On Ubuntu you have the possibility to move any file to the Trash but, as we demonstrate in our last post, anyone has the possibility to recover them using a simple, basic GUI, program called PhotoRec.

If you want to be reasonably sure that none will be able to recover a file you decided to permanently delete you have to use the Shred command. Shred is native in Ubuntu Kernel and literally delete your files overwriting them repeatedly with arbitrary data. After you delete a file with Shred you can be sufficiently sure that recovering procedures will not succeed.

As usual we must warn you that technology is rapidly evolving and what could be considered sure today, tomorrow will be out of date! So, if you think you need to preserve your privacy in the best way, don’t forget to change the hard disks regularly and mechanically destroy your old ones. Sincerely we hope our readers haven’t this kind of need.

To start using Shred on Ubuntu you have to open a Terminal and type:

sudo shred –help

In this way you will visualize the grammar and all the possible options offered by this program.

The correct grammar to use Shred is:

shred [OPTIONS] FILE

or, if you want to shred a entire partition:

shred [OPTIONS] /dev/[HDA9]

The possible options are:

  -f, –force    change permissions to allow writing if necessary
-n, –iterations=N  overwrite N times instead of the default (3)
–random-source=FILE  get random bytes from FILE
-s, –size=N   shred this many bytes (suffixes like K, M, G accepted)
-u, –remove   truncate and remove file after overwriting
-v, –verbose  show progress
-x, –exact    do not round file sizes up to the next full block;
this is the default for non-regular files
-z, –zero     add a final overwrite with zeros to hide shredding
–help     display this help and exit
–version  output version information and exit

In our experience, to operate in the fastest way, we decided to add Shred on the Nautilus Menu and have the command ready with a simple right click on the mouse.

For this reason you have to open a Terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install nautilus-actions

Then you launch the program following this path: System->Preference->Nautilus Actions Configuration.

Last, you have to configure Shred filling e.g. the following parameters:

Label: Shred
Tooltip: Shred utility to securely erase files
Icon: gtk-dialog-warning
Path: shred
Parameters: -f -u -v -z %M
Filenames: *
Mimetypes: */*
Appears if selection contains: Both
Be sure to check the box “Appears if selection has multiple files or folders“

To finish your configuration, do not forget to open again a Terminal and type:

nautilus -q

nautilus

First of all you have to launch Terminal and add the right PPA to the repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa

Then you need to update and upgrade the OS using:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If you are installing Firefox for the first time the right commands are:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa

sudo apt-get updatesudo apt-get install firefox firefox-gnome-support
 firefox-locale-en

As usual on Linux, it is not necessary to reboot the computer and you can start immediately to use your updated Firefox. 

Searching on internet I discovered that there are few possible solution to avoid this problem and, in case you have the same bug on your computer, I decided to sum-up the most powerful after I successfully tried them.

First of all you can try to force the update process through the Terminal typing:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If this doesn’t work you will try with this next step:

sudo rm var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Then launch again the Update Manager to verify if you succeed and if nothing happened solve the matter typing:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/* -vf
sudo apt-get update

and try again to launch the Update Manager.

In my case this was enough to restore all the Update Manager features and solve the problem. If you have extra problems about this bug or if you want to suggest alternative solutions, please, don’t hesitate to comment this post.

First of all I suggest to use BleachBit because, for my experience, it’s the most powerful software to clean temporary files, log files and unwanted traces on your computer. BleachBit is easy to use and, as we described in previous post, very effective.

Then we have to check if our system is really updated so we can use the usual ways as Synaptics Package Manager or quickly run a some simple commands through Terminal to update, upgrade and remove old packages or Kernel.

For this purpose I collected three simple commands and chained them in a single line:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
&& sudo apt-get autoremove

In this way you will be sure that you can start again to work on your Ubuntu as before the Christmas time!