Frustrated newb with questions

[stuartv]

For accessing Exchange, I would recommend you try the DavMail Gateway software in combination with Thunderbird+Lightning or Evolution.
DavMail will translate Exchange resources to industry standard IMAP/SMTP (mail), LDAP (Addresses) and CalDav (Calendar). It supports custom proxies.

In its basic incarnation, all you need is an OWA (Exchange) URL. The user authentication is piped from your mail client through the DavMail gateway. The gateway is typically accessed though a local port e.g. http://localhost:1080/users/[username]/calendar for CalDav.

Cheers!

Thanks, Lewis! I will check that out!

[stuartv]

Sorry, I don't know anything about VMWare and little about virtualization, but I do know you can find where all files related to an installed package are unpacked on a system by running

dpkg-query -L package_name

Hope that helps you find the kernel headers.
Also if you want to install software, I find the command line tools to be much more useful than software-center- look up the man pages for apt-get and apt-cache.

cortman, I executed that command and got this:

stuartv@ubuntu:~$ dpkg-query -L linux-headers-generic
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/linux-headers-generic
/usr/share/doc/linux-headers-generic/copyright
/usr/share/doc/linux-headers-generic/changelog.gz

I looked in those folders and don't see any actual headers file or any documentation that tells me the path to the installed headers.

[Impavidus]

linux-headers-generic is a metapackage that depends on linux-headers-<some version>-generic, which contains the actual headers.

[stuartv]

Nevermind, cortman.

I found the headers.

/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-25-generic/include

My reinstall of the VMWare Tools appears to be proceeding successfully now. Actually, just finished. Apparently, successfully.

Thanks again for the help.

[stuartv]

linux-headers-generic is a metapackage that depends on linux-headers-<some version>-generic, which contains the actual headers.

Got it. So how would I know what actual package it installed, so that I could run the command to tell me where they are? Looking in the Ubuntu Software Center, it just tells me I installed linux-headers-generic.

[stuartv]

Annnnd... now I'm hosed again.

The first time I installed Ubuntu (yesterday), it came up and was running. Networking was flaky (as described earlier), so I restarted the VM (using the menu at the top right). It started rebooting, displayed the Ubuntu splash screen, then hung with a black screen just showing "[ OK ]" in white, at the upper right. I tried doing a "reset" on the VM and it did the same thing. I ended up deleting the VM and creating a new one and installing again. That's what I was running the rest of yesterday, up until just now.

Just now, the VMWare Tools finished reinstalling and it told me I should reboot. So I did. Again, using the menu at the upper right to do a Restart. It shutdown and started booting up and now it has done the same thing as yesterday. Ubuntu splash screen, then black, with [ OK ] at the upper right.

Oh, and I tried hitting Enter yesterday and today. Nothing. It just sits there, hung. it does show a blinking cursor, and when I hit return, the cursor moves down a line and all the way to the left. But, that's it.

Any more suggestions? I'm going to start a thread on the VMWare support forums on this.

[stuartv]

Sonuvagun! I did VM/Restart Guest about 3 times, and on the third time, it booted back up and let me login. I did another Restart (from the Ubuntu menu) and it did it again - booted to a black screen and hung. Did VM/Restart Guest a couple more times and it booted up again and let me login.

Also, each time I do VM/Restart Guest, it displays some messages. The first is:

acpid: exiting

then some others

Then:

* Asking all processes to terminate [OK]
* Killing all remaing processes [fail]

or words to that effect. Anybody have any idea what's going on??

[stuartv]

Final update on this:

I blew away my VM and created a new one from scratch. This time, I did not do the VMware "easy install". I created an empty VM then "inserted" the Ubuntu VM and powered on the VM, then went through the normal Ubuntu install process. When it finished, everything seemed fine and I logged in then restarted the system 3 or 4 times, with no problems.

Then I installed the VMware Tools. And my boot problems were back, just like that.

I think I'm going to just blow it away again and create it again without the VMware Tools and leave it that way for now. I started a thread on the VMware support forum about this. Hopefully, VMware will come out with updated Tools soon. Being able to copy and paste between host and guest is pretty handy sometimes....

[mastablasta]

A person who doesn't know Windows would still (I believe) pretty easily find Event Viewer, just by clicking on Start, knowing generally what he or she wants, and looking through the menus. I could not find Log Viewer because the UI didn't help me (like the Windows UI does). In Windows, you click the Start button and the next things you need to look at are presented on the screen near where you clicked. With the Dash Home button, I clicked on it (at the top left of my screen) and the next thing I NEEDED to look at turned out to be small icons that are grey, on a translucent grey background, at the very bottom of the screen. With 1920x1200 resolution, that's a long way away, visually. As a developer who was been building user interfaces for over 25 years, my assessment is that this particular part of the UI is significantly inferior to what Windows is providing for the same use case.

Not in windows 8. and in unity everything is about search. so you click dash and type in view log.

I didn't start this thread to be a Linux vs Windows thing, but I don't see how anybody can take Ubuntu seriously as a candidate to replace Windows (7, anyway - it seems way better than the travesty that is Windows 8) on the average user's PC. I can't think of anybody I've run across who had to be referred to some website to read up on how to use Windows 7 for normal stuff (e.g. basic setup, web browsing, email, Office-type applications). They just start using it and are able to (generally) figure it out.

yah because everyone is born with that knowledge... they know where things are because they've been using it since probably childhood. and i have plenty of co workers that do not know where to find such things as for example the command prompt.

the commands are given becuase someone else might have same problem as you and these commands work in all desktop environments (the default Unity&Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, IceWM, Openbox, E17....). furthermore they often work across linux distributions. so even someone not running ubuntu can get help by reading the forums.

i seriously consider linux as windows replacement. there are many here that already did the switch.

now then speaking of various distributions and options and since you desperatelly want windows like interface then have a look at Kubuntu (it's what i use since i do not get along with Unity as well). if you want the XP feel then right click on K and use classic menu. another option is Xubuntu which you can easily modify to look like windows.

i think windows copied a lot of stuff form KDE (kubuntu) and probably vice versa....: http://www.kubuntu.org/feature-tour

[stuartv]

Not in windows 8. and in unity everything is about search. so you click dash and type in view log.

I agree. I already pointed out that Windows 8 sucks!

yah because everyone is born with that knowledge... they know where things are because they've been using it since probably childhood. and i have plenty of co workers that do not know where to find such things as for example the command prompt.

Fortunately, the average Windows user almost never needs to use the command prompt - though you can invoke it from the Start/All Programs/Accessories menu.

the commands are given becuase someone else might have same problem as you and these commands work in all desktop environments (the default Unity&Gnome, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, IceWM, Openbox, E17....). furthermore they often work across linux distributions. so even someone not running ubuntu can get help by reading the forums.

This is a Ubuntu forum, right? I'm asking questions about Ubuntu, as it comes out of the box.

i seriously consider linux as windows replacement. there are many here that already did the switch.

now then speaking of various distributions and options and since you desperatelly want windows like interface then have a look at Kubuntu (it's what i use since i do not get along with Unity as well). if you want the XP feel then right click on K and use classic menu. another option is Xubuntu which you can easily modify to look like windows.

I don't "desperately want" a Windows interface. But, as I said up front, ONE of the reasons I'm jumping into Ubuntu is to evaluate the platform for suitability to replace Windows on the desktops of the various people that use me for support - e.g. my parents. So, I'm asking questions to get answers that would work for those kinds of users. And I can assure you that I will not be putting my parents on a platform where the standard answers to common, ordinary user questions come in the form of "go to a command prompt and type xyz -blahblahblah" Oh, and make sure you get the case exactly right. Oh, and wait, you're using the Bourne shell? Sorry, that command works for csh. I'll have to give you a different command for the shell you're using.

This is the newb subforum, right? For Ubuntu, right? If every newb question cannot be answered without resorting to command line interfaces (with a presumption of Ubuntu, as it comes out of the box), then I'd say that, well, there are other, more user-friendly (or, perhaps, newb-friendly would be more accurate?) operating systems for a newb to use.

i think windows copied a lot of stuff form KDE (kubuntu) and probably vice versa....: http://www.kubuntu.org/feature-tour

My other reasons for jumping into Ubuntu involve, essentially, learning the modern Linux platform as it is the platform for a few different software development projects I have in mind working on in the mobile and embedded systems spaces. So, I'm not particularly concerned about the how-to details of Unity or Gnome or KDE or any of those others, for myself. Like I said, wanting to understand Ubuntu - as it comes out of the box - from an "average user" perspective is just one of my goals.