starting up issues

[mrsfrog]

not sure where to post it, I'm not much of a computer person, just use linux for the fun of it.

Recently the laptop is not starting up properly. It seems to boot the bios, and then hangs in a black screen. I've waited for 15 min, nothing happens. I end up turning the computer off and restarting. Then it will boot and comes up with a screen asking if I want to proceed normal mode, recovery mode or two types of memory tests. I pick the first one and computer runs fine. But every time now, I have to start up twice and I know that is really bad for the computer.

I run Katya, but will update to Maya soon. its an Acer Aspire 9300.

Would the problem be in Mint and be solved with updating? Or could it be the graphic card? We are getting some screen issues as well, seeing stripes and stuff, which I think is just age and misuse. Is there any way I can find out what's going on when the computer freezes?

[stratus_ss]

If you get to a grub prompt hit e to edit

You should see something like this

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linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=f52320fb-34a0-4321-80bc-286b7986e618 ro   quiet splash $vt_handoff


Remove the words "quiet splash"

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linux   /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic root=UUID=f52320fb-34a0-4321-80bc-286b7986e618 ro  $vt_handoff


This will turn off background splash and put text to the screen.

I would make this change permanent by editing /boot/grub/menu.lst

This way at least if you freeze again you can see where in the boot process you are having problems

In an early version (cerca 2007 or 8?) I had a problem where the computer would not boot ever until I removed "quiet splash".

Anyways it could be your video card or it could be something else.

We can also check /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog (i forget which it is in your version) dmesg may also hold clues

[mrsfrog]

thank you,

there seems to be no menu.lst anywhere, not sure if it might be called different in my version. I looked for hidden files as well.

I had a look at the other file you mention. Nothing of that makes any sense of me, but from what I gather everything of starting up happened in the same second and then a little bit a few seconds later. It doesn't seem to have registered that I forced it to shut down and nothing happened before that either. I will restart and make sure I check the time next time.

(btw, it's syslog)

[stratus_ss]

Katya may be using grub2

In which case the location of the file is /boot/grub/grub.cfg

However for grub 2, the official way to edit this file is to edit
/etc/default/grub

You should see an entry that looks like:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"


Changing it to:

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""


save and exit. Then run

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sudo update-grub


Those changes should then take affect

[mrsfrog]

thanks. I did that. I had to do that sudo nautilus thing and it opened the folders program. I did get a few warnings in the terminal, though:

(gedit:16266): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory

I then typed sudo update-grub but nothing happened. Then tried to quit nautilus, but can't remember the code for it. It's not just exit is it?

ETA: never mind, patience, patience, it's updating now. Hopefully it does the trick, I'll tell tomorrow.

[mrsfrog]

nop. still same problem.

it loads the bios and then nothing, just nothing. I restart and it works and now I get to see all the text.

[stratus_ss]

hmm thats odd. It seems unlikely to be the linux install then. If you are not even getting to the point where there is text on the screen grub isnt even loading. It may indicate a corrupted or problematic grub install or faulty/dying hardware

[mrsfrog]

hmm. I hope it's not something that can't be fixed, I like this laptop.

faulty grub - I remember doing something with the grub when I installed the next version of ubuntu, which turned out to be annoying, so I switched to Mint. Not sure now, though, whether the grub thing was with Mint or Ubuntu. If the grub is the problem, would updating to Maya solve it?

faulty hardware - computers are black boxes to me, where would I start with checking the hardware?

I'm jobless next week, so will have time to do the update then. hoping that will fix it.

[stratus_ss]

Updating to Maya may help, it might have a different version of grub2, it may also not help anything.

As for the hardware its usually 1 of 3 things that gives trouble at boot like that:

video card
ram
hard drive

For ram you can run memtest for a day or so from a live cd. For the video card its all about noticing odd things. It helps to have a baseline... for example I run "glxgears" for about a minute when I get the card and every once in a while just to see if the performance of the card is slipping. Its basically a really really basic bench marking tool for FPS from your video card.

For the hard drive, you would normally start to see other problems start to crop up.

And as usual you can check syslog, dmesg, xorg.0.log for clues

[mrsfrog]

today computer has been fine. Gonna blame it on solar flares, they are to blame for all the trouble in life, unless it's teething.