Xubuntu 7.1 worked, 8.04 not so much

[MikeHalloran]

Ancient Thinkpad, 256M ram, 4.7Gb drive, erratic CD drive.

Installed 7 from a mini, got everything working nicely...

Then I stupidly accepted the offer to upgrade to 8.04. Splash screen works, signin works, then I get a big ugly red/orange/yellow chicken, and then a terminal window appears on top of that. No desktop, except what appears to be a desktop background with the chicken peeking out from behind the terminal window. Clicking there does nothing.

Tried full 8.04 install, and alternate install, from CDs; no joy; several hours in, the CD drive starts failing. Installed 8.04 from mini, got the same damn chicken and terminal.

Alternate sessions <ctl><alt><Fn> work okay.

It appears that X is confused. At the time it upgraded from 7, the X settings were correct and appropriate... but of course I don't know what they were. The /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is quite small, even minimal, and I swear it's getting smaller.

Ideas? Abuse?

Thanks.

 

[geirendre]

Without knowing the hardware in your Thinkpad it's hard to say.
Sounds like a HW-issue to me.
You could surf over to the

http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html

site and check if someone has Hardy running on it there.

To find what hardware you'v got:

lspci

HTH

 

[DonQuichote]

Did you use the wubi installer ("install linux under windows")? In that case, it is probably windows that did not do a clean shutdown and still has locked the NTFS partition that holds your installation of Xubuntu.

As far as I know, the "chicken" is the emblem of wubi.

Also, my Xubuntu upgrade broke a lot of things and some of them are still not working (my Wacom Bamboo tablet, for example). My xorg.conf file was overwritten just like you said, but also backed up in the same directory. See for yourself what the differences are or just try to put it back.

Good luck!

+++ Despite being wrong in every important aspect, that is a very good analogy +++
Hex (in Darwin's Watch)

 

[stefanwagner]

a) That was 7.10, not 7.1.
7=2007
10=Oct.
8.04 therefore is ... (left as an excercise for the reader).

You get a chicken?
A what?
I just know the meaning of chicken as an animal, picking and scratching.

When 7.10 worked, a hardware problem is not that probable.
How DonQ. comes to believe 7.1 would be some kind a widows...?
I had problems updating from 7.10 to 8.04 too.
Just a background-surface after login, no xfcedesktop, no xfce4-session.
Sometimes xfce4-session started, but in 3 out of 4 cases not.

Found a workaround which seems to work from someone else:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=4918094&postcount=10

don't visit my homepage:

http://home.arcor.de/hirnstrom/bewerbung

 

[MikeHalloran]

That last sounds promising; I'll try it when the opportunity arises.

Except for the CD, the hardware is stable. Puppy has no problem with it. Centos5 worked well enough, if slowly.

No Windows or NTFS involved. This machine hasn't had any version of Windows on it for almost two years.

Thanks, all.

 

[DonQuichote]

I do not think Xubuntu 7.10 is a kind of windows, but I thought that Xubuntu was installed with wubi:

http://wubi-installer.org/

I did that with my work PC when Xubuntu 8.04 was in the alpha stage and had some startup problems that did not occur always. It turned out to be caused by unclean windows shutdowns.

What wubi does is this: it installs Xubuntu in a file in an existing MS-Windows installation in a file and adapt the boot loader to enable booting Xubuntu. It is (hardly) slower than a dual-boot on multiple partitions, and uninstall is dead simple. It is one of the "non-scary" ways to try out Linux on your system.

+++ Despite being wrong in every important aspect, that is a very good analogy +++
Hex (in Darwin's Watch)

 

[MikeHalloran]

Thanks, guys. Somehow, 8.04 is now working okay.

 

[BadBigBen]

That Chicken is actually a heron, which is the emblem of WUBI and who would have guessed it, Ubuntu 8.04 aswell.

hmmm... could the code name have something to do with that, I wonder...

Ubuntu 8.04 also called HardyHeron...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[MikeHalloran]

No disrespect intended to the artist, but that is one ugly heron.

 

[BadBigBen]

No disrespect intended to the artist, but that is one ugly heron.

possibly, a sensory malfunction on the part of the artist (too much caffeine or other substances)...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."