Gnome Power Management crashed - now what

[toastmastah]

Say you got a message at the password prompt saying that Gnome Power Manager had been installed incorrectly (I'd love to give you the exact message, but unfortunately I've installed it in Norwegian, meaning the error messages I get are in Norwegian as well.) Is Gnome installed in the /home partition or could I repair this error by reinstalling Linux Mint?

One other question, I am currently booting my computer from a Fedora live-cd(I wanted to take a backup) and it says that my disk have many bad sectors...I've tried to read up on this and it seems that there is nothing I can do about this. Is that correct? The computer is less than two years old, would it be likely for me to get a refund then or is it likely to be my own fault? I've used nothing but Linux so it's not very likely that it is a virus.

[vincent]

Gnome Power Manager installed incorrectly? Weird...if you can get to a command prompt, see if these two commands help:

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sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-power-manager

Bad sectors tend to occur as your hard drive ages, although 2 years is kinda short for the life-span of the typical hard drive...have you tortured your hard drive or something? Anyways, there are ways to cover them up and ignore them, but there is no way as far as I know to fix bad sectors, and as time goes on, the number of bad sectors on your hard drive will get worse and worse, to the point that you won't be able to use the drive anymore. Now's the time to backup your data, and buy a new hard drive for your computer. (You probably won't get a refund for a hard drive riddled with bad sectors, unless your warranty happens to cover this?)

[toastmastah]

First of all, sorry that I didn't answer earlier.

Gnome Power Manager installed incorrectly? Weird...if you can get to a command prompt, see if these two commands help:

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sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-power-manager

I don't think I can, unless there is a way to get to the command prompt before the login prompt.

This is where the error message comes up:


And here's the error message:

What it says(my translation):
A problem with the installation
The configuration details for GNOME power manager is incorrectly installed. Please contact the system administrator.

Logging in with GNOME, GNOME-failsafe and Xterm all send me back to the login prompt. The only thing I can do is shutdown.

Bad sectors tend to occur as your hard drive ages, although 2 years is kinda short for the life-span of the typical hard drive...have you tortured your hard drive or something?

Well...does all the times Grub2 failed and I reinstalled from scratch rather than trying to fix the problem count?

[vincent]

Try pressing CTRL + ALT + F1 to get into a tty and login from there, which will (hopefully) give you access to a shell.

Also, you don't need to re-install from scratch everytime Grub 2 self-destructs or something. Just for future reference, all you would have to do is to boot from a Live CD and type in a few straight-forward commands, saving you time, energy, and the lifespan of your hard drive. (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recover%20Grub%202%20via%20LiveCD)

[Erinsfan]

Hard drive bad sectors come in two flavours:
1) software list them as bad but they may be recoverable;
2) hardware genuine bad sectors which are unrecoverable.

By formatting your drive, you may be able to recover some/all of the 'bad' sectors. Reinstalling software should never cause bad sectors per se.

Regarding Gnome Power Management, try reinstalling or you could try to recreate a new user account and login to that. It may be that some settings have become corrupt in your /home (however doubtful that may be!).

Erin

[Jacqui]

Hello,
I have the exact same problem at the login screen. I am able to get to terminal (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and have performed all of the following with no change in behaviour:

1.
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-power-manager
2.
sudo apt-get clean
3.
chmod 0777 /tmp
4.
sudo dpkg --configure -a
5.
sudo apt-get --reinstall install ubunto-desktop
6.
mkdir /var/lib/gconf/default

Any suggestions of how I might proceed? I really don't want to have to reinstall Mint. Thanks...
Jacqui

[toastmastah]

Try pressing CTRL + ALT + F1 to get into a tty and login from there, which will (hopefully) give you access to a shell.

Also, you don't need to re-install from scratch everytime Grub 2 self-destructs or something. Just for future reference, all you would have to do is to boot from a Live CD and type in a few straight-forward commands, saving you time, energy, and the lifespan of your hard drive. (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recover%20Grub%202%20via%20LiveCD)

Once again, I'm sorry, I completely forgot I had made this thread.
I only remembered it a few days ago, and I tried to run apt-get yesterday. I tried running "SUDO APT-GET -f install" and and got this: "E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem. "sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-power-manager" gets me the same answer.

Once again, sorry for not having paid enough attention to my own thread.

[vincent]

Try this first, just like the error message hinted at:

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sudo dpkg --configure -a

Then try the following:

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sudo apt-get purge gnome-power-manager
sudo apt-get install gnome-power-manager

[toastmastah]

Thanks Vincent, you're a real hero.

At sudo apt-get purge gnome-power-manager I get the following message(Again, this is an off-the-cuff translation from Norwegian. If I've learned anything from this it's that I'll definitely install mint 10 in English )

(Reading database ... 148201 files and catalogs are installed)
Removing gnome-power-manager ...
Cleaining setup files for gnome-power-manager ...
Treating executables(not sure if I am translating correctly here) for desktop file-utils ...
Treating executables for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.nb._NO.utf8.cache...
Treating executables for hicolor-icon-theme ...
Treating executables for man-db ..
/usr/bin/mandb: can't write to /var/cache/man/2193: No space left on device
treating executables for python-support ...

sudo apt-get install gnome-power-manager received this reply:
Warning: the following packages were not authenticated!
gnome-power-manager
Authentication warning overruled.
Error http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main gnome-power-manager 2.30.0-0ubuntu1
Couldn't look up <<archive.ubuntu.com>>
Couldn't get http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... 1_i386.deb Couldn't look up <<archive.ubuntu.com>>
E: Couldn't download all archives. You may try <<apt-get update>> or <<--fix-missing>>.

[vincent]

Couldn't look up <<archive.ubuntu.com>>
Couldn't get http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/m ... 1_i386.deb Couldn't look up <<archive.ubuntu.com>>
E: Couldn't download all archives. You may try <<apt-get update>> or <<--fix-missing>>.

Hmmm...you can't seem to download gnome-power-manager for some reason. Do you have a working internet connection? Is APT configured properly?

[toastmastah]

Well, it is the same connection I used back in July when it went belly-up, and I managed to post just fine from the other computer I bought to replace it...so yeah, I think I am supposed to have a working connection. As far as APT goes, I'm honestly not sure. I've never used APT that much up till now.

I didn't try the --fix-missing suggestion because it seems to me that double dashes means that I am supposed to put something in front of it first. Would "sudo apt-get --fix-missing" be the correct line?

Thanks again for having the patience.

[vincent]

Could you try the following first:

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ping www.google.com

Let's confirm you have a working internet connection before moving on.

[toastmastah]

Could you try the following first:

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ping www.google.com

Let's confirm you have a working internet connection before moving on.

Sorry for falling away again. I have been down with the flu.

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ping: unknown host www.google.com

I'll be damned...

OKay. I guess I'll have to use the ip command to establish a connection before we go any further. (That one I actually know :p)

[walk_the_talk]

Thank you Vincent!

Ok - I am a complete idiot when it comes to computers so it is great to say 2 things:

1. The cause - I have had this happen twice now on my netbook and it is when I have dropped the power whilst the update manager was doing its thing. For some reason I guess the file corrupts without the power source! I am sure one of you can explain why. Last night I fell asleep whilst it was working its little download magic and the cord fell out. I woke to that prob.

I then rushed to my office to jump on my laptop to work out a fix.

2. Vincent - your purge code works perfectly If you remove it and reinstall it should work.

BUT... My netbook has a tiny memory and there was no space for all the file so it continued to error. So I tried just uninstalling it using the purge code. I then rebooted and it logged in. However, now there is now power manager. I can now clear some space and see if I can reinstall. Oh and buy some more drive space!

Once again, thanks guys cos you just saved me losing all my work stuff for the second time.

Rory