[aklug] Re: Ubuntu issues

From: Jim Gribbin <jimgribbin@gmail.com>
Date: Wed Mar 03 2010 - 13:34:25 AKST

I don't think he's up to that task. He's still kind of a newbie. I was
rather surprised to see that his box had that many variations of OSs
installed.

I only see him in the coffee shop and I'm not confident enough in my
abilities to go through that much in that environment. Maybe at
FriLinux, but not sitting in the coffee shop.

I also still can't figure out how he ended up with a separate partition
for /var. I'm under the impression he just did a default install and
most distros, anymore, seem to put everything except /boot and swap in 1
partition.

Speaking of all this, wouldn't this freezing thing be a bug that should
be dealt with? Maybe by the kernel people?

This is not the 1st time I've seen boxes freeze because /var is full
(usually log files). It looks like the system is locked in a loop
waiting for space to open up. Space never opens, so it never returns
from it's wait loop.

On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 12:22 -0900, jonr@destar.net wrote:
> Maybe he could just create a link to the /var/?? directory on a
> partition with more space. Also, mention to him to use LVM for his
> partitions and he can increase the size if he needs to. I believe you
> can grow and shrink most filesystems except XFS and JFS, those can be
> grown but not shrank.
>
> Jon
>
> Quoting Jim Gribbin <jimgribbin@gmail.com>:
>
> > It doesn't. It just freezes the box.
> > I think the problem is, is that for some reason he ended up with a
> > separate /var partition and it is too small to hold the packages being
> > downloaded.
> >
> > Mike B. offered to talk to him about talking him through some
> > troubleshooting, but I think he's going wait until the next release and
> > just do a clean install of (just) 1 version. He must have 4 or 5
> > variants of Ubuntu installed along with Windows Vista and a Japanese
> > Windows XP. All on one, multiboot, box..
> >
> > On Wed, 2010-03-03 at 12:06 -0700, William Attwood wrote:
> >
> >> Tell him to open a Terminal and:
> >> sudo apt-get update
> >> sudo apt-get upgrade
> >>
> >> If there are errors, it will prompt him with what to do to clean them up.
> >>
> >> On Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 12:04 PM, Jim MacDonald <jim@macdonald.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> > I also think he is talking about the update manager. which is nothing =
> >> > but a GUI for APT. and it's quite possible that his apt files are =
> >> > corrupt. He should be able to run "apt-get update" from the command line =
> >> > and that will tell him what the issue is and probably recommend a way to =
> >> > correct it.
> >> >
> >> > Jim MacDonald
> >> > jim@macdonald.org
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > On Feb 17, 2010, at 10:28 AM, Jim Gribbin wrote:
> >> >
> >> > > I have an acquaintance using Ubuntu 9.10, so he tells me.
> >> > > He tells me he is having difficulty updating the box using something
> >> > > called the "download manager". Apparently it causes everything to =
> >> > freeze
> >> > > when he's attempting updates and he ends up power cycling his laptop =
> >> > as
> >> > > everything is unresponsive.
> >> > >=20
> >> > > I am not an Ubuntu or Debian user and am unfamiliar with the supplied
> >> > > tools. Would anybody have some pointers I can pass on?
> >> > >=20
> >> > > I've been trying to encourage him to show up at a Friday night =
> >> > session.
> >> > > So far he's a no-show.
> >> > >=20
> >> > > Jim G
> >> > >=20
> >> > >=20
> >> > > ---------
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> >> >
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> >> >
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
>
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Received on Wed Mar 3 13:34:38 2010

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