ubuntu unreliable - options??

Mike Scott · External Since: Nov 07, 2006 Posts: 11

I've been making a serious effort over the past few weeks to switch from
XP to ubuntu. I'm so nearly there, but......

Thunderbird, nfs/automount and hibernation seem to make an evil mix.
They seem to conspire together to make an unreliable machine - causing
unpredictable problems such as outright system hangs, and hibernate not
working consistently (even on this, a desktop machine).

I gather from the 'net that hibernate is prone to "issues" - so does
anyone have useful suggestions what best to try next? A different linux
distro? Or do they all have similar problems? Or head straight for
freebsd (with which I'm familiar anyway) or its cousin desktopbsd?

--
Mike Scott (unet1 <at> scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex England

Gordon Henderson · External Since: Jun 10, 2007 Posts: 19

In article <Gjbul.2371$Qg1.1206@newsfe25.ams2>,
Mike Scott <usenet.11.RemoveThis@spam.stopper.scottsonline.org.uk> wrote:
>I've been making a serious effort over the past few weeks to switch from
>XP to ubuntu. I'm so nearly there, but......
>
>Thunderbird, nfs/automount and hibernation seem to make an evil mix.

Are you actually using nfs and automount? This would indicate that you
already have a Linux box somewhere...

>They seem to conspire together to make an unreliable machine - causing
>unpredictable problems such as outright system hangs, and hibernate not
>working consistently (even on this, a desktop machine).

I think it's the hibernate and networking that's the issue. I generally
don'thave issues with my notebook with hibernate, although when it comes
out, all networking os offline and I usually need to kick it again. This
may be deliberate - I've not really looked into the scripts.

>I gather from the 'net that hibernate is prone to "issues" - so does
>anyone have useful suggestions what best to try next? A different linux
>distro? Or do they all have similar problems? Or head straight for
>freebsd (with which I'm familiar anyway) or its cousin desktopbsd?

I'm using Debian Lenny on my desktop and laptops (Acer Aspire 5050 and
Acer Aspire One) the same on my wifes AAO. My wife would not tolerate
an unstable machine and this works for her... My curent desktop uptime
is 71 days although I don't hibernate it.

What's ubuntu going to give you that Lenny won't?

Gordon

Mike Scott · External Since: Nov 07, 2006 Posts: 11

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> In article <Gjbul.2371$Qg1.1206@newsfe25.ams2>,
> Mike Scott <usenet.11.DeleteThis@spam.stopper.scottsonline.org.uk> wrote:
>> I've been making a serious effort over the past few weeks to switch from
>> XP to ubuntu. I'm so nearly there, but......
>>
>> Thunderbird, nfs/automount and hibernation seem to make an evil mix.
>
> Are you actually using nfs and automount? This would indicate that you
> already have a Linux box somewhere...

Freebsd actually, running as a headless server. Runs 24/7; maybe
hibernate doesn't work there either - I'd never know Smile

>
>> They seem to conspire together to make an unreliable machine - causing
>> unpredictable problems such as outright system hangs, and hibernate not
>> working consistently (even on this, a desktop machine).
>
> I think it's the hibernate and networking that's the issue. I generally
> don'thave issues with my notebook with hibernate, although when it comes
> out, all networking os offline and I usually need to kick it again. This
> may be deliberate - I've not really looked into the scripts.
>
>> I gather from the 'net that hibernate is prone to "issues" - so does
>> anyone have useful suggestions what best to try next? A different linux
>> distro? Or do they all have similar problems? Or head straight for
>> freebsd (with which I'm familiar anyway) or its cousin desktopbsd?
>
> I'm using Debian Lenny on my desktop and laptops (Acer Aspire 5050 and
> Acer Aspire One) the same on my wifes AAO. My wife would not tolerate
> an unstable machine and this works for her... My curent desktop uptime
> is 71 days although I don't hibernate it.

Mmmm. Must run up the electric bill a bit Smile

But as ubuntu is based on
Debian, wouldn't they both have this sort of problem in common?

>
> What's ubuntu going to give you that Lenny won't?

No idea - I'm hoping for good suggestions from here (a.o.l.ubuntu has
seemed pretty unhelpful, I'm afraid). I need something dead reliable,
and that my wife will be able to use as well (I'm not intending to buy
any more windows-based machines)

>
> Gordon

--
Mike Scott (unet1 <at> scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex England

Gordon Henderson · External Since: Jun 10, 2007 Posts: 19

In article <0ccul.124844$3f2.15851@newsfe14.ams2>,
Mike Scott <usenet.11 DeleteThis @spam.stopper.scottsonline.org.uk> wrote:
>Gordon Henderson wrote:

>> I'm using Debian Lenny on my desktop and laptops (Acer Aspire 5050 and
>> Acer Aspire One) the same on my wifes AAO. My wife would not tolerate
>> an unstable machine and this works for her... My curent desktop uptime
>> is 71 days although I don't hibernate it.
>
>Mmmm. Must run up the electric bill a bit Smile

I bet it's not as much as your FreeBSD box is using! This is a low-power
Atom mobo running out of flash.. (With /home mounted on another server
which would be running anyway)

> But as ubuntu is based on
>Debian, wouldn't they both have this sort of problem in common?

Well - My understanding isthat Ubuntu is more (b)leeding edge than
Debian. So eg. Debian Lenny has OpenOffice 2.4 while Ubuntu has 3.x
(I think) And I think Ubuntu loads up much more "stuff" than Lenny does.

Debian is geared up for stability, Ubuntu for new features and 6-monthly
release cycles...

I choose to go for stability over the latest and greatest and I don't
(or try not to) load packages I don't want. It makes my own way of
installing it a bit longer winded, but works for me.

I actually have firefox 3.2 - which I downloaded to test as the firefox
shipped with Lenny has a really slow javascript engine - it'seasy to
select either though.

>> What's ubuntu going to give you that Lenny won't?
>
>No idea - I'm hoping for good suggestions from here (a.o.l.ubuntu has
>seemed pretty unhelpful, I'm afraid). I need something dead reliable,
>and that my wife will be able to use as well (I'm not intending to buy
>any more windows-based machines)

I loaded up Lenny on our Laptops recently - Wifey is an adequate XP user
and had taken to Lenny without any problems. I did load up xfce4 for her,
installed her email and web clients - I had to manually get realplayer and
flash which aren't included in Debian due to their "non free" status. I
also had to custom compile a kernel for her laptop (but that's my choice,
I do that anyway) to make it see the camera and wi-fi hardware.

FWIW: I've used Debian as my desktop more or less since it came out
and yes, there have been times when it's been quite long in the tooth
compared to anything else, but it's never let me down.

Gordon

Moog · External Since: Feb 02, 2007 Posts: 181

Mike Scott illuminated uk.comp.os.linux by typing:
> I've been making a serious effort over the past few weeks to switch from
> XP to ubuntu. I'm so nearly there, but......
>
> Thunderbird, nfs/automount and hibernation seem to make an evil mix.
> They seem to conspire together to make an unreliable machine - causing
> unpredictable problems such as outright system hangs, and hibernate not
> working consistently (even on this, a desktop machine).

I don't hibernate. I have issues, and it's all down to ACPI
implentation.
If it is a show stopper for you, you may wish to look at a distro such
as Slackware or Gentoo. This would give you a much better chance of
patching the kernel to accomodate "acpi buggy" bioses.

I don't use thunderbird. Evolution is far easier IMHO.

NFS is fine here.

> I gather from the 'net that hibernate is prone to "issues" - so does
> anyone have useful suggestions what best to try next? A different linux
> distro? Or do they all have similar problems? Or head straight for
> freebsd (with which I'm familiar anyway) or its cousin desktopbsd?

Hmmm. Down to you really. Why not pop in a few liveCD's and see what
gives.

--
So this cowboy walks in to a German car showroom and he says "Audi!"

Mike Scott · External Since: Nov 07, 2006 Posts: 11

Gordon Henderson wrote:
> In article <0ccul.124844$3f2.15851@newsfe14.ams2>,
> Mike Scott <usenet.11.RemoveThis@spam.stopper.scottsonline.org.uk> wrote:
>> Gordon Henderson wrote:
>
>>> I'm using Debian Lenny on my desktop and laptops (Acer Aspire 5050 and
>>> Acer Aspire One) the same on my wifes AAO. My wife would not tolerate
>>> an unstable machine and this works for her... My curent desktop uptime
>>> is 71 days although I don't hibernate it.
>> Mmmm. Must run up the electric bill a bit Smile

>
> I bet it's not as much as your FreeBSD box is using! This is a low-power
> Atom mobo running out of flash.. (With /home mounted on another server
> which would be running anyway)

Low power C7-based job. mobo rated at 9W iirc - doesn't that beat the
atom? Smile

Don't know what the disk takes, it's a 2.5" drive, but more
than your flash. But it's quite self-contained.

>
>> But as ubuntu is based on
>> Debian, wouldn't they both have this sort of problem in common?
>
> Well - My understanding isthat Ubuntu is more (b)leeding edge than
> Debian. So eg. Debian Lenny has OpenOffice 2.4 while Ubuntu has 3.x
> (I think) And I think Ubuntu loads up much more "stuff" than Lenny does.

Hard for anything to load more than ubuntu, I suspect.

.....

> FWIW: I've used Debian as my desktop more or less since it came out
> and yes, there have been times when it's been quite long in the tooth
> compared to anything else, but it's never let me down.
>
> Gordon

I'll take your comments on board. TBH, I /thought/ ubuntu was going to
be workable, but the niggles are bad enough I'll probably go back to
square 0 and try something else.

BTW, (and not PC to say in some groups) but XP has, actually, been
pretty reliable overall. But the writing's on the wall with the new
windows versions.

--
Mike Scott (unet1 <at> scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex England

Mike Scott · External Since: Nov 07, 2006 Posts: 11

Moog wrote:
> Mike Scott illuminated uk.comp.os.linux by typing:
>> I've been making a serious effort over the past few weeks to switch from
>> XP to ubuntu. I'm so nearly there, but......
>>
>> Thunderbird, nfs/automount and hibernation seem to make an evil mix.
>> They seem to conspire together to make an unreliable machine - causing
>> unpredictable problems such as outright system hangs, and hibernate not
>> working consistently (even on this, a desktop machine).
>
> I don't hibernate. I have issues, and it's all down to ACPI
> implentation.

Seems a general comment. But if w*ws can manage, I don't see why the
'nixes shouldn't too.

> If it is a show stopper for you, you may wish to look at a distro such
> as Slackware or Gentoo. This would give you a much better chance of
> patching the kernel to accomodate "acpi buggy" bioses.

It is a show stopper; but there I /really/ don't want to go....
>
> I don't use thunderbird. Evolution is far easier IMHO.

Probably. But I want something to work cross-platform, between XP and
ubuntu/whatever and with a common "profile". I've found nothing other
than TB to do this.

>
> NFS is fine here.
>
>> I gather from the 'net that hibernate is prone to "issues" - so does
>> anyone have useful suggestions what best to try next? A different linux
>> distro? Or do they all have similar problems? Or head straight for
>> freebsd (with which I'm familiar anyway) or its cousin desktopbsd?
>
> Hmmm. Down to you really. Why not pop in a few liveCD's and see what
> gives.

I did work through a few; but it never occurred to me that hibernate
would be an issue. Same comment over locking (which causes TB a few
hiccups when the profile is on nfs)

>
Thanks.

--
Mike Scott (unet1 <at> scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex England

Bruce Stephens · External Since: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 186

Mike Scott <usenet.11.TakeThisOut@spam.stopper.scottsonline.org.uk> writes:

> Moog wrote:

[...]

>> I don't hibernate. I have issues, and it's all down to ACPI
>> implentation.
>
> Seems a general comment. But if w*ws can manage, I don't see why the
> nixes shouldn't too.

IIUC there are some OS-specific problems: if you've got hardware
fiddliness across kernel- and user-space then hibernate and suspend is
going to be more challenging than if you stick everything in the
kernel. I think that affects X on Unix, which is (again, IIRC) partly
why it's regarded as important to get a few more video features into
the kernel.

Also, IIRC, the way that ACPI behaves depends on what OS the kernel
says it is. The BIOS manufacturers (and subsequent box shifters)
obviously have a large incentive in making sure Windows behaviour is
acceptable and much less incentive to follow available standards (or
to let anyone else know how their boards behave). So while there
might well be published standards which Linux and *BSD could follow,
some of the time they're apparently better off lying to the BIOS and
claiming to be Windows, and getting behaviour that might not be
entirely predictable.

[...]

Martin Gregorie · External Since: Jan 23, 2009 Posts: 14

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:38:46 +0000, Mike Scott wrote:

>
> I did work through a few; but it never occurred to me that hibernate
> would be an issue.
>
I use suspend rather than hibernate (Fedora 9 on a Lenovo Thinkpad R61i)
and have no restart issues with any software I've run on it, but I'm also
an Evolution user.

I used Hibernate for a while but then I had a program (I forget which)
crash almost immediately after coming out of hibernation, locking the
display and keyboard in the process. The result was the machine was
wedged immovably into a mode where any and all attempts to reboot would
repeat the crash and lockup. Nothing I tried would break this loop until
in desperation I took the battery out to get a cold start and then booted
off an installation DVD. This let me wrest control back from Hibernate.

It seems that Hibernate achieves wake up by subverting the boot process.
It seems to do this by writing directions to some non-volatile storage
that forces the system to reboot from all the cruft it saved last time it
hibernated. When de-Hibernation completes, and only then, it switches the
directions back to normal reboot behavior. The result is that if you
manage to get the machine to hibernate a corrupted process that, on
restart, will lock it up before de-Hibernation completes you're very
nearly stuffed.

Anyway, I this taught me that Hibernate is a Very Bad Thing.

Since then my laptop is suspended overnight with the power brick plugged
in and completely shut down if I take it some place. This may use an
extra watt or two, but at least I know it can always be started without
any hassle.

--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

Paul Martin · External Since: Sep 21, 2004 Posts: 176

This message is not archived

Folderol · External Since: Dec 13, 2004 Posts: 135

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:38:46 +0000
Mike Scott <usenet.11 DeleteThis @spam.stopper.scottsonline.org.uk> wrote:

> Moog wrote:
> > Mike Scott illuminated uk.comp.os.linux by typing:
> >> I've been making a serious effort over the past few weeks to switch from
> >> XP to ubuntu. I'm so nearly there, but......
> >>
> >> Thunderbird, nfs/automount and hibernation seem to make an evil mix.
> >> They seem to conspire together to make an unreliable machine - causing
> >> unpredictable problems such as outright system hangs, and hibernate not
> >> working consistently (even on this, a desktop machine).
> >
> > I don't hibernate. I have issues, and it's all down to ACPI
> > implentation.
>
> Seems a general comment. But if w*ws can manage, I don't see why the
> 'nixes shouldn't too.
>
>
> > If it is a show stopper for you, you may wish to look at a distro such
> > as Slackware or Gentoo. This would give you a much better chance of
> > patching the kernel to accomodate "acpi buggy" bioses.
>
> It is a show stopper; but there I /really/ don't want to go....
> >
> > I don't use thunderbird. Evolution is far easier IMHO.
>
> Probably. But I want something to work cross-platform, between XP and
> ubuntu/whatever and with a common "profile". I've found nothing other
> than TB to do this.

Claws-Mail is cross platform and very lightweight. It also uses
standards-compliant file formats.

--
Will J G

Folderol · External Since: Dec 13, 2004 Posts: 135

On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:15:35 +0000
Paul Martin <pm DeleteThis @zetnet.net> wrote:

> I use "sid" for a twice-daily release cycle. Smile

Can't get much more leading-edge than that. Not sure if that makes you
brave or stupid! LOL

--
Will J G

Johnny B Good · External Since: Mar 30, 2004 Posts: 58

The message <20090312225933.26880893@debian>
from Folderol <folderol RemoveThis @ukfsn.org> contains these words:

> On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:15:35 +0000
> Paul Martin <pm RemoveThis @zetnet.net> wrote:

> > I use "sid" for a twice-daily release cycle. Smile

> Can't get much more leading-edge than that. Not sure if that makes you
> brave or stupid! LOL

Let's put it this way: He's not stupid. Wink

--
Regards, John.

Please remove the "ohggcyht" before replying.
The address has been munged to reject Spam-bots.

Mike Scott · External Since: Nov 07, 2006 Posts: 11

Folderol wrote:
....
>
> Claws-Mail is cross platform and very lightweight. It also uses
> standards-compliant file formats.
>
Thanks, but I did look a while ago at that one. It always seems to look
in the home directory for profile info - not much use when trying to
access the same data from different machines, never mind different OSes.
I still don't understand why there's no switch/environment setting to
override this. Or maybe it's changed lately?

--
Mike Scott (unet1 <at> scottsonline.org.uk)
Harlow Essex England

Paul Martin · External Since: Sep 21, 2004 Posts: 176

This message is not archived

Folderol · External Since: Dec 13, 2004 Posts: 135

On Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:13:09 +0000
Paul Martin <pm.TakeThisOut@zetnet.net> wrote:

> In article <20090312225933.26880893@debian>,
> Folderol wrote:
> > On Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:15:35 +0000
> > Paul Martin <pm.TakeThisOut@zetnet.net> wrote:
>
> >> I use "sid" for a twice-daily release cycle. Smile

>
> > Can't get much more leading-edge than that. Not sure if that makes you
> > brave or stupid! LOL
>
> My other email address ends with @debian.org

Oops Smile

> Should I get that made into a bumper sticker? Smile

Not a bad idea, although it would of course fly right over the heads of
most road users.

Hmmm. Presumably it would also carry a CC license!

--
Will J G