gray dots forever: when 12.1.0 & 13.1.0 never fully boot (XO-1 especially? 11.3.1 too)

[Holt]

On 3/10/2013 3:39 PM, Nancie Severs wrote:
> Going to 12 and 13, I am still getting a % of XOs that get stuck at 
> the grey dots when booting after the reflash is complete. Richard 
> Smith figured out that this is a Pretty Boot issue. He had a 
> workaround that worked on an XO 1.5, but I have not been successful 
> had getting that to work on an XO 1.0.

I've the same issue with an XO-1 running Release 11.3.1 -- it was 
previously running March 6th's 13.1.0

Now it freezes at the end of prettyboot (once all grey dots have formed 
a circle).  Sugar's interface never fully boots.  2 workarounds 
(partially) force Sugar to boot:

1) Hold down the "check" game key 
(http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Cheat_codes) on boot, or
2) Hit the Esc key on boot.  Then type "boot" at the 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ok prompt

As Nancie asks, how to force this every time on an XO-1?  Or perhaps 
this is not possible, according to "Enabling Verbose Boot from 
OFW<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OFW>" at the bottom of: 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Startup_diagnosis
Hauntingly even if such a workaround exists, as the XO's main Power 
button does not respond as it should once Sugar has booted (short taps 
of the Power button are completely ignored when using the above 
workarounds).

Reflashing to 11.3.1 does not help, very surprisingly.
I even tried reverting firmware from 13.1.0's q2f13 to 11.3.1's q2f11 at 
the ok prompt (this is an unsecured XO-1), and subsequent reflash to 
11.3.1.  But no dice.

Nancie's getting something like 10-25% of her newly reflashed XO-1s 
ending up in this borked state recently, suggesting a deeper syndrome?
Is there a pattern that many of these machines are unsecured?  That 
part's unclear.  FYI, I only wrote this up in case it hpoefully helps 
others, or someone has the antidote =)


Interestingly: the 9-month-old 11.3.1 appears substantially faster than 
13.1.0 on XO-1 in almost all regards.  Sad!
Due to Fedora 14 to 18 innards?  And/or Sugar's evolution from 0.94 to 
0.98?  O well.  Yioryos Asprobounitis has some time trial numbers here 
if anyone needs them.

--
Help kids everywhere map their world, at http://olpcMAP.net !

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