Mini tips & tricks

Mini tips & tricks is the page for the one-liner on the command line making the life easier or help you out for simple problems. Here you can give away your private details ;).

Xine and the black xawtv screen
You would like to watch tv with xawtv but xine has been started before and you get a black screen on xawtv? Type
 * xvattr -a XV_AUTOPAINT_COLORKEY -v 1

BTW: You can also use gxvattr with a GUI.

You would like to list your packages with dpkg -l and then some package names are cut?
Use the environment variable COLUMNS with dpkg and broaden the width of your columns:
 * e.g. ''COLUMNS=150 dpkg -l

Your package installation or upgrade has been breaking with a file conflict error?
"Here should be a typical error message."

Then apt is working no longer and ends always with the same error? This is sometimes the case for example if you use unstable or you have a mix of more debian branches (you should not really use unstable if you don't know what you are doing...). Note that the following command forces the installation and could result in other problems!
 * e.g. dpkg -i --force-overwrite /var/cache/apt/archives/package_name.deb