I have a Volvo V50 and started noticing that with heavy rain the drivers side foot well was becoming damp. It turns out this is caused by a blocked tube that goes from the sun roof to the bonnet. Sometimes the tube gets blocked or shrinks and therefore doesn’t reach the bonnet. I took it the garage it was they cleaned the tube.
Volvo V50 Losing Fuel Efficiency – Reduced MPG
I have a Volvo V50 1.6 Eco Drive. Over the past few months, it has started to lose fuel efficiency dramatically. It dropped below 52 MPG and ended up around 42 MPG. It turned out that this is caused by a semi blocked diesel particulate filter. This was probably blocked because of soot caused by having dirty injectors. I bought a bottle of DPF Cleaner and also some Injector Cleaner and added them to the fuel. I did it over two half full tanks. I found that the MPG increased dramatically over the period of about 2 weeks.
The other potential diagnosis for this problem is a dirty MAS (Mass Airflow Sensor). You can get this cleaned also.
If you are in the UK then I recommend visiting Halfords and getting them to clean your diesel particulate filter in a liquid.
How to fix Skype can’t connect – Ubuntu 16.04
I just updated to Ubuntu 16.04 and tried to make a Skype call. It said that “Skype can’t connect”. The error message looks like this:
To fix this you need to remove Skype completely from your system including your settings.
1) Remove the skype and it’s settings
sudo apt-get remove –purge skype skype:i386
2) Remove any settings in your home directory:
rm -rf ~/.Skype
3) Reinstall the application:
sudo apt-get install skype
You should then launch Skype and see the following term dialogue box.
If you don’t see this box when you first launch Skype then you didn’t remove all the settings. Your Skype should now connect 🙂
Migrating To Digital Ocean
I’ve just migrated this blog to Digital Ocean. The blog is now located in their New York data centre because most of my visitors are from the US. Hopefully this should make it faster for the majority of my users.
How To Make User Sudoer Ubuntu 14.04
You can make a user a sudoer in Ubuntu 14.04 by adding them to the sudo group. Obviously you need to have root permission to do this.
adduser youusername sudo
How To Install PHP 5.6 on Ubuntu 16.04
I just upgraded one of my Ubuntu Servers to Ubuntu 16.04. The media wiki installation shopped working because it now comes with PHP 7. I tried upgrading mediawiki to the latest version but this didn’t seem to work either. I can’t seem to find out if Mediawiki support PHP 7. So, I thought I would install PHP 5.6 in parallel on Ubuntu 16.04 by using a PPA (which I generally don’t like)
Here are the commands that I used:
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
apt update
apt install php5.6 libapache2-mod-php5.6 php5.6-curl php5.6-gd php5.6-mbstring php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-mysql
a2dismod php7.0
a2enmod php5.6
systemctl restart apache2
Hope this helps someone.
Apache config error Invalid command ‘php_flag’ Ubuntu 16.04
I have just started to upgrade some servers to Ubuntu 16.04. It looked good until I rebooted to the server and the Apache2 service didn’t start up properly. I view the logs in systemd. Using the command:
systemctl status apache2.service
● apache2.service – LSB: Apache2 web server
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/apache2; bad; vendor preset: enabled)
Drop-In: /lib/systemd/system/apache2.service.d
└─apache2-systemd.conf
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2016-04-26 13:29:37 EDT; 7min ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 1343 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/apache2 start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname apache2[1343]: * The apache2 configtest failed.
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname apache2[1343]: Output of config test was:
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname apache2[1343]: AH00526: Syntax error on line 59 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf:
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname apache2[1343]: Invalid command ‘php_flag’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname apache2[1343]: Action ‘configtest’ failed.
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname apache2[1343]: The Apache error log may have more information.
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname systemd[1]: apache2.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=1
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: Apache2 web server.
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname systemd[1]: apache2.service: Unit entered failed state.
Apr 26 13:29:37 hostname systemd[1]: apache2.service: Failed with result ‘exit-code’.
I did a Apache2ctl config test like so:
AH00526: Syntax error on line 59 of /etc/apache2/apache2.conf:
Invalid command ‘php_flag’, perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration
Action ‘configtest’ failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.
The problem is the setting “php_flag engine off” and “php_admin_value engine Off” settings. Which looks like so. This setting stops php files being executed in certain folders (such a image folder etc).
<DirectoryMatch ^.*/somewhere/>
AllowOverride None
php_flag engine off
php_admin_value engine Off
</DirectoryMatch>
I removed both of these and restarted apache again using:
sudo systemctl start apache2.service
Hope this helps someone else.
U.K. Junior doctors contract explained
The U.K. Governments new contract which they imposing on the junior doctors is terrible. Here is a well written article explaining why is it so bad: http://www.drphilhammond.com/blog/2016/03/09/private-eye/the-junior-doctors-dispute-explained-simply-but-in-detail/
I will be supporting their strikes.
How to move the Unity menu to the bottom – Ubuntu 16.04
There are two ways of move the Unity menu from the side to the bottom. You can either move the launcher to the bottom using a single command line statement or dconf. The best way is just to cut and paste this command into a terminal
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Launcher launcher-position Bottom
This setting will stay and the Unity menu with stay at the bottom even after a reboot. You can also move the menu back to the left hand side like so:
gsettings set com.canonical.Unity.Launcher launcher-position Left
Voila. You are good to go 🙂
How To Set The Default Paper Size To A4 in Firefox
I am running Firefox on Ubuntu and the default paper size was US Letter. I wanted to set the default paper size to A4. There isn’t a graphically interface to do this. So you have to:
- Visit about:config
- Search letter
- You should have a result with a value of na_letter.
- Double click to modify and change the value to A4
Then it should look like this:
Hopefully that helps someone change the default paper size from US Letter to A4.