[CLOSED]MGA 6 - complete system freezes-on new instal

[Myles]

arnesp,
Thanks for that info, very helpful.

But, as always, I spoke too soon - I have more problems on this reinstalled system!!!!

I suspect - am I'm hoping that for some reason (Dolphin crashing when I open or do things in MCC, some other weirdness - none of my External drives are being recognised as being plugged in; etc.) what is causing this is that I kept my existing /home drive with the data from the previous system on it. I don't know why that would happen - but that's the only difference besides a new, clean /var partition.

So, I'm going to have to reinstall yet again and use a new /home drive as well as a /var. also, what I thought was a spare partition next to /var isn't identified in the pgm in windows, but it's the Linux Swap partition.
Before I reinstall I will delete the current Swap partition and allocate a new one on another drive. Then I can expand the /var partition to alleviate the space problems which can occur with the folder I use that is located on there (and will grow in small amounts gradually).

I'll let you know how that endeavour goes, but it won't be till after tomorrow.

[wintpe]

I have to say, that all those spare drives with old stuff on them, sounds horrible.

it would probably be best if you kept one drive for windows and a fresh drive for Linux, and just disconnect all but that fresh drive.

as per the advise I gave the other day, SSD for boot drive will greatly enhance boot times and performance. (128 gig min)

once mageia is up and running it happily hot plugs drives.

even better if you label them , as you get persistent named mount points that way.

it would certainly be easier for those of us who have to effectively paint your back kitchen through your front letterbox as an analogy of how we interpret whats going wrong.

when i partition my system in the installer, i do it manually.

if you have UEFI support i first install a UEFI partition.

I then choose a / partition of around 20 GiG, that suits my needs as i dont install loads of apps, just my favorite ones, and clear off everything else.

then swap, which I usually make same as memory, up to 4 GiG, if ive got more memory, then its still 4gig

then /home

your choice to have a separate /var, is OK, if you need it, and if you are putting thousands of files in there its probably sensible.

I then assign the rest of the disk to /home.

I label my external drives as data1 data2 and so on.

as for patients with you.

we are always patient with people who are polite and willing to help themselves.

regards peter

[Myles]

Peter,
Thanks for your wise words.

I have a 240Gb SSD, (as you might remember from our OpevVPN conversations that you helped me with a couple of months ago). This contains: Windows partitons (small boot thing and main C:\ drive); Mageia /root (19Gb);
Mageia /home (48Gb) and another MGA6 install which includes complete all-in-one Magiea system - no separate partitions) which I installed in desperation/to test a week or so ago and has been really handy in doing things to this system. I have 3 internal drives (3 x 2Tb); 2 x formatted as whole-drive data partitons and 1 formatted with 1 small NTFS (97Gb), 1 /var (7.8Gb - 8Gb RAM) and the rest a data partition. I do have a lot of external drives + 2 Thumb drives plugged in all the time (used for xfrerring files between Linux<> windows Notebook as I don't know/haven't looked into seriously - how to connect to myh Windows Notebook on my network; 1 drive I use a lot for backups and media and the rest I have other media/old data/archived data/music etc. Not all of these are switched on all the time - mainly the backup/media drive.

I am still getting the Dolphin crashes as soon as I open "Local Disks" in MCC (3 failures) and also on reboot ("kdeinit5" error). See image below. I really don't think that they are related to me having used my old /home drive on reinstall as I have done that before. Just don't know what is causing it.
[removed superfluous image-coding]


So maybe I'll persevere with this install for the time being. I going to see if I can dynamically relocate my /swap partition so I can expand my /var. Would I be able to do that with a partitioning tool outside Mageia and then just reboot with newly expanded /var or is it a whole new reinstall again??? (he says with crossed fingers ).

Thanks again Peter.

[arnesp]

I am still getting the Dolphin crashes as soon as I open "Local Disks" in MCC (3 failures) and also on reboot ("kdeinit5" error). See image below. I really don't think that they are related to me having used my old /home drive on reinstall as I have done that before. Just don't know what is causing it.

I think you are right, these are probably Plasma bugs. I was able to reproduce the dolphin crash (but only once so far) doing this:

Code: Select all

Connect an external USB drive
In the Device Notifier pop-up, select Open with File Manager
Start MCC and select Local disks/Manage disk partitions


Another issue, which may well have the same root cause, I am able to consistently re-produce.
If an external USB drive is connected, starting MCC and selecting Local disks/Manage disk partitions makes the external drive disappear from the Device Notifier (and from the devices list of dolphin, if started). After this the Device Notifier no longer detects connection of external disks.

I also have occasionally seen the closed unexpectedly pop-up on reboot, only in my case it was the System Monitor application.

So maybe I'll persevere with this install for the time being. I going to see if I can dynamically relocate my /swap partition so I can expand my /var. Would I be able to do that with a partitioning tool outside Mageia and then just reboot with newly expanded /var or is it a whole new reinstall again??? (he says with crossed fingers ).

With two MGA installations, I think it could even be done from within Mageia, but getting GParted live: https://gparted.org/livecd.php is probably a simpler and safer solution.
Please read the caution in the GParted Manual though.
the gparted application allows you to create, delete, resize and even move partitions.
If your disk is GPT, re-sizing should be straightforward. If it is msdos partitioned and one partition is inside and the other outside an extended partition, it may become more complicated.
If you note the UUID of the current swap partition and assign the same value to the new one, I don't think any changes are required for the Mageia installs.

Alternatively, you could also consider moving your user data directory from /var to another partition and create a symbolic link to it, if your programs need to access it as a sub-directory under /var.

[Myles]

Peter,
Thanks for the reply.
I had updates come through this morning - one being for the kernel (4.4.59 I think). After I rebooted I just thought I test the "local disks Dolphin problem" in MCC. Well that seems to be okay at the moment since that update - but I'm still getting an occasional Dolphin Bug whilst I'm logged on and when I shut down/reboot (4 of them I think).

Also re: the /swap file. As you are far wiser and experienced than I in these matters - and you have the same amount of RAM as I do (8Gb) - I thought that, instead of moving the /swap partition I'll just shrink it to 4Gb (like yours) and then expand my /var to be 10.8Gb! Should be more than enough for what I need. I could try the symlink route but I'd have to seek guidance from the support forum of the pgm for that.

So, I'll let you now how that goes.

[Myles]

Well, I didn't do the shrink of the /swap and expand /var as - seeing as I've only just got a working system back after a week, and a system not using nouveau; and all the pain (mostly self-inflicted I've had since July) - I'm going to leave well enough alone!

/var is only 52% used at the moment so I'll leave it. I will do a new install (maybe even in Virtualbox if I can, never tried to do an install with separate partitions, good learning oppotunity) with a separate /var and then shrink it and see what happens - rather than try it on my working system!!!

So I'll leave this open for a week and if nouveau doesn't rear it's ugly head I'll close it still not knowing why it caused me all that pain with system freezes!

Anyway, thanks once again to Peter and arnesp, for your help, very much appreciated.

[wintpe]

I still get those dolphin crashes also, usually when i have a hot plugged drive

similar to you I have loads if 2/3/4TB drives I attach when needed.

the crashes are only however when i close dolphin
regards peter

[Myles]

Peter,
Yes, that's exactly what happens to me. But I have never experienced these Dolphin errors until this reinstall. So we have no idea why they're happening?

[Myles]

Hello again good people. I'm sorry I have to post again in my closed problem, but this is happening again. I had to re-install my system again (don't ask) and now this nouveau virus has returned and is plaguing my system once again!
Seeing it was over a year ago I can't remember what I actually did to rid myself of this insidious problem. (and can't find any record of what I did which I would usually do, saving myself having to ask you good people for help yet again - whch I will do this time to save me having to go through this again!).
I tried to update xorg.conf but this continues to get overwritten when nouveau loads! I exececuted that "dracut" cmd (no idea what that does) and I have tried "nokmsboot" as an option on booting to no avail.
This noveau driver is like a virus - I can't seem to get rid of it and override it with my nVidia driver and make it stick!
As always, any help gratefully accepted for a poor non-linux expert!

[wintpe]

I think the biggest cause of this issue is when you switch to the proprietry driver also make sure that kernel-devel and kernel-headers are installed.

otherwise when you switch to proprietry and it cant compile the driver its switches back to nouvou.

regards peter

[doktor5000]

Peter,
Hello again, you're like an old friend - you've helped me out on a number of occasions.
By this

make sure that kernel-devel and kernel-headers are installed.

do you mean these:

Kernel Headers etc_20180913.png (16.85 KiB) Viewed 6170 times

As I said, I'm no expert, very far from it!

[Myles]

I've changed the status to "REOPENED".
Could someone please help me with the steps necessary to get rid of nouveau loading/overriding my nVidia driver! This is really annoying. And this time I will document what I have t to do and save it for future reference.
I have removed he "nokmsboot" from grub, so the only thing that I have done was that execution of the dracut command (no idea how to reverse that)
So I don't know what I have to do from here to get my nVidia driver to be my default driver and to keep it that way without nouveau overriding it.

Thankyou in advance.
Frustrated once again.

[doktor5000]

I have removed he "nokmsboot" from grub

Why did you remove it when you want to use the nvidia driver?

[Myles]

doktor,
I removed nokmsboot because I thought that it clashed with nouveau or something (I thought I read that somewhere).
Anyway, I went into MCC, updated boot to include nokmsboot and I thought I'd try to get the nVidia driver to work (just for a laugh!).
Well, when I selected yes to the propriety driver I was presented with 2 or 3 screens about refresh rates etc. which I had not been presented with at any time up to this point!
So, I went through that, said okay to all those and rebujilt grub2.
I then rebooted.
Well, lo and behold, the nVidia driver is working!!!! I even rebooted again to make sure that it wasn't a one-off case.

I don't know what changed, or if anything I had done previously had any impact, but it's working for now.

So for now I will mark this CLOSED again.