On Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:09:26 -0700 Jason Dagit <[email protected]> dijo:
> On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 1:14 PM, John Jason Jordan<[email protected]> wrote: > > A month or so ago I asked here for suggestions as to why my bluetooth > > mouse stopped working. It happened after our August general meeting. I > > had tried to suspend (which never works because I can't restore). I > > hadn't tried suspend for a long time, so I tried it again just to see > > if perhaps some of the constant updates had fixed things. Suspend was > > still broken, and the only way to restore was to use the power button > > and restart. After restarting the mouse was dead and nothing I could do > > would get it working again. However, bluetooth was working fine because > > I can connect to my phone, and "hcitool scan" finds the mouse. > > > > Drew suggested here that if bluetooth is working, then the problem must > > be in X. So I switched from the nv driver to the nVidia driver and > > restarted the computer. (Can't do Ctrl-alt-backspace on current > > incarnations of Gnome.) When X came up the mouse was working. I > > switched back to the nv driver and the mouse has continued to work. > > That is, until this morning, when I discovered that overnight it died > > again. Sadly, switching drivers did not restore it this time. > > Otherwise, same symptoms - "hcitool scan" finds it, and "hcitool cc > > <address> executes without error, but no mousie. I have another > > bluetooth mouse and I get the same results with it. > > > > There's more. Ever since that fateful night the desktop font (Sans, 9 > > pt) has been slightly messed up. The linespacing is too wide, and when > > I type into a dialog box the text jumps down so the lower half of the > > letters are cut off. Numerals also appear in various point sizes. > > Changing to a different font does not help. > > > > And still more. I now have occasional system lockups. Once the capslock > > light was flashing, but usually it just quietly locks up - no mouse, no > > keyboard. There are no messages in /var/log/messages. Also, Firefox > > decides to crash about once a day, always when clicking on a link in a > > web page. When I restart Firefox the same link works fine. Previously > > Firefox was always rock solid. > > > > So I conclude that something is messed up in X and it is causing all > > these woes. I have decided that I should just reinstall X. But there is > > my problem. Google cannot tell me what "X" actually consists of. It's > > probably more than one package, but which ones? Also, what will happen > > if I uninstall X from the GUI? Like, Synaptic sort of needs a GUI, so > > I'm not sure the reinstall will work properly. I'm thinking I should do > > the whole uninstall-reinstall from the command line after booting to > > Recovery Mode. That means I need a paper list of packages. Or maybe > > it's Gnome, not X. I don't actually know where X ends and Gnome starts. > Because you mention the font weirdness I would suspect Gnome and not > X. I personally have observed Gnome causing font size weirdness and I > know others who have had similar issues. > > For example, run a different desktop than Gnome. Try running your > kernel with fewer drivers. Check if your graphics chipset is known > for bad linux support. Try the nVidia driver for a while and see if > FF stops crashing. Check up on the FF memory usage during the day and > see if there is a pattern with how much memory it is using when it > crashes. Check the log after FF crashes to see if the OOM killer is > mentioned. Does your computer overheat? Is your powersupply > regulating properly (I had a problem where kernel threads would died > after several days of uptime due to a bad powersupply once)? I have made some progress. Among other troubleshooting ideas your suggestion to try a different desktop made a lot of sense. So I installed kubuntu-desktop, then restarted and logged into KDE. Things were even more messed up. You know those four or five big icons that appear in the middle of the screen one after the other while KDE is loading? All I got was black boxes. And the desktop font was still weird. And I could still lock up the computer. So that experience acquits Gnome of guilt. While doing testing I discovered that typing anything in a Google box in Firefox will bring down Firefox or the entire computer very quickly. I don't mean the Google search page - I mean the little box to the right of the URL bar. Four or five searches is as far as I could go without crashing or locking up. It is good to have a litmus test. Now I can make changes and find out quickly if they solved the problem. I went into Synaptic and searched on xorg, then reinstalled anything that looked like it had something to do with fonts or mice. No luck. While in Synaptic I decided to do some housecleaning. I had a ton of apps installed that I never used, so I removed a lot of them - almost a GB of files. Didn't make any difference, but a clean house is nicer to live in. Finally I decided to try rebooting to older kernels. My up-to-date Jaunty had 2.6.28-15, so I rebooted to -14. No luck. Then I rebooted to -13. And that made a big difference - finally I can type repeated searches in the Google box without locking up. I have done about 30 searches without a problem. It is too soon to be sure, but it looks as though a major problem has been resolved. Please cross your fingers for me. The mice still don't work, though. And I need to find what happened between -13 and -14. I might find some big clues by going through the changes. And I really ought to spend some time and figure out why Jaunty will not shut down completely, because that may have contributed to the problem. _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
