I wasn't sure where to post this; mods please feel free to move to a more suitable place.
Here's my situation: I just got a new laptop, an HP dv7. It's amazing--beautiful, BIG screen, gorgeous display, full size keyboard with a numeric keypad on the right, just wonderful. Except for one thing: MANY things are not working.
When I first received it I formatted its drive (to get rid of windows) and installed Kubuntu 11.04 from a CD I'd burned. The installation was easy as can be. I manually partitioned its hard drive, choosing ext4 and creating /, /home, /data and swap partitions.
After the initial install I started adding things via Synaptic. But when I attempted to run many of these programs, such as SysInfo, they didn't run. I'd see them starting, but then they just exited. I was also having problems seeing/accessing the other computers on my network (all of which are Linux only, and most are running Kubuntu 10.10, one is running 9.10). So many things weren't working that I decided to step down a release, so I formatted / and installed Kubuntu 10.10 instead.
Again, the installation went as smoothly as can be...but I'm having the exact same problems with 10.10 as I did with 11.04, and I'm at a complete loss.
I should have mentioned it has a 640GB hard drive; I split it up as follows:
/ 50GB
/home 200GB
/data 340GB
swap 50GB
I use SeaMonkey as my browser and e-mail/news client. Within its preferences I have /data/mail as the directory where each account's mail is stored, each in its own subdirectory. I've never even SEEN this problem before, but when I fire up SeaMonkey I immediately get an error modal saying:
Also, when I attempt to post to Usenet I get an error saying that saving a copy to my sent folder failed.
The files that are in /data/mail were copied from my old laptop, preserving their attributes; I definitely have read/write permissions. On my old laptop SeaMonkey works just fine. I looked online for the error message above but none of its explanations make sense for my situation.
There's 338GB of free space where the mailboxes reside. Is THAT the problem? Is it possible that Kubuntu isn't recognizing that big a partition? I thought those days were LONG gone.
I'm having major networking issues. The only way I'm able to access the other computers on my network is by using KRFB/KRDC. I can't mount their drives via fstab or command line despite doing everything exactly as usual. I can't see them in Dolphin via its 'network' link under Places; under 'network' if I choose 'Network' or 'Network Services" NOTHING happens, and if I choose 'Samba Shares' SOMETIMES some of the other computers show up and sometimes I get this error message:
On the rare occasions when some of the computers do show up under 'Samba Shares,' they may or may not actually be accessible.
Yet KRDC sees all the computers immediately.
Another huge problem: The computer freezes. Just, bam!, frozen solid. Everything stops--the clock, all open apps, everything except the mouse pointer which continues working both via my USB trackball and the laptop's touchpad. But nothing is selectable. In other words, the pointer moves but I can't actually DO anything. Sometimes, after 3, 4, 5 minutes it unfreezes, other times I have no choice but to do a hard reset. (If I wanted to reboot due to system freezes, I'd use windows!)
The brightness keys do nothing. With my previous laptop, also an HP, all of its function buttons worked, but with this one, although the onscreen display comes on and shows that the brightness is being adjusted up or down, NOTHING actually happens.
I'm beyond unhappy and frustrated right now. I've got this amazing laptop but instead of being able to get some work done I'm stuck trying to figure out all these flaky problems.
Oh, another thing. I tried installing GNOME via Synaptic (I'm not a GNOME fan, but figured I'd try it and see if any of these problems disappeared), but it fails with messages that "depends on [whatever] but it's not going to be installed"--even when I HAVE checked the specific things for installation. So I can't even get GNOME installed to give it a try.
Sorry for the ridiculous length of this post but I wanted to cover all the issues I'm having. Any help and/or advice will be greatly appreciated!
Here's my situation: I just got a new laptop, an HP dv7. It's amazing--beautiful, BIG screen, gorgeous display, full size keyboard with a numeric keypad on the right, just wonderful. Except for one thing: MANY things are not working.
When I first received it I formatted its drive (to get rid of windows) and installed Kubuntu 11.04 from a CD I'd burned. The installation was easy as can be. I manually partitioned its hard drive, choosing ext4 and creating /, /home, /data and swap partitions.
After the initial install I started adding things via Synaptic. But when I attempted to run many of these programs, such as SysInfo, they didn't run. I'd see them starting, but then they just exited. I was also having problems seeing/accessing the other computers on my network (all of which are Linux only, and most are running Kubuntu 10.10, one is running 9.10). So many things weren't working that I decided to step down a release, so I formatted / and installed Kubuntu 10.10 instead.
Again, the installation went as smoothly as can be...but I'm having the exact same problems with 10.10 as I did with 11.04, and I'm at a complete loss.
I should have mentioned it has a 640GB hard drive; I split it up as follows:
/ 50GB
/home 200GB
/data 340GB
swap 50GB
I use SeaMonkey as my browser and e-mail/news client. Within its preferences I have /data/mail as the directory where each account's mail is stored, each in its own subdirectory. I've never even SEEN this problem before, but when I fire up SeaMonkey I immediately get an error modal saying:
Unable to write the email to the mailbox. Make sure the file system allows you write privileges, and you have enough disk space to copy the mailbox.
The files that are in /data/mail were copied from my old laptop, preserving their attributes; I definitely have read/write permissions. On my old laptop SeaMonkey works just fine. I looked online for the error message above but none of its explanations make sense for my situation.
There's 338GB of free space where the mailboxes reside. Is THAT the problem? Is it possible that Kubuntu isn't recognizing that big a partition? I thought those days were LONG gone.
I'm having major networking issues. The only way I'm able to access the other computers on my network is by using KRFB/KRDC. I can't mount their drives via fstab or command line despite doing everything exactly as usual. I can't see them in Dolphin via its 'network' link under Places; under 'network' if I choose 'Network' or 'Network Services" NOTHING happens, and if I choose 'Samba Shares' SOMETIMES some of the other computers show up and sometimes I get this error message:
Unable to find any workgroups in your local network. This may be caused by an enabled firewall.
Yet KRDC sees all the computers immediately.
Another huge problem: The computer freezes. Just, bam!, frozen solid. Everything stops--the clock, all open apps, everything except the mouse pointer which continues working both via my USB trackball and the laptop's touchpad. But nothing is selectable. In other words, the pointer moves but I can't actually DO anything. Sometimes, after 3, 4, 5 minutes it unfreezes, other times I have no choice but to do a hard reset. (If I wanted to reboot due to system freezes, I'd use windows!)
The brightness keys do nothing. With my previous laptop, also an HP, all of its function buttons worked, but with this one, although the onscreen display comes on and shows that the brightness is being adjusted up or down, NOTHING actually happens.
I'm beyond unhappy and frustrated right now. I've got this amazing laptop but instead of being able to get some work done I'm stuck trying to figure out all these flaky problems.
Oh, another thing. I tried installing GNOME via Synaptic (I'm not a GNOME fan, but figured I'd try it and see if any of these problems disappeared), but it fails with messages that "depends on [whatever] but it's not going to be installed"--even when I HAVE checked the specific things for installation. So I can't even get GNOME installed to give it a try.
Sorry for the ridiculous length of this post but I wanted to cover all the issues I'm having. Any help and/or advice will be greatly appreciated!
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