that directory and add your file.

If you want it permanently you'll add it to /etc/fstab (Google details).
> How can I create the ability for a normal user from within GNOME to
>
> either be prompted once for the root password for administrative
> tasks, or be able to start X11 as a normal user, yet have the ability
> to perform root administrative functions like mount devices or create
> new printer shares?

Do you mean, let the user mount devices, create shares, etc without
needing root's password? If so, I think this is controlled by
PolicyKit these days. I don't think there is a nice GUI front end for
configuring all that, but you could create your own file to override
the existing settings. Maybe putting something like this in
/var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/10-override-install.pkla
would work:

[Let me do stuff]
Identity=unix-user:[user];unix-group:[group]
Action=org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install
ResultAny=auth_self
ResultInactive=auth_self
ResultActive=auth_self

That will prompt the specified user or member of the specified group
to provide *their* password for authentication, else you need root's
password. Or, if you don't want them to authenticate at all and have
it just work, then replace "auth_self" with "yes".

If you want it for other tasks, you need to get the key file name (you
can usually see these under "details" when you're prompted for root's
password for authentication. When you have them, just add them to the
"Action" entry separated a comma.

See this:
http://skvidal.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/polkit-and-package-kit-and-changing-...

-c

[Chris Smart]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:23 PM, Chris Smart  wrote:
> If you want it for other tasks, you need to get the key file name (you
> can usually see these under "details" when you're prompted for root's
> password for authentication. When you have them, just add them to the
> "Action" entry separated a comma.

Not comma, semi-colon, i.e.
Action=org.freedesktop.packagekit.package-install;org.fedoraproject.config.firewall.auth

Also, you can get a list of all keys using pkaction, but you might not
know which ones apply to what (hence check when you're prompted to
authenticate).

-c

[Ted Roche]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 9:47 PM, Alex  wrote:
> How can I attach a file to an email in Thunderbird that is on a
>
> samba share? I've mounted the share in the file browser, then dragged
> it over to the email, but Thunderbird responds with a permission
> denied type of error, like the file either isn't accessible in
> Thunderbird, or is only shared from within the File Browser. I've also
> tried going through Thunderbird, but there doesn't appear to be a way
> to connect to a network share, only the local disk.

You can find the files through the Thunderbird Attach menu option by
browsing to your home folder (/home/alex, for example) and searching
for the .gvfs directory. You may need to hit Ctrl-H to show hidden
files in the dialog or Ctrl-L to edit the path. You can then navigate
to /home/alex/.gvfs/YourShareName/path/to/yourfilename.

[Alex]

Hi,
> You can find the files through the Thunderbird Attach menu option by
> browsing to your home folder (/home/alex, for example) and searching
> for the .gvfs directory. You may need to hit Ctrl-H to show hidden
> files in the dialog or Ctrl-L to edit the path. You can then navigate
> to /home/alex/.gvfs/YourShareName/path/to/yourfilename.

Apparently when I connected to the samba share through Nautilus it
didn't make it persistent across a reboot. How can I configure
Nautilus to mount the share permanently? It didn't seem to be an
obvious option.

Thanks,
Alex

[Chris Smart]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 3:17 AM, Alex  wrote:
> Apparently when I connected to the samba share through Nautilus it
> didn't make it persistent across a reboot. How can I configure
> Nautilus to mount the share permanently? It didn't seem to be an
> obvious option.

Maybe if you tick "Add bookmark" and give it a name?

-c

[Ted Roche]

On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Alex  wrote:
> Apparently when I connected to the samba share through Nautilus it
> didn't make it persistent across a reboot. How can I configure
> Nautilus to mount the share permanently? It didn't seem to be an
> obvious option.

There's more than one answer, depending on exactly what you want.

As Chris indicated, you can tick "Create a bookmark" and give the
share a name and then it will mount on demand each time you go to the
menu "Places" and select it from the list. The mount will persist for
the remainder of that desktop session. I generally prefer this method,
as I take my machine with me and often don't have that remote machine
available.

Alternatively, you can set up the share through the /etc/fstab file to
mount each time on startup. I don't know if there's a way to do this
through the GNOME GUI interface, I usually just open a terminal and
edit the file. You'll need to switch to the root user or use sudo to
edit that file.

[Chris Smart]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 12:27 AM, Ted Roche  wrote:
> You can find the files through the Thunderbird Attach menu option by
> browsing to your home folder (/home/alex, for example) and searching
> for the .gvfs directory. You may need to hit Ctrl-H to show hidden
> files in the dialog or Ctrl-L to edit the path. You can then navigate
> to /home/alex/.gvfs/YourShareName/path/to/yourfilename.

Thanks Ted! I didn't know you could do this :-)

-c

[Alex]

Hi,

Regarding attaching files in Thunderbird...
> You can find the files through the Thunderbird Attach menu option by
> browsing to your home folder (/home/alex, for example) and searching
> for the .gvfs directory. You may need to hit Ctrl-H to show hidden
> files in the dialog or Ctrl-L to edit the path. You can then navigate
> to /home/alex/.gvfs/YourShareName/path/to/yourfilename.

This worked, but creating a bookmark didn't, unless I'm doing it wrong.

The bookmarks to two network shares appear when in Nautilus, but not
in Thunderbird.

When in the "Attach Files" screen from within Thunderbird, I can
browse to the share through the .gvfs directory, and click "Add" in
the lower-left, but it appears there briefly then disappears again.

What could be the cause of this?

Thanks,
Alex

[Ted Roche]

On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 3:50 PM, Alex  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Regarding attaching files in Thunderbird...
>
> This worked, but creating a bookmark didn't, unless I'm doing it wrong.
>
> The bookmarks to two network shares appear when in Nautilus, but not
> in Thunderbird.

No, that's consistent with what I see. The Bookmarks available off the
Places menu pad in GNOME list the temporary shares/mounts that you've
created and saved as bookmarks. These don't show up in the "Attach"
dialog within Thunderbird. If you open the bookmarks in advance, the
mount shows up in the top part of the Attach dialog. I've resigned
myself to "that's how the Nautilus developers think it should work"
purely from empirical observation.
> When in the "Attach Files" screen from within Thunderbird, I can
> browse to the share through the .gvfs directory, and click "Add" in
> the lower-left, but it appears there briefly then disappears again.
>
> What could be the cause of this?

Poor UI design?

I've never tried this myself, and don't think that was the way it was
intended to be used. Of course, they shouldn't present an "Add" option
if they're not really going to honor your request.

[Tim]

On Mon, 2010-08-30 at 17:04 -0400, Ted Roche wrote:
> No, that's consistent with what I see. The Bookmarks available off the
> Places menu pad in GNOME list the temporary shares/mounts that you've
> created and saved as bookmarks. These don't show up in the "Attach"
> dialog within Thunderbird. If you open the bookmarks in advance, the
> mount shows up in the top part of the Attach dialog. I've resigned
> myself to "that's how the Nautilus developers think it should work"
> purely from empirical observation.

I can't see it really being another way.  It'd be pointless to have
website bookmarks in a file browser, unless you're planning to use it as
a strange download manager.  And mostly pointless to have local file
system bookmarks in a web browser.