I’ve been having all kinds of video issues since I purchased my new hardware, the strangest is with the video card… Worst part is that I don’t have time to deal with this right now, I have a baby on the way (as in less than 15 days, and need everything working!).
Part of my new hardware purchase was an XFX Radeon 6850 cooler, quieter, lower power usage, and 20% performance increase, an upgrade from my XFX Radeon 4890 monster. I first installed windows 7 with my new hardware and had lots of problems. After I gave up on that, I moved to Linux (I used windows 7 first, because Ubuntu 11.10 was due out in 7 days and I did not feel like spending a week setting up my computer, just to upgrade it) and decided that I have always liked XFCE and LXDE as my default window manager in other linux distros and so I would give them a shot now. I downloaded the Beta 2 release of both versions of Ubuntu and tested them via the live CD. I decided on LXDE as my WM of choice and went with it. 13 or so days later I went to download LUbuntu.
Well, to start it was not available at 5am on the release day (eastern time, GMT -5), nor was it available at 11am. so I stopped checking and just decided to wait until later. about 7pm I decided to check again, and Ubuntu 11.10 was available, and after hunting repositories, and it took 5 or 6, I finally found LUbuntu 11.10 non-beta on one of them. I of course chose the torrent file, and while it was still a bit slow (I’ve seen downloads on my computer hit 1.84Mb/s and this even via torrent was crawling along at 287Kb/s) it was going along well enough. I also started Kubuntu at the same time as you never know, and I used KUbuntu for years before I switched from Windows.
The installation went fine, other than the fact that my network adapter was not working (I expected this from the live CD and was prepared with a driver from the chipset vendor. After installation I put the NIC driver on the system, still no internet… I did a lot of searching and spent several hours trying to get the internal adapter working, no dice (even found other users who had the same motherboard and were not having issues after downloading the driver…) finally I got tired of it, I have not had a completely working computer in almost 2 weeks, and work (personal work) was starting to back up to enormous quantities and you could no longer see the top of my desk! So, I grabbed an old 1GB NiC out of the closet in my box ‘o parts, and slapped it in the computer, rebooted, disabled the on-board NiC and boom everything worked. (just a note, I did have the exact same issues in Windows, except the MB CD has Win7 drivers, and they worked). I downloaded the new AMD Radeon drivers and they installed fine, had my two monitors running, even got VMWare workstation working with only 2-3 days worth of research and troubleshooting.
Now I was happily installing my applications and setting everything up, that is when I noticed the lack of GUI system settings applications. Sure there are plenty out there, but most wanted me to install Gnome2 or nearly all of KDE to get them working. All I wanted was:
- To be able to see in real time the CPU usage of all 6 cores at the same time, with or without a graph.
- To customize my power settings so the monitor stopped cutting off every 15 minutes (I set the default time out to 180, in case I am watching a movie, as not all players stop the screen saver).
- To be able to change alternatives without installing half of Gnome2.
- To have the settings I changed in AMDCCLE actually save! and to be able to use them!
- There were some other things, but I can’t think of them now, I’ll add them if/when I remember.
I know most of what I want can be done from the command line, and I was doing some of it from there, but some of the things I wanted to make changes to, without using a GUI app, I did not know where all the setting are located, as they are not always in the same directory. (try editing Grub settings if you don’t believe me, they are located in 4 different places!) and I always miss something… So I decided to install KDE over top of LUbuntu, that way I could use LXDE when I wanted to, but I already knew where the settings and plasmoids were that I needed to do the other things I wanted. Not to mention at this point I was going on 3 weeks without a working computer. (as of when I was writing this, it has been 25 days since my new hardware was ordered and I had 2 day shipping on that!). Installation went well, although it missed a few things from just running : sudo apt-get install kde-desktop but I was able to resolve those with a sudo apt-get -f install and all seemed good.
Then about 3 days later something happened. I was working on setting up an application, I cannot remember what, and I was watching a pre-recorded TV show at the same time. suddenly my screen froze, mouse worked, but no response from the Keyboard. Since then I have not had a working display, and that was 6 days ago. Nothing has worked, I’ve even reinstalled KUbuntu from the KUbunutu install disk. I still cannot get my video working, I get video from one screen, a little less than half the time, the rest of the time the desktop fails to load, or I get a blinking blue or flashing white display. I’ve done a LOT trying to get it working, in fact I have not spent less than 6 hours a day trying to get it working, for 6 days! I’ve tried reinstalling LUbuntu, KUbuntu (the installer keeps crashing during partitioning, so I’ve given up on that one), and when I started writing this I was installing Ubuntu, even though I am not a fan of Unity. I’ve even gone so far as to unplug one of my monitors, thinking having two was causing the issues (during every attempt to reinstall the AMD drivers in the last 3 days I have been getting a message “configuration has more monitor than detected” and this was after using the auto configure to setup the configuration…). I’ve followed the sticky display issues during upgrade post on the Ubuntu Forums, not much there of use after spending 4 days googling the issue already. Nothing seems to fix it, not even copying my old, “working” xorg.conf file. part of the problem is that Ubuntu no longer requires an xorg.conf file, part of the problem is that the AMDCCCLE only saves in the home folder of the user who ran it (if you run it with root privileges, which are needed to make changes, it saves it in Root’s home folder!), but Ubuntu uses the file (if it exists) from /etc/X11! no wonder nothing was working… (any settings changes did not take affect when I made them from the GUI, and if I closed the AMDCCLE and relaunched it, they were reset to the defaults; however using the command line worked fine… the first time.).
Right now, with a clean installation (several posters on the Ubuntu forums have reported this resolved their issues, and nothing else), I am giving it a go, I only have 1 monitor connected right now, and still have to get most of my applications working again, but at least I have a desktop running, internet access, video drivers installed, and it has not crashed yet. I have not completely ruled out a crappy (but quite expensive) motherboard. A bit upset, I spent more on the upgrades for my computer, than I spent on my computer (which I built from parts, like always, in my life I’ve only ever bought 1 pre-assembled computer, and that was because my wife wanted it. and it lasted 5 years without upgrades and cost more than twice what I spent building this one, before my new upgrades anyway), and when I bought it everything was top of the line (except the video card and it was not too far down the list) and it almost all worked right away, but i never had any problems like I do now.
So, back to trying to get things running again. I’ll comment on the current status later if all is well, else I’ll post more headaches.
Let me start off by saying, “What a Mess!” About 2.5 weeks ago (probably 3 by the time I post this!) I bought an HP Deskjet 2050 printer at Walmart, it was cheap, had a flatbed scanner, came with “full” ink cartridges, and only a USB connection option. It was $49.00, $20 more than the printer that looked identical, but was not a flatbed scanner. I thought that HP of all companies would have linux support, even for newer model printers, oh there is support for it… If you can find it. (I’ll be putting up a separate post with plenty of links and re-written documentation for installing this and other HP printers in Ubuntu in the next week or two, kinda busy this weekend, so doubt it will get done before next week)
First thing I did was to go to HP’s website and download a driver, I wasn’t even going to fool with the included CD (actually not sure it even had one). I found it within a minute or two, all seemed good. Installed the driver and plugged the printer in, everything went fine. I believe I even printed something that day just clicked print and it spit right out! Well, next to happen was my wife is using my ChromeOS CR-48 netbook and wanted to print something, so I went to look into setting up Google Cloud Print. I figured, yeah cloud print, that should work… Google has two operating systems in their pockets and both are linux based, piece of cake to use cloud print with linux, right? wrong…
Google Cloud Print requires a Windows computer running the beta Google Chrome browser (or a Mac, but why would you want to use a Mac?) (an fyi, the Linux Chrome Browser only comes in Beta!), a bit confused and disappointed (happens a lot with Google these days), I thought, oh well, good thing I have 5 or 6 Windows Virtual Machines setup already! I popped onto a Win7 VM and setup Google Cloud Print and told my wife “Good to Go!” only took me 30-45 minutes to figure all that out and set it up (I forgot to share it with her gmail ID the first go round!).
Success! it printed!
I love first try attempts that work out great!
So next I had to fill out some paperwork for work and email it back, so I printed the pages that needed signing and filled them out, then tried scan them back in… the scanner would not scan (using simple scan) unless I unplugged the USB cable for 10 seconds or so, then plugged it back in… (more on that at the end of this post, I have a theory). Well after 3-5 pages of this over 1-2 hours, out of about 12 pages, popping the USB cable out stopped working. I wasn’t sure why it needed it in the first place, I had checked to make sure the printer was not attached to a VM at the time… So instead I tried setting it up to scan off the Win7 VM I was using for Cloud Printing (just a note, this was all happening maybe 4 days after the cloud print setup), the scanning application from HP worked fine until I was done. Weird though, again if I did not use the printer for an hour or two, or the VM was paused, or the screen saver came on, I had to unplug the USB cable again…
ok, so history done, up to my issue that started last night…
Actually the issue started on Saturday, but I was pre-occupied and didn’t really try too hard to get it resolved. My wife sent something to the printer from the netbook, I started up the VM for the Win7 Cloud Print, and it never printed. The first document just says “In Progress” and the date submitted was showing 3 days ago when I deleted it. I’ve powered off the Printer for 30+ minutes, I’ve rebooted my computer 4 times, leaving it powered off for about 8 hours once, popped the USB cable, nothing worked. I tried printing locally from Ubuntu and still nothing comes out, just says “Processing”. I did some digging online and found some “directions” for setting up the printer in linux, most of which was on HP’s website, and I never did any of it, including downloading the driver source files and doing a Build, Make, Install on them. So I started following the directions (did not build the driver, it seems to be installed and functioning, as Ubuntu can tell if it is plugged in or not and shows the correct device name), and found a huge list of dependencies that it says to install, I tried it and sure enough I did not have most of it installed on my system yet. About 78MB worth to be specific. I let it run, and noticed a new kernel was available, so I updated that while I was at it… 3 reboots later (not necessary, just kept trying to get things working) and I have no change in the current situation.
So, right now I have no working printer at all, not even scanning is working. It shows it is online, I have enabled it, shared it, allowed internet printing on it (none of which I did when I installed it, only did that after it stopped working).
Now, I’ve had some time to think about it, and I have been having USB issues with Ubuntu the entire time I’ve been running it. My USB webcam and Skype have fighting matches everytime I reboot my system, it never detects and adds the webcam as a valid hardware device, I have to manually configure the microphone each restart, and the video sometimes requires I unplug the webcam and then plug it back in and restart Skype. Other USB devices (I have a USB wireless headset and KB, external drives, my android phone), have all had issues that has required me to restart the computer or plug and unplug the device over and over several times.
This made me think I should run “lsusb -v” on my system to take a look at the devices that the system thinks I have. Well the command does nothing, it just hangs and never runs or finishes running, I have to kill the process AND the terminal window process to get it to stop. I missed this in the printer issue above, but I tried running the hp-setup app that came with the driver and it hangs on detecting the printer when I select USB as the connection type, as well.
So I have determined that the issue is with my Ubuntu installation and the USB service (this occurred to me actually right before I started typing this up). I have not yet started looking into the USB issue and will be doing so tonight. I’ll post a second post instead of updating this one with any results I find out, or if I nuke and reinstall… as a note if I do reinstall, it will not be Ubuntu 11. Also planning on typing up a how to properly install an HP printer on Ubuntu 10.10 x64 guide too.
Lots of things going on, not enough time to tell about them. I am still running the Beast Rom v2.2.1 on my Notion Ink Adam, and not having any issues to complain about, I have used UnrEvoked on my HTC Evo to root it, removed the Sprint apps I didn’t want and started backing up with Clockwork Mod and Titanium Backup. Still running Ubuntu 10.10 x64 exclusively on my desktop, I’ve been working on learning Java and think I’m picking it up pretty quick, although there are nuances I still do not have down. Maybe after 4-6 months I’ll take an intermediate level course on Java and see if they can tell me the small things I am missing from not having an instructor. Some time around January I’ll start learning Android specifics, by then I should be getting up to speed on java graphics and UI interfaces, right now I am just doing console coding.
I lost a large quantity of data from my drives last week, there appears to be an issue with my external drive caddy, when I bootup sometimes one of the drives is not recognized, normally a reboot operation clears it right up. Last week I shut my systems down for a bad storm, in case we lost power for an extended time as the storm was about 2am. Well during startup it had no issue finding the drive that normally didn’t startup, but it did do a disk consistency check, which happens every now and then and no big deal I thought. A few hours after that I went to startup my virtual machine so I could work on my java code and VMware told me some VM drives were missing, I didn’t think much of it, as I had been rearranging and deleting some old VMs recently and started up my Android-SDK VM, launched Eclipse (I move to using Eclipse instead of Appcellerator’s Titanium Mobile Developer, because It has a code editor and Appcellerator decided not to include one…) Well it couldn’t find my files, so I started looking and my data store drive was there, had files in it, but all of my directories were missing!
First things first, I rebooted, thinking there was an issue mounting during startup, well it was the same when it came back up. I checked the trash, in case I accidentally deleted them, nothing was there. I moved to a terminal session and checked the drive space on my mounts and saw there was 173GB of data on my 1TB drive, but no files to show for it (previously there was over 750GB of data on the drive). Well I found a large portion of them in a .trash-1000 folder, not sure about most of you, but I copy every CD I’ve ever gotten since 1997 on to my hard drive as a backup, well that was the end of my backups for a large bit of it. Two days later I found another 140GB on my old Windows 7 boot drive that I apparently copied off of, but never removed the original. So I’m out about 55-65% of my backup data, most of which the CD’s are either missing or damaged beyond use. Probably 60-80% of my backups are either things I have never actually used, or only installed to see what it did, then uninstalled it. So I am not really out too much, just makes me feel empty inside… Most of what I lost that I actually use were my Microsoft disks, having been a Microsoft partner for about 4 years and working a lot with Virtual Machines I had everything stored in .iso format, and about 2 years ago Microsoft moved to .iso format and I was keeping up with all available software via the download site. So I basically lost everything that was released by MS in the last 2 years and since I am no longer a MS partner I no longer have access to those downloads. (this includes Win7 and Office 2010) I guess it is a good idea that I don’t run windows as my OS anymore!
Having an issue since I tried to flash from Beast v2.2 to Beast 2.2.1, I don’t think it is Caused by Beast, but I did not have any issue previously and I have been through a couple of roms now… as a note I am using Ubuntu 10.10 x64 on my desktop and also have a laptop with U10.10 32-bit dual-booting into win7 x64, although I try to never boot into windows. I have a microSD to SD converter that I plug into a SD to USB converter to copy files to the card.
- I copied the file to my 32GB MicroSD
- restarted into recovery mode
- wiped the cache and data
- restarted again (had to boot into v2.2 and renamed it to update.zip, as I have not reinstalled Clockwork since I left EdenX)
- restarted into recovery mode again
- wiped the cache and data
- selected update from external SD
- after the update it hung on the new Android logo (I let it sit for 73 minutes before giving up)
- restarted into recovery mode again
- wiped the cache and data again
- restarted the Adam again
- same result
I tried redownloading the .zip file and trying again
- renamed the file first this time
- copied it to my 32GB Micro SD
- this time I added some .apk files to the apps folder to try and save some time reinstalling things
- restarted into recovery mode again
- wiped the cache and data again
- selected update from external SD
- update failed update.zip (BAD)
- took the Micros SD out again
- and put it in my desktop
- I tried to open the .zip file and it failed to open, “Error: /media/disk/update.zip: Can not open file as archive”
rinse and repeat four times, same issue every time. Always the same issue if I try to reboot too, with it hanging on the Android logo.
Just to test if it was my Ubuntu install corrupting the file transfer I tried it from the laptop in Windows, same results, exactly.
I’ve tested the .zip both before and after putting it in the Adam, every time the same, doesn’t matter if I put the card in my desktop, laptop with either OS. It is always good before I put it in the Adam (yes I tested by copying it on one computer and opening it on the other before putting it in the Adam), and Always bad after I take it out of my Adam.
Now, I still have the Beast v2.2 update.zip on the internal SD; however when I flash to it, the Adam reboots and then gets stuck on the Android logo (from the new v2.2.1 rom) as such is obviously still Beast v2.2.1 even after what appeared to be a successful flash.
**** update ****
two other notes,
- I do have and have tried, a 2GB microSD card. same results.
- I called the file update.zip.zip (by accident on the Win7 machine, hidden known file types) one time and the Adam said it could not find the file, then when I put it in my laptop again (in Win7) and tried to open the file to make sure it was still good, Windows prompted me to “insert the last disk of the Multi-Volume set” Again, this was on a zip file that was working when I took it out of the laptop, was not named update.zip and it still had the issue when I took it out of my Adam.
Because of #2 here in the update section, I tested this by placing other .zip files in the root of the micro SD, and all .zip files are corrupted after I put the card in my Adam.
****update 2****
I downloaded the Beastv2.2.1 Rom from my own mirror location, saved it to my 2GB MicroSD and put it in the Adam. Flashed perfectly and then said “BYE” and restarted, I ran out to return a red box movie right as it flashed “BYE” and when I came back it was still sitting on the “ANDROID” logo, so no go there. The Good news is that the update.zip file was not corrupted when I stuck it back in the Win7 machine. not sure what changed, but it was the first time the zip file came back ok. So I just tried powering the Adam back on normal. Sat on the ANDROID screen for 10 minutes before I gave up. Went back in and wiped the Data and Cache and rebooted again, my reward for diligence was 10 more minutes on the ANDROID logo. I do want to note at this time that all times it sat on the Android logo, from the first flashing, the logo WAS animated, it was not hung, more like the Adam was waiting on something. Also I want to note I have tried flashing clockwork on to try and see if it would help, but get the same results. I also tried rebooting without the MicroSD card inserted, no difference.
I’m going to try a different Rom and see if it makes any difference.
Well, I failed with Vegan Rom also…
I guess I need to setup ADB and do an unbrick…
strange enough it always flashes the copied Beastv2.2 from the internal card with no issues, other than it still boots with the Gingerbread Android Logo and gets stuck on it forever…
**** Update 3 ****
Stranger things have happened, I plugged my Adam into the Laptop while Win7 was booted and the Adam was trying to boot into something, and it recognized it, added 4 devices to my computer, including one called “Harmony” which I had to use the unbricking USB Driver to recognize, it turned into Android Debug Device after that… It did mount the storage device; however, I was not able to open it, it just told me to insert a disk. I will start the unbricking process in the morning, as I am tired now and don’t want to make any stupid mistakes.
Ok, so it is a new day, and I have successfully restored my Adam to the way it was when they shipped it to me.
As an fyi, my Adam normally boots with a white background, black text “Notion Ink” additionally in the recovery options it says:
- reboot system now
- apply internal sdcard:update.zip
- apply external sdcard:update.zip
- wipe data/cache
- wipe cache partition
- calibrate touch screen
I flashed with the unbricking file windows_PQ, it took about 2 minutes to complete, and my adam now has a white text, black background notion ink logo, and #4 in the recovery window says “wipe data/factory reset” and is stuck on the adam boot screen loop.
I am right now doing both wipe steps and rebooting again…
And my adam started up without issue.
**** update ****
I have (just for fun) checked for updates on my adam, while it was in stock mode and there was one available. I downloaded it, and it is a 81.48 MB file, I have copied it to a usb stick, just in case, and will put the results here after it runs. (not sure what to expect, as I am currently on NIP20040211.
**** after update ****
I got my black Notion ink logo on a white background back, and am now on build NIP20140211, kernel 2.6.32, Android v2.2, it remembered my wifi security key… and now reports my adam is up to date and the update file has disappeared from my internal memory and my external SD…
Now for fun, I am going to try and install clockwork and then the exact same Beastv2.2.1 file that I tried the first time that got me in this mess…
hmmm… every time I copy (or rename) the clockwork.zip file to update.zip using sniffer, if turns into an empty folder named update, which disappears if I switch to another filesystem (ie go to USB or SD2, then back to the internal SD), but if I try to copy it again, it tells me the file already exists…
I am having the same issue if I try to rename and save the file from my desktop or laptop as I was having originally. So at this point I have a Notion Ink Adam that looks, runs and functions exactly like it did when I received it. Which in my mind is not at all. Now I am stuck, I cannot get my Adam to switch to another Rom, I cannot install anything via the update.zip method.
******************* UPDATE ******************
This issue has been resolved and within about 5 minutes I have found the problem and fixed it and I am preparing now to reflash my Adam to my modified Beast v2.2.1
The problem was caused by Beast v2.2.1 dropping LauncherPro as an installed home launcher, and only including VTL.Launcher (which I cannot stand, personally I think the weird floating shortcuts on the sides are abominable!) So, I’ve installed Launcher Pro from the market, and backed it up with Titanium Backup and copied the backups to my MicroSD, that I’ll transfer into my modified Beast Rom and attempt to install again.
******************* FINAL UPDATE!!! **********************
This issue was caused by a counterfeit Kingston 32GB micro SDHC class 6 – according to the Kingston website, the 32GB micro SDHC is not manufactured in class 6
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