More AAO problems when installing ubuntu???

Can someone please please please give me a bit of hope with my AAO. After owning it for about ten days I've finally managed to get the live update to run all the way through only to reboot and be faced with a white cross on a black screen and nothing else!

Can someone please tell me how to fix this before the whole lot goes back to the shop tomorrow!

Love Rebecca xxx

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Scrap Linpus! It is rubbish! Put Mandrive 2009 GNOME on it or Ubuntu 8.10 - the difference is amazing. With my rig right now, which took me a few days to settle into, I don't think I'll be going back to my Macbook for a while - this is simply the best Linux machine I've used in a long time. I had to do some work, though.. Ubuntu really shines when you get it all set up the way you want to, though!

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Someone else has had this problem - I think all we could suggest was doing a system recovery. Unfortunately the usual ways of recovering from what has happened (the Xserver has started but the desktop manager hasn't) are locked down on the standard Acer setup.

It has been reported that rebooting several times can get your desktop back.

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Right... I'll give that a go before I do anything more drastic... this is just awful! I've spent so many hours trying to get this machine working and now I have to start all over again... this is really bad!

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

shesh... that is bad luck
Mine sometimes looks like it has frozen while booting, but if I've left it it's always rebooted and then just worked. I presume ctrl+alt+f2 and ctrl+alt+f1 don't get you to a shell? There is the possibility of making a boot usb stick, booting to a different operating system, and then looking at the hard disk to see what the matter is (perhaps running the disk checker fsck), but you'd need to know what your looking for. Anyone know what causes this failure to boot?... For now, I'd leave it for a while to see if it comes back on its own and cross fingers.

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Its a long shot, but if you reboot over and over there is a chance it might come back... If there is some disk corruption and that is causing the problem and the disk checker (fsck) is not getting run for some reason, then after a maximum number of reboots (I think it's 26 on the harddrive, viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5676&p=41515&hilit=fsck+max+mount#p41515 not sure about the SSD) then an fsck check will get run automatically. Unless anyone knows different, I reckon it's worth booting, leaving for 5 minutes, rebooting... at least 26 times just in case... (but like I say, it's a long shot).

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

hmm.. belay that, I just checked my disk (sudo tune2fs -l /dev/sda1) and it says:
Mount count: 158
Maximum mount count: 29
Last checked: Sat Oct 25 19:17:13 2008
Check interval: 15552000 (6 months)
Next check after: Thu Apr 23 19:17:13 2009
Meaning it probably won't automatically check the disk for 6 months - Appart from booting, waiting, booting a few time, I'd recommend booting from a usb stick and running fsck from that...

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Virtual terminal switching is disabled by default inn the Acer Linpus. There's a line in /etc/xorg.conf which need changing to make it work - the option DontVTSwitch needs changing to 'off'.

I'd recommend this to anyone - it's presumably part of Acer's lock-it-down policy, but it's the only way out of a failed desktop!

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Hi again everyone,

Right after last nights disaster I'm in the process of putting everything back together. Could one of the experienced guys on here let me know what you think are the essential jobs that I need to do to stop this happening again! I know someone mentioned turning on the alt f1 alt f2 thing and installing a different version of linux but I just want to know catergorically what I shold be doing so that I can fall in love with my little machine again. I plan to have a night of it once the little ones in bed so any help will be much much appreciated. Here are the things I can think of that I need to know:

What version of linux?
What media player?
Is it better to sort my printer/scanner before or after I sort the operating system?
What else would you consider to be essential jobs that I need to do?

Thanks in advance,

Rebecca xxx

 

Re: Right now I'm really angry with this thing!

Have you started already? There is one last thing to try I think...
I've just discovered I can get to "single user mode" by hammering on ctrl+C during a reboot.
To do this:
1) Power on
2) hold down Ctrl
3) With Ctrl pressed down, press C repeatedly over and over again *really* fast!!...
If you do it right, this will stop the system booting properly and dump you to a command prompt
(actually when I do it, the system tries to start the GUI - screen goes black - 3 times before it gives up)
When it does finally stopped, you can quit pressing the C key. If you get this far there are several things we can try...

First, check the disk and fix any errors... To get to a single user mode type
$ sudo shutdown now
Wait for this to finish, and then when you get the # prompt, type
# fsck -pf
This will check your disk (press y to fix any errors).
# reboot

 

Re: After last nights disaster... can you help me???

Hi Duncan,

Thanks for the posts... unfortunatly I'd already done a restore from a USB stick when I saw them! Oh well... I'm starting from scratch and hopefully it will be a good learning point for me to get right into linux and perhaps start enjoying it! I'd appreciate any advice you might have as all your posts so far have been superb... you're a life saver!

Love Rebecca xxx

 

Re: After last nights disaster... can you help me???

OK, let's start with insurance against ever having the same no-desktop problem again!

- Open a console (go to My Files, and from the file menu select Terminal)
- enter this command:

Code:

sudo mousepad /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Translation: sudo (do it as root), mousepad (the editor), /etc/X11/xorg.conf (the file which you need to change - it's the configuration file for the Xorg version of the X-Server. The X-server is what drives the screen, basically.

Now Mousepad will open with the configuration file displayed. The first section is what we want: find the line with the DontVTSwitch option, and put a '#' at the start of it so that it now reads

Code:

#     Option "DontVTSwitch" "yes"

The # at the beginning of the line turns it into a comment, so the configuration will ignore it. You could instead change the 'yes' to 'no' - the default is 'no', so commenting the line out has the same effect. what you've done is tell the X-server to allow switching to Virtual Terminals - you'll see the effect of this later.

Save the file, and close Mousepad. Now you can close the terminal (three options: close the window by clicking on the 'X' button, type 'exit' and enter; or for the quickest and Linux-est way, just type CTRL-D)

Now to test it: reboot. Linux changes don't usually require reboots, but as your One is originally set up that's the only way to restart the X server.

When the desktop is running, press CTRL-ALT-F1. You'll initially get the screen you see at the start of a startup routine, but press 'enter' and you'll find you have a terminal running. It may well contain all sorts of system messages (and others may pop up as you go along), but at the bottom will be a prompt.

Press CTRL-ALT-F2: voila, you're back to your desktop.

The importance of this is that if you ever lose the desktop again, and get that black screen with an 'X' cursor only, you can press CTRL:-ALT-F1 and get straight into a terminal. That is then likely to enable you to do things to the machine to try to solve the problem: you're no longer at the mercy of a wedged X-server!

 

Re: After last nights disaster... can you help me???

Yet another very clever man... and thanks for explaining all the steps, I know windows and osx really well and feel like a right idiot over the last few days of trying to sort this lovely little machine out. What do you think is my next move?

 

Re: After last nights disaster... can you help me???

Right I've been trying now for two evenings to install ubuntu but I don't seem to be getting anywhere! The download of ubuntu either fails or isn't there when I try to put it on my usb stick via UNetbootin. I seem to be going from bad to worse with my AAO at the moment.

Any help would be much apprecited.

Rebecca xxx

 

Re: After last nights disaster... can you help me???

Are you using the One to do the download? If you have a working desktop machine it might be better to use that, especially if it's on a wired connection rather than a wireless one.

 

Yeah I was using my one to do the download... I'll give that a try in a while, would nero be okay to put the disk image on a usb stick?

 

Hi Bec,
instructions here, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne110L
I think I'd try to burn a CD, and use that to boot another computer (i.e. not the One) into ubuntu and then make the usb stick bootable using that (instructions as above, in "Preparation").
Hope that helps,
-Duncan.