Recovery

Help - My Aspire One has died on me! When I was transferring some photos onto a flash disc (which i've done before with no problems) the screen froze. Being a newbie I had no idea what to do (I don't know what the Linux version of 'control-alt-delete' is), so i left it and waited for the battery to die (please don't laugh!). When i turned it back on it looked like it was starting up ok, then a blank black screen appeared with a white 'x' i the middle which can be moved with the mouse. I tried turning it on a couple of times, but the same thing happened again. I guess I need to use the recovery disc and start all over again (all those hours spent sorting out Firefox 3, Skype etc - arrggggh). However, I don't have an external disc drive, so tried to use my old laptop (Windows XP) to copy it onto a flash disc. I managed to get as far as 'Create Recovery USB Drive' but nothing happened. I tried it on my neighbours laptop (Windows Vista) but nothing happens at all. Is it because is bloody Linux (which I'm getting a bit more than frustrated with) and you can only do it on a Linux system? Help - I'm really losing it now!!!!

 

I've been trying the new Hardy Ubuntu UNR and it works great on the One...
If you've got as far as destroying Linpus, you're practically half way there.
You just need to put the .img file on a memory stick (e.g. using dd as described on the wiki)
and boot from that. IMHO, I would recommend you install that now over reinstalling Linpus.
For the installation steps, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR

More historic details here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne
UPDATE: An Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) installer image with the LPIA kernel is now available. Such image can be installed as-is on an Aspire One and most of the steps described are not necessary. Of particular interest, wifi, suspend/resume, webcam and fan control (once BIOS has been upgraded) work out-of-the-box. Card readers have the same issues. -- FabianRodriguez

 

Thanks very much. Sorry to sound like such a thickie, but is there any chance you could give me easy step by step instructions of what to do? Your instructions were a bit too technical for me. I'm really not used to doing things like this, being a Windows user for years, I'm a bit used to having everything done for me - I'm willing to learn though! Thanks thanks thanks (in advance - fingers crossed!)

 

For the installation steps, see: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UNR
I've copied here, as there really are only 3 steps... (probably)

1. Save image to disk from http://oem-images.canonical.com/unr/unr-1.0.1.img

2. make bootable USB key using Usb Imagewriter or dd command line, e.g.
I used dd on my aspire, so I plugged in my usb stick and in a terminal typed:
$ dmesg
one of the lines tells what device the usb stick has been assigned to
for me, this was sdb, so my device was /dev/sdb, then copy the image to the usb stick, based on:
sudo dd if=/path/to/your/downloaded.img of=/dev/device/you/saw/in/dmesg bs=1M
e.g. For me, this was (but obviously do not do the same as me, unless your usb stick is also sdb!)
(N.B. this will delete anything already on the device, so make sure you get the right one, or you my wipe your hard disk!)
$ sudo umount /dev/sdb1
$ sudo dd if=/home/Duncan/unr-1.0.1.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

3. boot the device with USB key and install UNR (i.e. press f12 during boot and select usb stick)

Hopefully that should be it (if you don't see your stick as a bootable device, you may need to set the flag).
$ sudo parted /dev/sdb toggle 1 boot

Takes quite a while to install, you can press caps-lock if the screen goes blank to see its progress.

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to help me, but i had trouble downloading. I ended up finding someone with a dvd writer that i could use and recovered it back to my original package. It's working fine again now.

 

No probs, glad you have it working. I would still recommend giving UNR a shot if you have time... Now most (if not all) the major niggles have been ironed out, I would recommend it over Linpus for someone new to Linux.

 

How is it different from the Limpus? I don't really understand how/why there are different systems. If I install it, will I lose all the things that I've spent hours on installing - Firefox 3, RealPlayer etc.? Don't think I could go through installing it all again.

 

Well, in all seriousness, if it ain't broke, don't fix it If you're happy with Linpus I'd just keep using that...

Linux is a collaborative effort and there are many groups of people working on many different versions ("distributions" or "distros") as they all have slightly different requirements. It's not like one version is better than another, just that some are tailored to be more suited to specific tasks (and users) than others. Linpus is a stripped down, bespoke version of a distribution called Fedora 8 and so not only is it quite old (the most recent version of Fedora is 10), but it also has bits missing and includes tweaks that Acer has developed specifically for the One. This non-standardization is what sometimes causes problems when installing software.

Ubuntu is another standard distro (like Fedora), and a specific version has been developed to run on Netbooks (UNR = Ubuntu Netbook Remix). This is not specifically written for the One, since it has been developed for Netbooks in general, but nearly everything works out the box*. It is a standard platform (more widely used in comparison to Linpus) and that can make life easier when it comes to installing new software (since more people are likely to have tried it out). But essentially, under the hood all versions of Linux have the vast majority of their source code in common, it's just the tweaks that make them different.

*I found Firefox 3 too slow on the One in UNR and have moved back to version 2. The internal mic did not work on install but this was corrected by running a script to update the alsa sound drivers.

p.s. In any case, now you have things setup as you want, I would suggest you make a copy of your One's drive so that you can easily restore it should the worst occur (again).

 

Errr.... as we're in newbie mode - what is the most reliable way of making that copy of the One's drive?