[olpc-help] Sugar GUI applications (activities) won't start

[Andrew]

>You're running 656, which eliminates a few things.  Thanks.

>I remember hearing about other people who reported the same problem on a >stock system, but I'm pretty sure that was 650 or 653.  There's a >possibility some changes you've made might have interfered with the >system but let's presume this isn't the case.
>
>I'll trust you know what you've done to it better than I can guess.
>
>Have a look at these bugs in Trac:
>
>http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5317
most likely NOT 5317

>http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/6742

very well might be it!  I had an enclosed hard drive connected. Although, even after unmounting and disconnecting it, the failure-to-launch glitch persisted -- apparently only going away on the next reboot.

I rebooted, then launched the apps first (before connecting the drive)
and, lo and behold, the apps worked again.

Then, i (inadverently) connected the enclosed DVD drive, and, lo and behold, /it/ worked too! 

(I meant to test the enclosed hard drive, to ascertain its culpability, but it is now late in the day, and i will resume testing later)

Also: it now occurs to me: there is a glitchy superblock on ONE of the partitions on the enclosed drive.  When the XO tries to mount probe & mount it, it apparently delays considerably.

The partitions types include NTFS, vfat and ext3 (all are good, except a bad vfat one). 

(still, it's strange to have such a causality)

I'll post an update later.

>
>Do any of the symptoms sound familiar?  Does it 'smell' like the flash >disk is full, or should we be thinking along other lines?


On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 3:04 PM, Andrew <andrew2006 at flight.us> wrote:

>Hi Andrew-
>
>There was a problem seen in the 650 loads where the flash would
>fill-up completely and prevent activities from starting.
>-
>http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Support_FAQ#After_working_properly_for_a_while.2C_act
>ivities_won.27t_load
>
>Are you running the 650 release?

/etc/issue:

OLPC build 656 (stream ship.2; variant devel_jffs2)
Kernel \r on an \m

uname -a:

Linux xo-14-4F-01.localdomain 2.6.22-20071231.2.olpc.83e0631da83a269 #1 PREEMPT Mon Dec 31 10:37:17 EST 2007 i586 i586 i386 GNU/Linux






>
>On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Andrew <andrew2006 at flight.us> wrote:
>> All worked well for a couple of weeks in our new XO laptop, but i have been
>installing and running extra apps and changed the DISPLAY variable and added
>to /etc/hosts a few times.  (currently
>>
>>  i have yum-installed various apps, including gcc, wvdial, emacs, lynx
>>
>>  yesterday the GUI apps appear to have stopped loading. When invoked from
>Desktop bottom row of icons, the icons appear in the circle but their status
>is just "Starting..." ad infinitem, and they just hang in that state and don't
>load.  Rebooting doesn't seem to help.
>>
>>  The "Terminal Activity" and lynx _do_ load, which suggests to me that the
>problem is with the GUI apps only.
>>
>>  HOWEVER, it seems to be SUGAR apps, in particular, because when I run
>emacs GUI, as user olpc and with DISPLAY=:0 , emacs GUI does come up
>correctly.
>>
>>  Or maybe i'm barking up the wrong tree, entirely?
>>
>>  /etc/hosts currently has:
>>
>>  127.0.0.1 xo-14-4F-01.localdomain xo-14-4F-01 localhost
>>  127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
>>  172.18.0.1      schoolserver
>>
>>  TIA
>>
>>  Andrew
>>  _______________________________________________
>>  community-support mailing list
>>  community-support at lists.laptop.org
>>  http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/community-support
>>
>
>
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