Ubuntu - after things say 'bang'...
Wednesday, 21. October 2009, 19:11:42
There come moments that you would tear your hair out when working with computers. Hardly two weeks before Ubuntu would launch its newest 'Karmic' release a technical problem occurred in our region, suddenly cutting the Internet and power. The combination and rapid sequence of events caused hard drive and caching failures. Bang! My two RAID-chained hard drives couldn't initialize Ubuntu's GRUB anymore. After having restored that using the LiveCD from my 'Jaunty 9.04' I found out that the DeskTop didn't show its panel, sound came mono and loud only and there were other tiny inflictions like a total loss of access-speeds. It looked worse than Vista. What was going on? That the Internet was down plays an important role to explain this! Whatever the case I had to work and needed my OS.A reinstallation appeared inevitable. From this there is a lesson to be learned...
Reinstalling Ubuntu is easy if you have done it a few times. It doesn't take between 11 hours (!), 50, resp. 37 minutes for an upgrade to new Windows 7 (depending your type of computer) which a BBC reporter experienced after several failing attempts. I decided to not touch the suddenly "defect" partition with all my current data that was not backed-up yet, but use the occasion to clean up the family-partition of which a data backup was available. Using the LiveCD and the Partition Editor (Gparted) I decided to go for a trial of the new EXT4 filesystem that I also should use when Karmic became available. So I emptied the 'family' part and repartioned 60 Gb of my primary hard drive to carry an EXT4 filesystem and left another 60 empty for later. Next I regularly installed Ubuntu 9.04 on EXT4, which went without any hassle and took little over 12 minutes. But the Internet still failed, so updating appeared impossible. Yet this part worked for now in a primitive, limited mode and I could get to my ill-fated second hard drive in the RAID chain that held the defunct installation with my data.
In the GRUB2 this reflected by a rather peculiar entry at its bottom, summing up the /Home folders! As if I could ever start them? The sudden slowness reminded me of Windows! If you now think deep, you'll realize that this could have something to do with the failing Internet connection. Remember Windows, often hanging when the Internet became interrupted? Something apparently needed that connection and prevented me to achieve a regular, normal initialization of Ubuntu. Nothing else I could do to find out but wait until the Internet went up again. That took almost a day.The fresh Ubuntu now took all my attention. As usual I refused the urgent automatic updates to finalize the install-procedure. First I made sure to have the NVidia driver on board for my graphics card, triggering the call to install this 'non-free' item by changing 'Visual Effects' in 'Appearance' to 'Extra', what couldn't be delivered without it . Nextly I made sure that Synaptic Package Manager got pointed to my fast, favorite repository-server and had all program-repositories open. I reloaded Synaptic, which is pretty essential to get the latest updates. Then I turned to the Update Manager in System-> Administration, to see what I really needed to install to conclude this installation. About 20 minutes later a new Kernel and all other necessities were ready to go. I did not restart still. First I added 'Sun Java(TM) Runtime Environment (JRE) 6' and 'Ubuntu restricted extras' to it, using Synaptic. No need to manually modify the 'sources.list' and add extra entries for them. I now had Java (a.o. YouTube) and MP3 (and more) up as well.
The standard 2 channel stereo and very loud pulse sound server for my 5.1 stereo system needs permission to be used! Wow! This is often forgotten, contributing to the avalanche of Google search-items about Pulse Sound. So, I went to 'System-> Administration-> Users and Groups' to select 'Manage Groups' and set 'Properties' for Pulse, Pulse Access and Pulse RT at work for me. Then in 'Preferences-> Sound' I selected my device and the Master channel to be controlled with my keyboard. In the top-panel I used 'Volume-> Control' for preferences to use certain channels, a.o. 'Tone' to get Bass and Treble working as well. I now used the Terminal for
sudo gedit /etc/pulse/daemon.confto set default-sample-channels = 6 and have full 5+1 stereo sound on my boxes. That was a hassle, partly not necessary if you only use 2 channel stereo or a headphone. The final touch however was to avoid "flat volume". That is this usually very loud preset volume when Ubuntu starts and when you switch sound sources. It's 'traditionally' set to 80%, which is for common installations far too loud! Just return to your Terminal and use the Up-arrow key to return to the previously entered Code! That was (see before) the file: 'daemon.conf'. Now add at the bottom: flat-volumes = no and gone is the roaring sound, unless you have your Volume Control set too high... Last but not least I wanted the 'swappiness' down from 60% to 10%. Using swapping over the hard drive gives this retarded "Vista-effect" and if you have more than 1.5 Gb memory you could lower that value to get far more agility (speed). Just use the Terminal to change this: (just copy-paste)
sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10Finally I adjusted some settings of my keyboard. Having all set, I made my restart and it worked very fast and pleasant again. Cave: the movie deals with Karmic 9.10!
Evolution email has a not so much 'hidden' as well a little know feature under its File menu: Forget Passwords. This is important to know when you must enter passwords anew for multiple email accounts. My wife made a few mistakes, causing a mess for Evolution. This program started to repeatedly ask for passwords, although the correct ones were already given and stored. To reset that situation you use 'Forget Passwords' and give the correct sequence afterwards. Then this email program works well.
Finally my answer to the suddenly defunct situation. How could it happen that the GRUB started me into a malfunctioning OS? The DeskTop didn't appear in full, the Panel with menus didn't appear and when I started a program manually with a trick all went 'sooo sloow', it looked like good old Vista. It appeared to be caused by "DropBox" in an older version (!) that desperately searched for an Internet connection that wasn't available. The link to my DeskTop couldn't be established at startup. A 'time-out' loop occurred! A bug that was resolved in a later version, which I installed now. DropBox is in the repos. After installation you manually interrupt Network Connections for a moment to startup Dropbox a first time. When it asks to install its web-component, just restore the connection and have it run. I found this out today after a renewed breakdown of services. It is the reverse 'problem' as when installing DropBox for which you thus must briefly interrupt Internet access. There are possibly more programs that require Internet access and may run automatically after a start-up. This phenomenon warns us in a way for too enthusiastic "Cloud" computing. What can one do without Internet in such a case? Upon regaining the Internet however all previous problems were dissolved and everything worked as usual. I am curious to see if the new Ubuntu 9.10 'Karmic' is improved on some of these aspects.
I can hardly wait...
John
PS. For the 'wise guys and girls' amongst my readers, who would want to break startup speed records, a hint. If and only if your computer has an INTEL Quad processor allowing Multi-Threading (and you are sure you know this is true) you could go: /etc/init.d/rc and set 'concurrency = shell' (from 'none') to nibble a second or so off from your fast EXT4-startups. Below 8 seconds is possible for the upcoming 'Karma'. By comparison: new Windows 7 takes over 2 minutes. So don't get too nervous. My box takes 16 seconds from power-on to log-in screen.
WIDGETIZE
Deb Platt # 22. October 2009, 01:34
When I installed Ubuntu, I only set up one partition. Now I'm regretting that I didn't put my home directory in its own partition. As I understand it, that can make upgrades go more smoothly. So can I use gparted now to move my home directory into its own partition?
Dr. John v. Kampen # 22. October 2009, 09:11
I have written about this, but here is a more detailed source:
a) the normal way: http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
b) another one: http://www.howtoplaza.com/how-to-install-ubuntu-904-on-a-manually-created-partition
c) and: http://www.funnestra.org/ubuntu/jaunty/
The basic principle remains the same but there is a caveat:
d) your way: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
The trick sits in this gksu gedit /etc/fstab! Read (d) well on it.
Bear in mind that "BackInTime" can roll-back an backupped Home with ease as well. I prefer that way currently!
Deb Platt # 22. October 2009, 19:04
Aadil # 23. October 2009, 00:04
I'll have to raid those links to seperate my /home out!
An sd card of 8Gig should be enough!
Dr. John v. Kampen # 23. October 2009, 19:20
Aadil # 24. October 2009, 21:08
Always remember that my 'real' job (the one that pays the rent) has no use for computers and that this is my hobby. So, a complete system faillier (is that spelt right?) is not a disaster, but merely an entertaining challenge!
As frustrating as fiddling with computers can be, it's that very frustration that gives me hours of entertainment. One of the reasons I never liked Windows is because it generally either works or it doesn't. If it works, there's nothing for you to actually do, and if it doesn't, there's often not much you can do!
Now think about this. I've pulled apart every flash drive I own within an hour of getting it out of it's package just to see what was inside.
(warranties exist for valid reasons though but they don't deter me easily)
Dr. John v. Kampen # 24. October 2009, 21:42
Warranties are good for the first 100 hours of usage. When a computer (and many other household tools) keeps working it will do so the next 4.000 hours (the 'bathtub' period) as a rule of thumb. But those first 100 hours are critical indeed. That is the scary period for manufacturers. All the rest is to sooth the minds...
Aadil # 24. October 2009, 22:31
I knew it was wrong and tried several alternative spellings like 'failiar' and 'failior' but I just couldn't get the right one.
Dr. John v. Kampen # 24. October 2009, 22:51
Aadil # 31. October 2009, 08:51
But that's being a bit too lazy!
Dr. John v. Kampen # 4. November 2009, 21:47