It Boots Up but Nothing Works!

Hi, I'm having issues with my Aspire One which I'm hoping somebody has seen before because I've been round Google umpteen times with no luck!

The symptoms are:

• * It boots up seemingly OK - gets to main desktop screen.
  * Won't connect to network.
  * If you open 'My Files' you find nothing there - all the linked folders ('Pictures', 'Music' etc) are missing completely.
  * However you can browse the drive in thunar - but the mnt/home folder is empty
  * The battery indicator always shows 'plugged in' even when it isn't.
  * The speaker icon is shown as muted.
  * Alt-F2 works, but if I open a terminal window it is blank and doesn't allow me to type anything in.
  * I can open stuff like mousepad from Alt-F2 without issues and can even do a sudo from there to edit files if need be.
  * If I type xterm into Alt-F2, nothing happens.
  * Rebooting changes nothing.

This happened for the first time yesterday - I thought it was related to some changes I was trying to make to the fstab file. In the end I spent most of the day restoring it with a usb drive and reinstalling everything (FF3, Skype, VLC etc.) Now it has gone and done it again! (And I didn't touch fstab this time!)

The last thing I did before it happened was to mount some of my windows network shares using a mount command. However I've done that a few times and rebooted without problem.

Any help would be much appreciated - I'm pretty new to Linux but I'm learning fast!

Thanks,

Nirst

 

Just an odd addition to this:

When I left the battery to run out on the aspire and I came to switch it back on again, It all worked as normal (after a slightly longer boot up time)

Since then though, it has happened again! What is causing this?!

Nirst

 

The fact that it took longer to boot than it usually does and it fixed the problem seems to indicate that what has happened is the system did a fsck (checkdisk in DOS terms) on bootup and correct file corruption errors. The fact that it has once again stopped working appears to indicate that file corruption has happen again. Why this would be happening, I don't know? Possibly there is a hardware problem. You can always try running some other version of Linux from a USB flash key and running fsck against /dev/sda1 to see whether file corruption still exists and to correct it.

Cheers.

 

hi,

i got the same problem with mine. it happen after some transfert from a usbkey. i wonder id you did update you system with the live update recently. their was a file manager update in it.

after searching i found that a good amount of people have this problem. even more, it seem to have happen recently making me think something in the recent update might cause that. some just report missing wifi or inoperative usb. but i suspect they just dont take the mesure of the whole problem on their aspire one.

i will try the FSCK command or to run my battery out ( the 6 cell have around 5 hours duration that might be long).i might also try to reverse the recent update i might. but my linux experience is inexistant.

i kind of pissed off by this poor linux implementation... i should have take xp... witch at least i know more and have more recovery possibility.

im out of the country for 2 mounth and having to use a internet cafe for troubleshouting my acer piss me off even more... i did Bring that thing specificly for the wifi... now im affraid to have that 3 pound dead corpse in my back pack for nothing

anyway i will post more if i find something.

 

good, the run out battery trick worked.

but before that even the terminal was jammed. so i wasn't able to fsck the SSD HD.

i wrote to acer support about that i will post if there is news.

sandrin

 

fsck should only be run against a drive that is unmounted. Hence the need to run an external Linux to do it, or have the system run fsck BEFORE it mounts the drive.

Cheers.

 

I am a Linux guy, and do know that all computers and OS's have their foibles. XP has its own. I have seen a lot of Windows machines
crash due to registry problems, and nothing to be done but to reinstall and you lose everything on it. A backup is invaluable, and the
macles* aa1backup system is fabulous as it lets you restore to bare metal. See his blogsite or my posting elsewhere.

A few things in Limpus are not too well thought out, or have serious problems. That is not the fault of Linux per se, but of a low-budget
company (Linpus) putting a distro out there that is obsolete upon release. Acer then modified it, so normal Linpus things don't work on it,
and Linpus updates BREAK it too! This is unheard of in regular RedHat Fedora, or Ubuntu Linux. Please do not think badly of Linux due
to a poor implentation by Acer. And by the way, as far as I know, Acer+Linux is no more. Just old inventory being cleared with 2-year old
linux limpus software.

Things that can break your Limpus are legion, but here are a few:

1. Using the SD card as expansion. It only works under some narrowly defined conditions. It is not an expanded drive because if you pull
your expansion card and plug in a new one, you may not like the results. In other circumstances, specially if you like to experiment a bit,
you may trash the whole system. Not good when you are in a Paris Bistro depending on your Acer.

2. Mounting shares on a Windows network may have a lot of unintended consequences, particularly if your system has a card in the
expansion slot. I can think of several scenarios, none of them pretty. Not the fault of Windows per se, but of a system that does not
understand the Acer implementation of unionfs.

3. The solid state drive does not crash and etch grooves in your platters, but it can get corrupted by power failures, etc. It is not immune to
the foibles of computers in general. Fortunately, FSCK as outlined above can sometimes repair this. Linux runs fsck on itself on bootup,
or -most of them do. Acer Limpus may not, but I believe it does. Limpus does not display a screen showing all this activity, it just
puts on a pretty face, so offhand I do not know what it does. But regular Ubuntu, Fedora etc WILL fsck your computer and repair most, if
not all damage. Sometimes takes a couple reboots.

4. The ext3 filesystem is journaled and generally will repair itself from the most egregious of screwups, specially power loss. BUT, ext3
does a lot more hard drive writes, so it is not healthy for the 8 GB SSD in the little Acer. But ok on the hard drive models. For this
reason, Linpus runs ext2, which is unjournaled and only fsck is available. Fsck is slow, expect half hour to fsck your SDD. But ext3
is almost instantaneous in self repair. For a long time, Windows did not have anything as good, but the new file systems under Vista
are quite good, equivalent of ext3.

5. Many of the problems that people have with Linux is because they bring their Microsoftisms into Linux. Let me say that Linux is NOT
Windows. Please respect that. A lot of work has gone into some aspects of Linux to make it friendly to Windows users, but there is no
guarantee and those aspects are spotty and inconsistent. On the other hand, if you are a Linux user and go to Microsoft, you will also
pull your hair out! The truth is that there is a middle ground. Take a kid or an old lady that has never used a computer before, and
give them Linux ... they grow up Linux and have no problems. The problem will be when they try to switch to Windows, and they will
whine forever. So please, take Linux the way it is, and if things are not as expected, Learn the Linux Way and you will be time and money
ahead.

And always remember, there is always a way to do it with Linux, but with Microsoft you have to do it their way and pay for every step.
But, if you are a rich American, your wallet is quite deep so you have a choice.

 

Hi

I've got a similar problem to "Nirst" (though not quite as bad) on a AAO 110 with SSD and 1/2G Ram.
Ive not updated the Bios since I bought it mid last year.

While the drive is mounted Ive run "fsck -n" to check if its intact.
It lists various errors (including a corrupted directory)

I've tried "shutdown -F -r now" to force an Fsck on reboot.
When I rerun fsck -n I still get errors - some new, some old, while other old ones seem to dissapear
But it still gives me the message:
"linpus contains a file system with errors, check forced"

In fact I don't know for certain that Fsck has run on reboot!
Ive tried this a number of times.

Is there any way I can run Fsck and get visual feedback and perhaps interact with it ?
(clearly not when the SSD is mounted)

Thanks in anticipation
BJC

 

As I stated, you'll need to boot another Linux from a flash key for example and run fsck against the SSD's ext2 partition.

Cheers.