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Self hosting is actually crazy cheap compared to any kind of corporate solution. Anybody paying for SquareSpace, for instance, could cut their cost by a factor of 20 or more with a FOSS alternative like Ghost Blog.
I know my setup is over engineered a little so I pay a bit more, but my expenses are still under $100 per year for subscription services that support the self hosting.
$2.50 per month for a VPN.
$40 per year for two VPS’s (this is what I know I overpay for since I didn’t really know how much I needed when I set it up, but the time to change it is worth more to me than the extra $10 per year).
$17ish per year for a domain name.
Plex lifetime pass (around $100 one time).
And of course, ten million dollars in man hours spent learning how to use Linux.
I’m lucky to live in a really good radio town. For the last 10 years, I have found the best new music consistently from the KUTX community supported radio station.
You can listen to them online too. Laurie Gallardo is sort of my low key hero.
Stick with it! I was intimidated by Linux at first and barely learned anything the first year because I was afraid to tinker.
Learn how to make a backup and do a restore (timeshift is a good option), and then tinker with abandon. The terminal is your friend. Experience is the best teacher.
I’m excited for you. I wish I could learn it all again to experience the excitement of writing my first script or figuring out docker again. It’s going to be an awesome adventure for you. 🙂
Honestly, it sounds like you set up some unusual settings when you first set up Ubuntu. Usually, the default Ubuntu options will disable root and give your first account sudo permissions. If it didn’t do that, then it should still have root enabled as a user you can log in as.
I mean no disrespect, but it seems like you need some terminal fundamentals that will be difficult for me to relay to you one at a time. Instead, I’m going to give you the basic game plan that I would run here, and then I suggest you google the individual commands to see how they work.
Step 1: Get Admin Permissions
It is imperative that you get administrator privileges. Try logging out completely and logging in as root. If that doesn’t work, do some googling about Ubuntu root accounts and wrack your brain to remember what you selected when you first set up the OS. When you get access to the root account, you should be able to run that command from earlier to add your user to the sudo group. Running commands with sudo will give your primary account root like permissions without having to risk a fat finger error like you do with root.
Step 2: Try Changing File Permissions
Once you have sudo or root access, use sudo or root to run the chmod 777 command to change a file’s permissions to global access. This will allow any user or program to access that file. There are other chmod restrictions that are more specialized that you may want to learn about, but 777 is a good place to start while testing this because we want to reduce the chance of something going wrong as much as humanly possible.
Step 3: Look For Dependancies
Look up terminal install instructions for google drive. Are there other programs that need to be installed first that may have been missed? If so, install all dependencies.
Step 4: Test Other Distros
Spin up a VM of Debian and try installing google drive there. Does it work on Debian? If so, it may be some setting with Ubuntu that is keeping it from working. I’ve occasionally run across weird incompatibilities with Ubuntu that resolve themselves on Debian.
Step 5: The Nuclear Option
If it works in Debian or another distro, then you may want to consider switching distros, reinstalling Ubuntu, or spending a few hours of googling to figure out what the differences are between the two OS’s to track down your problem. Tracking the solution down may be the hardest option, and though it seems daunting, switching distros isn’t so bad.
Good luck, soldier! The sweet release of solving a problem in Linux is better than any orgasm. I honestly think if you do googling about root accounts, sudo, chmod, and the individual dependencies for your malfunctioning programs, that you will figure this out.
If you get it fixed, I’d love to hear your solution. Also, I’m happy to answer more questions if you make some progress and hit another block, I just figured it was easier to spell out a whole plan instead of giving it to you a step at a time.
Couldn’t hurt, but I’d be surprised if that fixed it.
Has your account been added to the sudo group before? If not, run the following command in the terminal with your own username:
sudo usermod -aG sudo <username>
That should give your account sudo privileges and let you run the command with sudo properly.
I really wish I could take a look at your system in person. There are several things happening here that are unusual for Ubuntu.
Do you know how to accomplish a chmod in Linux?
Here’s a breakdown if you need to learn: https://www.howtogeek.com/437958/how-to-use-the-chmod-command-on-linux/
From your description, it looks like there is read write permission for the user, but no group or general permissions. Again, I don’t know if this will work, but it is where I would start.
Open your terminal and type:
sudo chmod 777 /path/to/file.txt
That will allow all users, groups, and guests to read, write, and/or execute the file. Then, if your programs are set to run under their own user or group, this will open the door for them to be able to access the full file.
Other than that, I’m wondering if the original file names have a structure that one of the systems can’t handle (such as slash marks) and so it changes the name to accommodate.
This is going to take some trial and error in troubleshooting. If you aren’t familiar with your terminal yet, this is going to be a great learning opportunity. Just make a backup of your files and system so you can undo any mistakes.
Not gonna lie, that’s straight up bizarre. I’m almost wondering if it has to do with the programs not having proper permissions to access those files, but then I’d think that they wouldn’t upload at all.
Have you tried chmod 777 on any of those files to see if it makes a difference? That is usually my first stop when a Linux program has trouble interacting with a file.
I use an Apple phone and laptop along with a Debian server and distro hopping laptop.
The first benefit I get is social integration—I’m not looking for FOSS alternatives to some things because the mainstream source definitely runs on it (Adobe products primarily). Never underestimate the social utility of those blue bubbles—it tells a certain brand of person that you are part of their herd, and my family heavily falls into that group. Nobody ever bats an eye at my MacBook Air in public—people don’t see me for the 1337 hackerman that I am inside, and I like it that way sometimes.
The second benefit is hardware support. Say what you will about the price of Apple Care, but knowing I can walk in to an Apple Store and walk out with a replacement is extremely useful in a pinch.
Finally, I like the feel and look of their products, and there is a convenience in their ecosystem. You know what you’re getting with Apple, and it all works together out of the box. I could recreate their built in features with FOSS alternatives, but I simply don’t have to because it is already designed to work.
With Apple you pay a lot up front and then nothing for the software over time—that is an easy budgeting calculation for me. I don’t have to worry about what card I choose or niche incompatibility, Apple already took care of that.
I’ve flirted with fully transitioning to Linux many times, but I have always found a reason to keep one mainstream OS around, and Windows sucks. MacOS is a happy medium for power users who are comfortable with it and enjoy the UNIX family.
It’s designed like pushing paper towards you or away from you—I actually find it more natural. Imagine the screen is a long piece of paper continuing down to your hand and you’ll see what I mean. Push away to push the screen up, pull towards yourself to pull the screen down.
Plus, if you don’t like it, it is easily customized in the trackpad preferences.
I don’t usually like trackpads on other machines, but the gestures to switch desktops, zoom, change pages, and everything else that Apple builds in become so ingrained in your muscles that they save an enormous amount of navigational time. There really is no comparison. It is one of the essential features that keeps me from fully switching to Linux for every device in my home.
They always make them out of materials that feel luxurious to touch, which is another bit of computing philosophy I’ve adopted from them—if it touches my body, it should be extremely high quality. This goes for trackpads, mice, keyboards, clothes, and furniture.
Even if you don’t use their machines, it is worth checking out a demo of their gestures just to make you reconsider what a trackpad should be.
How do you sue without a smoking gun in an at will employment state? I have felt discriminated against several times in my workplace, but it is only a feeling. I worry that any attempt at a lawsuit would only leave me unemployed.
I don’t have evidence—the interactions are all person to person. It seems like it would be easy for the supervisor to say “I didn’t say that”, “I didn’t mean that”, or “it was for other reasons”, and I would have nothing to fall back on.
I made these points (less eloquently) to my mom this week, and was disturbed to find that she stopped caring about what I thought the second she figured out I was going to vote for Biden. I completely agree that we can’t let Trump win, but the Democrats are going to keep experiencing disasters if they can’t find a candidate that people want to vote FOR instead of just pointing out the catastrophe we need to vote AGAINST.
I’m more depressed this election cycle than I have ever been before. The future looks grim.
I am a Thelemite, which means I am a follower of the mystical system designed by The Golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley. The idea of other prophets is addressed directly in our primary sacred text, Liber AL vel Legis:
“All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little…”
Most Thelemites I’ve met, myself included, interpret this to mean that most religions have kernels of useful teachings in them, but the difficulty of describing the experience of a prophetic epiphany leads to misunderstandings in the message by either the prophet or the followers.
A common practice among some Thelemites is to not criticize other religions for their ideas since we don’t always know the utility they could have for another person, but we do engage in criticism of religious organizations that are doing harmful things to people, especially actions that prevent liberty or self expression.
The thing that makes Thelema a little different than other religions is that we study a variety of aspirational techniques for self actualization in an attempt to have our own epiphanies about ourselves and the world rather than exclusively taking someone else’s word for it. Thelemites are encouraged to use or ignore even Crowley’s own writings depending on how it resonates with us as individuals. We often combine tarot, meditation, journaling, yoga, ritual magick, and every other aspect of our life to create a focus towards a goal that we believe to be our “true will”, or purpose for existence.
I encourage anyone interested in learning more to check out Lon Milo DuQuette’s videos on YouTube, or visit an Ordo Templi Orientis lodge near you to see our rituals performed live.
93’s to all my fellow magicians if you are out there!
It seems like life is a vehicle for allowing matter, and by extension the universe, to comprehend itself in some limited fashion on an individual scale. I believe that this comprehension is an unfolding process of increasing universal awareness generated by an ever increasing number of points of view through every living entity.
It seems to me that most actions are heavily governed by pre-determined mechanical processes that are geared towards survival and reproduction, but there are also actions that can be chosen that are not exclusively determined by biology or circumstance. I refer to that impulse as Will.
I think the function of Will is essentially a course correcting ability of the universe that is bound in an infinitely interlocking series of experiences, giving the emerging consciousness of the universe the ability to “steer” its destiny a little bit, on both the individual and eventually macro level. I think that various mindfulness, meditation, health, and aspirational techniques can gently raise your awareness of this process within yourself and in the exterior world, which makes it all seem a bit less random—essentially attaining an enlightened perspective on life.
In the sense that I am a part of this universal process that is bound together in infinite complexity, and that I have the opportunity on occasion to effect events in such a way that essentially “leave my mark” on spacetime, I would say that I believe I am connected to a universal soul along with all forms of life.
Public transportation is good. Sanitation on public transportation in America is bad.
I got very adept at touching nothing while riding a bumpy subway car in New York, but even that couldn’t always save me from the puddle of piss that ran like a heat seeking stream from the legs of the mentally ill.
I really enjoy Warp. It’s sleek and modern, plus it saves me a lot of time with its advanced autofill features. It also gives me helpful suggestions for minor edits if I’m making small errors that keep a command from running.
I haven’t used the chatbot, but I have found the user experience of the program to be better than most other terminals I’ve used before.
My wife says she wishes she could make me scream like Linux does. I told her she would if I could put it in her bash.
She leaves me alone when I’m on the computer now. It’s quiet in here.