Restoring Ubuntu Unity

Ubuntu Unity Users.

Quite often Unity will crash when playing with Compiz and other tools like Emerald, so this is a guide on what to do when this happens.

Should you ever find that Unity crashes you can reboot it at the terminal with a quick command.

User@pc:~$ unity --reset

and there you go :) if any unity setting were replenished then I recommend you hit CTRL-C as unity will now be running in your terminal then execute

User@pc:~$ sudo reboot

Once you log back in unity should be running as normal again.

Booting from GRUB Shell/Command Line/Console

This is a first post about Ubuntu and general Linux related topics.

My first little trick which may well help a fair few people out is how to boot into Ubuntu after GRUB has refused to manage booting for you and greets you with that ever forgiving shell prompt, grub>

Thankfully it is pretty easy and only takes a few seconds to boot back into Ubuntu.

grub> set root=(hd0,5)
grub> linux /vmlinux root=/dev/hda5
grub> initrd /initrd.img
grub> boot

hd0   = the HDD in which your Ubuntu is installed.
5       = the partition in which your install is located
hda5  = the HDD label followed by partition number

As soon as you hit enter to the boot command, you can sit back and relax. Once you have successfully logged in, open a terminal (CTRL + ALT + T) and re-install & configure grub, so you don't have to worry about booting from the shell again.

User@pc:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/hda
User@pc:~$ sudo update-grub

Once again hda is the drive label in which you wish GRUB to be installed.

Now you can reboot to insure that GRUB is working as you would expect, or just hang out and NEVER reboot again ;) At least you wont face boot loader problems!

The New Team Leader

As of late it has become apparent that many companies who house a development team of some form within themselves lack the ability to appoint a new team leader. Scanning the internet reveals many jobs aimed at the programming market, but a large portion of these jobs are for the higher end, team leaders and project leaders.

When evaluating this circumstance, you soon learn that the employees have a team of lets say, novice developers who need a team leader. These novice developers have been working at the company for 2 years, and are all familiar with each other, and the programming styles, strengths and weakness' of the team.

It seems to be that the sensible approach towards this dilemma would not be to hire some external team leader, but instead to promote the most promising member of the team to the role of team leader, and provide a training course for him/her to learn key aspects of team management. Once this is done you then have an opening for a novice/junior developer, this is an ideal position for the given company to be in. It gives them a chance to employ new developers with great potential and up to date skills.

External team leaders know nothing of the team and how they work together, and normally force a new and tainted leadership strategy upon a team. External drafting causes team leadership to not develop but be stunted and limited to existing techniques which may or may not be appropriate for the given circumstance. 

Not only will this benefit the junior developers by increasing the job market it will also promote the development of juniors to seniors with team leader skills, a fantastic step forward for everyone.