Posts Tagged ‘reset’

Gnome Appearance modify command in Linux / How to change theme using command line in GNOME

Friday, October 13th, 2017

gnome-apperance-theme-modify-commands-in-linux-how-to-change-theme-using-commands-gnome-desktop-environment

 

1. Gnome Appearance modify command  in Linux instead – Intro

It is always handy to do stuff in console and as a GNU / Linux long time GNOME user I found it interesting to share here some nice tips on how Theme could be changed using command line.

Why would you ever want to change themes through console / Terminal? Well lets say you have to administrate remotely a bunch of GNU / Linux Desktop machines and you have to change themes simultaneously on a multiple hosts, changing theme using the command line then comes really handy.

Besides that in GNOME 3.X.X branch with Unity (yackes) if you have chosen to use GNOME (Flashback /Fallback) or Mate you might find it difficult to change some specifics of the default theme, that is especially true for GNOME (flashback) Fallback like me.

If you heard GNOME Flashback but you never used i and wonder what it is I think it is worthy to say few words about it:

GNOME Flashback is a session for GNOME 3 which was initially called "GNOME Fallback", and shipped as a stand-alone session in Debian and Ubuntu. It provides a similar user experience to the GNOME 2.x series sessions. The differences to the MATE project is that GNOME Flashback uses GTK+ 3 and tries to follow the current GNOME development by integrating recent changes of the GNOME libraries. The development currently lags behind a little but a lot of progress has been made in bug fixing lately. So in short GNOME Fallback is for anyone who wants to stick to GNOME 2.X interface but doesn't want to stick to Mate and wants still to use some more graphical goodies that comes with GNOME 3.

In MATE nowadays there is possibility to relatively Easy add / change appearance and add new themes, there is also the graphical tool called Appearance accessible via mate-control-center command or menus. Using Appearance you can modify themes and Window Decorations, however there is much more that can be done or tuned missing in the MATE GUI using a couple of GNOME desktop environment native commands.

 

2. List All Installed GNOME themes on Debian / Ubuntu Linux

 

 

$ ls -1 /usr/share/themes/|sed -e 's#/##g'
Adwaita
Adwaita-dark
Albatross
Arc
Arc-Dark
Arc-Darker
Blackbird
BlackMATE
Bluebird
BlueMenta
Blue-Submarine
Breeze
Breeze-Dark
Clearlooks
Clearlooks-Phenix
ClearlooksRe
ContrastHighInverse
Crux
Default
Dopple
Dopple-Left
DustBlue
Emacs
eOS
Flat-Plat
Flat-Plat-compact
Flat-Plat-dark
Flat-Plat-dark-compact
Flat-Plat-light
Flat-Plat-light-compact
GreenLaguna
Green-Submarine
Greybird
Greybird-accessibility
Greybird-bright
Greybird-compact
HighContrast
Industrial
Kiwi
Menta
Mist
MurrinaAquaIsh
MurrinaAzul
MurrinaBlau
MurrinaBleu
MurrinaBlu
MurrinaBlue
MurrinaCandido
MurrinaCandy
MurrinaCappuccino
MurrinaChrome
MurrinaCream
MurrinaCrystal
MurrinaCrystalCurve
MurrinaCrystalHuman
MurrinaCrystalLine
MurrinaDark
MurrinaEalm
MurrinaElement
MurrinaFancyCandy
MurrinaGilouche
MurrinaLoveGray
MurrinaNeoGraphite
MurrinaVerdeOlivo
Murrine-Gray
Murrine-Light
MurrineRounded
MurrineRoundedIcon
MurrineRoundedLessFramed
MurrineRoundedLessFramedIcon
Murrine-Sky
NOX
Orangine
Raleigh
Redmond
shearwater
Shiny
Spidey
Spidey-Left
Splint
Splint-Left
ThinIce
TraditionalGreen
TraditionalOk
WinMe

 


The All system installed theme location directory /usr/share/themes for RPM Linux-es Fedoras / CentOS etc. are identication

 

 

3. Change GTK Theme


Below commands are for GNOME 3 based desktop environments this includes also any other GNOME based Graphical Environments or components of GNOME 3 such as (Ubuntu Unity, GNOME 3 Shell/Classic, Cinnamon), and even the old GNOME 2 desktop.

In GNOME 2 it was possible to set various variables directly from gconf-editor including GTK Themes but in GNOME 3 somehow this is no more … so to do we need to use some cryptic commands or use gnome-tweak-tool or MyUnity (Ubuntu Linux users with Unity) but configuration that can be made with them is unfortunately partial so in any case knowing below commands is a necessity to be able to tune up nicely your Linux Gnome Desktop.

And yes it is crazy why on Earth gnome developers scaped out the configuration from gconf-editor and left us with this user unfriendly method. Could it be that someone (Like the big corporations) has the interest to ruin Free Software?? What do you think…
 

Unity, GNOME 3 Shell/Classic, Cinnamon

In Unity GNOME 3 Shell / Classic and Cinnamon (the default Debian graphical env).

Before we start I recommend you check out what is the current installed and enabled theme, you might want decide to keep it after checking the number of themes available. To check your current installed GNOME theme run:

 

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme
'Adwaita'


You see I have 'Adwaita' theme as a default.
Next lets change the gnome GTK theme interface.
 

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme "Menta"

 


MATE (In Linux Mate the current fork of GNOME 2 for hardcore GNOME 2 users)

 

mateconftool-2 –type=string –set /desktop/mate/interface/gtk_theme "Menta"

 


GNOME 2 (In native GNOME 2 if you still own some old machines with old Debian / Ubuntu / Fedoras etc.

 

 

gconftool-2 –type=string –set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_theme "Menta"

 


4. Change WINDOW THEME (Metacity)
 

Unity, GNOME 3 Classic (Metacity), GNOME 3 Shell (Metacity > Mutter)

 

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences theme "Menta"


Cinnamon (Metacity -> Muffin)

 

gconftool –type=string –set /desktop/cinnamon/windows/theme "Menta"

 

Note: Cinnamon must be restarted for the change to take effect.


GNOME 2 (In Gnome 2 with Metacity)

 

gconftool-2 –type=string –set /apps/metacity/general/theme "Menta"

 


MATE (Metacity)

 

mateconftool-2 –type=string –set /apps/marco/general/theme "Menta"

 


Change SHELL THEME (In Gnome Shell and Cinnamon)


GNOME Shell (user-theme extension must be enabled)
 

gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.user-theme name "Menta"


Cinnamon

 

gsettings set org.cinnamon.theme name "Menta"

 


5. Change GTK COLOR SCHEME

Unity, GNOME 3 Shell/Classic, Cinnamon (Change GNOME3 Color scheme)

 

 

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-color-scheme "bg_color:#e9efe9;fg_color:#444444;base_color:#ffffff;text_color:#333333;selected_bg_color:#6666cc;selected_fg_color:#eeeeee;tooltip_bg_color:#222222;tooltip_fg_color:#dfcfcf;link_color:#cc0099;"

Reset color (if you don't like it):

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-color-scheme ""

 

MATE (Mate set color scheme)

 

 

mateconftool-2 –type=string –set /desktop/mate/interface/gtk_color_scheme "bg_color:#e9efe9;fg_color:#444444;base_color:#ffffff;text_color:#333333;selected_bg_color:#6666cc;selected_fg_color:#eeeeee;tooltip_bg_color:#222222;tooltip_fg_color:#dfcfcf;link_color:#cc0099;"

 

 

Reset color :

 

mateconftool-2 –type=string –set /desktop/mate/interface/gtk_color_scheme ""

 


6. GNOME 2 (Again for the old GNome 2 machines to change the GTK Color scheme)

 

gconftool-2 –type=string –set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_color_scheme "bg_color:#e9efe9;fg_color:#444444;base_color:#ffffff;text_color:#333333;selected_bg_color:#6666cc;selected_fg_color:#eeeeee;tooltip_bg_color:#222222;tooltip_fg_color:#dfcfcf;link_color:#cc0099;"

 

Reset color:
 

 

gconftool-2 –type=string –set /desktop/gnome/interface/gtk_color_scheme ""

 


What about colors, well the #444444 and #22222 and #eeeeee, #333333 seen as color codes in above examples can easily decrypted if you don't know them using a tiny tool called gcolor2
The tool is installable on most Linux distributions with a simple apt-get install gcolor2 or yum install gcolor the tool is convenient and a must have for anyone using Linux for basic design or graphic operations with some program as GIMP / Krita / Inkscape / Vectr / Karbon etc.

All gcolor2 does is to make easy for you to get HTML color codes and convert existing ones into colors for you, here is shot:

gcolor2-show-html-color-codes-linux

gcolor2-show-html-color-codes-linux2

http://www.fandigital.com/2012/06/change-theme-command-line-gnome.html

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1778355

While talking about setting color another interesting Graphical tool related to article, that gives you abilities to change colors in GNOME is gnome-color-choose, the tool is really awesome and allows you to do many of the color tunings shown in above examples

# apt-get install –yes gnome-color-chooser

And finally for the gnome theme hungry people, here is a great bonus. If you need a ton of shiny new themes as possibility to set up on your GNOME download and install The Ultimate Edition Themes deb (Debian / Ubuntu Mint) etc. collection (mirrored):

Debian and other deb based distro users can easily download and install with:
 

linux:~# dpkg -i ultimate-edition-themes-.0.0.7_all.deb

 


Other Linux users such as Fedora ones and Slackware users (if anyone on Slack uses Gnome since KDE is default by default there), use alien tool to install it or directly open the file with Midnight Commander (mc) and copy the files to the /usr/share/themes dir.

 

This article is possible thanks to Change Theme Using Command Line in GNOME (Linux) command line examples are taken from there.

How to change / reset lost or forgot TightVNC administrator password

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

how-to-change-reset-lost-TightVNC-administrator-password

I have installed TightVNC to a Windows host just a few weeks ago in order to be able to manage remotely a Windows host and forgot to write down the administrator password 🙂 (stoopid!)

I had to explain to a friend remotely how to change the TightVNC admin password and it was a complete nightmare!

Shortly here is the exact menus one who wants to reset the password of a TigthVNC server after forgotten:

Start -> All Programs -> TightVNC
-> TightVNC Server (Service Mode) ->
TightVNC Service - Offline Configuration.

In the configuration dialog to popup there are the Server and Administration tabs through which a new password can be set.

After the password is change either a restart of the TightVNC server is necessery or a restart of the Windows PC.

How to completely disable Replication in MySQL server 5.1.61 on Debian GNU / Linux

Monday, July 16th, 2012

Replication_mysql_disable

Some time ago on one of the Database MySQL servers, I've configured replication as it was required to test somethings. Eventually it turned out replication will be not used (for some reason) it was too slow and not fitting our company needs hence we needed to disable it.

It seemed logical to me that, simply removing any replication related directives from my.cnf and a restart of the SQL server will be enough to turn replication off on the Debian Linux host. Therefore I proceeded removed all replication configs from /etc/my/my.cnf and issued MySQL restart i. e.:

sql-server:~# /etc/init.d/mysql restart
....

This however didn't turned off replication,as I thought and in phpmyadminweb frontend interface, replication was still appearing to be active in the replication tab.

Something was still making the SQL server still act as an Replication Slave Host, so after a bit of pondering and trying to remember, the exact steps I took to make the replication work on the host I remembered that actually I issued:

mysql> START SLAVE;

Onwards I run:

mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS;
....

and found in the database the server was still running in Slave Replication mode

Hence to turn off the db host run as a Slave, I had to issue in mysql cli:

mysql> STOP SLAVE;
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.01 sec)
mysql> RESET SLAVE;
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.01 sec)

Then after a reload of SQL server in memory, the host finally stopped working as a Slave Replication host, e.g.

sql-server:~# /etc/init.d/mysql restart
....

After the restart, to re-assure myself the SQL server is no more set to run as MySQL replication Slave host:

mysql> SHOW SLAVE STATUS;
Empty set (0.00 sec)

Cheers 😉

Reset Windows (NT, 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7) password / Reset Windows Forgotten Password / Reset Windows Administrator password

Friday, March 12th, 2010

Recently I was in the Pomorie’s Monastery – St. George .
One layman left his notebook (maybe as a donation) to the monks. However the notebook was protected by both: fingerprint check, as well as administrator password and therefore the notebook was completely unusable and was thrown away with many other unused belongings.
When the abbot of the monastery found out I’m adept with computers, he asked if I can fix up the notebook and somehow remove the password, or reinstall the machine to make it usable.
So here I decided to blog what I undertook to reset the windows password with the hope somebody else could benefit from that as well.

1. Go to Offline NT Password & Registry Editor, Bootdisk / CD website

2. Download the bootable CD image zip archive of Offline NT Password & Registry Editor and burn the iso to a CD using K3b (on Linux), Nero or CDBurnerXP on (Windows).

3. Follow the step by step walkthrough manual (here) to either change Some Windows user password or completely reset administrator or any other user password.

Following the walkthrough literally prooved to be quite succesful for me and I was able to properly reset the administrator password!
So Hooray it works again! The monks can now benefit of the cute Toshiba satellite machine.

Reboot Safely a frozen (hanged up) Linux Server with Magic SysRQ Key combination

Monday, June 20th, 2011

Linux Magic SysRQ Key picture

Being a remote system administrator for many years from now, I’ve experienced many times sudden Linux crashes, mostly caused by system hardware overloads.

This is a common thing especially on busy Web Servers with (Apache/MySQL). Situations like this are really messy and many times in order to bringt the server back online, one has to either physically go to the Data Center or contact the Technical support to request a server reboot.

In this terrible times, data loss might occur if the Server reset button is used to cold reboot it.

Happily in 99% of the cases the data loss which might occur could be prevented with Linux’s kernel capability to support the Magic SysRQ key !

Having the Magic SysRQ key functionality being supported in Linux in past times wasn’t that common, thanksfully these days this has changed andlmost every Linux distrubution supports this handy feature.

Now you might wonder what is the magic with those Magic SysRQ key ?

Let me explain, Magic SysRQ is a kernel level functionality which supports even completely crashed Linux systems with the horrifying:

Kernel Panic
message to be properly shutdown.

Using Magic SysRQ instead of the mostly used indiced cold reboots is really advantageous, as all the opened files by programs on the crashed server which hanged will be properly saved and closed and thus possible data loss caused by the sudden server crash will be minimized.

One other good thing about the Magic SysRQ Key keyboard combination is that initiating the Magic SysRQ could be made blindly (no need for server monitor or display to present any error messages on the failed server).

Now to check if the magic sysrq is enabled on a server one should issue the command:

Here are some Magic SysRQ keyboard combinations one can use in case of server failure:

ALT+SYSRQ+M to dump memory info;
ALT+SYSRQ+P to dump processes states;
ALT+SYSRQ+S to sync disks;
ALT+SYSRQ+U to unmount all mounted filesystems;
ALT+SYSRQ+E to terminate processes;
ALT+SYSRQ+I to kill all processes
ALT+SYSRQ+U to try to unmount once again;
ALT+SYSRQ+B to reboot.

I would skip to explain what each of the keyboard combinations will do as I believe the above description explains it well.

One classics of combinations one might want to issue on a failed Linux server supporting the Magic SysRQ would be:

ALT+SYSRQ+R
ALT+SYSRQ+E
ALT+SYSRQ+I
ALT+SYSRQ+S
ALT+SYSRQ+U
ALT+SYSRQ+B

The ALT+SYSRQ+REISUB key combination is very popular among system administrators.
Also Magic SysRQ is heavily used by kernel developers as it includes many handy debugging options.

If you try the Magic SysRQ key on older servers and you realize it doesn’t react you will have to recompile the linux kernel and enable the CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ kernel time compilation option.

The Magic SysRQ can also be initiated remotely on a properly running server 😉 by initiating:

server:~# echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger

This command would be useful if you want to just have fun and test that magic sysrq works on your system for sure 😉

To sum it up using the Magic SysRQ will guarantee your locked up, server a Safe Reboot and will hopefully save you a lot of time for backups recovery.