Maui Forums
Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - Printable Version

+- Maui Forums (https://forums.mauilinux.org)
+-- Forum: Maui Support (https://forums.mauilinux.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=74)
+--- Forum: Installation (https://forums.mauilinux.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=83)
+--- Thread: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? (/showthread.php?tid=24313)



Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - Chelle - 13th March 2017

When I first installed Maui 1 (after a few tweaks!), everything worked really well.  I was very happy.  Smile  But now, little things are going wrong.  

Like the trouble with downloading certain things in Firefox (started a week or so ago).  More often now (every other day or so), shutting the lid won't put the computer to sleep, and I either have to shut it down or hunt through the processess to see if I can happen to stop the right one.  Today, my touchpad worked intermittently - all of the time, a physical click works, but the tap stopped working sometimes.  Also today, I suddenly can't save anything to the mac section of my hard-drive, although I could last time I wanted to.  They are all small things that sometimes happen and sometimes don't; but they're adding up and becoming rather annoying as a whole.  And all of them have begun in the last few weeks.  

My question is - is this likely to be a result of some upgrades, and perhaps I should reinstall Maui 2 and just stay there?  Un-update whatever the last several that showed up on Update Manager were?  (I have no idea how to do this.)  Is there some kind of regular maintenance I should have been doing that I didn't know about?  (I haven't used windows for so long that I kind of forgot about things like that.  I read that linux doesn't need to be defragged, but is there something else I should be doing?)  Is it just a function of time, and linux is going to slowly break no matter what?  Or shall I hope that another upgrade will solve whatever problems the previous updates appear to have introduced?  

Thanks in advance for any advice.  
Chelle


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - leszek - 13th March 2017

If those problems happened after you upgraded some packages then maybe those packages introduces bugs that are the root cause for this.

My tip for those issues as they might be related to a kernel upgrade (maybe you can confirm) is to just try booting the older kernel that should still be listed in the boot manager grub.


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - starbuck - 13th March 2017

As a general advice: If you are happy with a running stable system, dont upgrade.
Only upgrade if for a valid reason, like a feature you absolutely need or a bug that already bothers you.
I run a KDE4 based system as my secondary netbook for years now without ever any hitch, putting it to sleep by closing the lid every evening.


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - Chelle - 13th March 2017

Starbuck - good to know, thank you. So I could just shut the Update Manager off and ignore it. (Once I get things figured out!)

leszek - Er. I'm not sure. I don't think I've updated the kernel, as I haven't chosen anything in Update Manager higher than a 3. Currently, I have:

KDE Plasma Version: 5.8.4
KDE Apps Version: 16.12.0
Frameworks Version: 5.29.0
Qt Version: 5.7.0
Kernel Version: 5.5.0-57-generic

As for an older kernel to boot from, I'm not sure. I'll go see if I can find out. Right now, it just flashes between a black screen and a blue loading screen, before settling on the login page, and I don't see anywhere that a kernel option exists (if I want to load to my mac, I hold down the option key).

If it is some of the later packages I upgraded, which seems the most likely, as it all started happening together and recently - I found the History of Updates list, which shows me which ones I installed recently - is there a way to just revert those back to the older versions I used to have? Or am I stuck with what I've got in that regard? I see that I can remove them entirely from Synaptic, but I don't see an obvious way to roll-back to a previous version.

Or I suppose I could cross my fingers, wait for the newest upgrade to 17.03 and hope that fixes everything that broke. Big Grin If not, I still have the original Maui 1 on a USB, though that would be a bit of a pain. At least, I know it works. Smile


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - leszek - 13th March 2017

There is no rollback option available in the packagemanager.
If you don't have a btrfs filesystem snapshot or another form of backup with that older versions installed it is not possible to install the older versions.
Can you show us a list of the latest updates you performed so we can at least speculate what might be the root cause of your issue?


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - Chelle - 13th March 2017

I was afraid that might be the case.  Smile  Ah well.

Here are three screenshots showing the last two update selections from Update Manager.  I'm pretty sure none of the problems I've been having showed up before that.  Yesterday was the first time I've had any trouble with my trackpad (currently, since I shut everything off last night, it's been working, hooray.), and the download-from-Firefox & laptop-not-shutting-down-when-the-lid-is-closed problems have only been in the last two weeks or so.  

Thank you very much for your help. 


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - kdemeoz - 14th March 2017

Hi Chelle

Without in any way wishing to appear as contradicting anything leszek & starbuck said, i thought i'd offer a few simple remarks fyi.

1. I presume this is a typo?
Code:
Kernel Version: 5.5.0-57-generic
Did you possibly mean instead 4.5.0-57-generic ?

2. I have two PCs, both running Maui since last year; Tower & Lappy. Tower has had a bit of a rough trot, per a comparative deluge of my posts, albeit it seems to have been a h/w issue & not an OS issue. Lappy might be more relevant for you, although mine is a Dell not a Mac [began life with Windows on it not MacOS]. Lappy with Maui has been for the most part reliable & robust -- there have been some issues, but they seem to have been caused by me doing something silly, not Maui misbehaving for no reason. Of relevance to you, Lappy with Maui 1, 2, 2.1 has consistently given me reliable WiFi, Suspend-Resume, & Touchpad behaviours.

3. Tower has the latest Maui & the HWE package upgrade, but Lappy still has 2.1 & whatever is the latest stock kernel for that [currently writing this on Tower, with Lappy asleep elsewhere in the house & me too lazy to go check]. Due to its age i shan't put HWE on Lappy, but will upgrade it to 17.03 once available in the repos [vs Tower which was a clean install... twice (stupid me)].

I've told you this stuff just as encouragement - Lappy & Maui has been a very happy combo for me, so i trust & hope that soon yours will be once more as well.


RE: Maintenance or Reinstall or ... ? - Chelle - 15th March 2017

Yes, of course, you are right. It's a typo. Should be 4.4.0-57

And thanks for the encouragement. Smile Today, so far, nothing has gone wrong. Random errors are very annoying, really.