[SOLVED] I'm giving up...

[DoYouKubuntu]

...on my current installation of 20.04!

Seriously, I should've done this right from the get-go, but didn't because of blah blah blah. So now I'm going to wipe my new laptop and partition its drive the way I normally do. But first I have a question.

System76 shipped it with Ubuntu 20.04 installed; I installed Kubuntu on it...after a hopelessly borked first attempt. They have a fat32 partition, which I left untouched, but now want to get rid of. This screenshot of gParted shows my disk:



I've never seen a drive formatted like this. I want my normal partition structure, i.e.:

/ -- the OS goes here
/data -- media files and pretty much everything else go here
/home -- self-explanatory
[swap] -- which I don't think I need any more? Will I be given an option to use a swap *file* when I reinstall the OS?

The fact that the fat32 partition has the word 'boot' in it scares me!

Please advise ASAP, as I really want to get this done.

[jglen490]

The fat32 partition is what the label says it is. It is the EFI boot partition. This is where Grub boot files go to play, when the files are installed in a UEFI firmware environment. It is not scary, and in fact works very well. Here's what my filesystem layout looks like:

ohn@john-Desktop:/media/john$ lsblk -f
NAME   FSTYPE LABEL UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                     
├─sda1 vfat         FEDE-EAB1                             467.3M     2% /boot/efi
├─sda2 ext4         23826d99-a20c-4578-be01-bcfdb11e4a0e   21.6G    27% /
├─sda3 ext4         3f50c05b-b795-43fe-b0cb-93984f7eaf65  162.5G     0% /home/extra
└─sda4 swap         775ceb26-36e8-4d6c-9b45-e0a1ea0d208f                [SWAP]
sdb                                                                     
└─sdb1 ext4         97534121-229e-4d67-921f-fd05ed312100    243G    42% /home
sr0

The /boot/efi partition is - formally - an ESP. It is fat32 (vfat), with boot flags, on purpose as that is a universally recognized filesystem that the UEFI firmware recognizes during boot and then reads to find the actual boot files for whatever OS your system boots into. The rest is (for me) ext4 and includes separate / (/dev/sda2) and /home (/dev/sdb1) partitions. I also have another called /home/extra (/dev/sda3), just because I can and my /dev/sda (120GB) is much larger than what I need for the OS and SWAP.

When I back up my /home, the rsync command picks up ALL of /home including /home/extra. Right now there are no files in the "extra" partition, but when it does, I won't worry about having to change anything. Smooth as buttah. This has worked for me for years, although some times I don't make use of an "extra" directory with /home. It also makes life real easy when I do a clean install, which I do for every LTS release.

[claydoh]

You can wipe it, the installer will create a new one, or gripe if there isn't one. This is necessary on modern systems, as it is using EFI for booting as opposed to the old mbr/bios.
Wipe it, and create a new one of the same size, to get rid of the previous installs boot info, though a new install of the same OS will overwrite the files in the existing one EFI partition. (*buntu is *buntu in this arena)
You can make it smaller, say 100mb would still be more than enough unless you want to multi-boot

[DoYouKubuntu]

Okay, thanks guys. So it's safe to wipe it, and format the whole disk as I usually do, ext4.

I haven't dual- or multi-booted in...years... Playing with different distros lost its shine a long time ago!

I'm done for tonight. I'll plunge in on this tomorrow morning.

[jglen490]

I don't dual boot either. It's a waste of space ...

[GreyGeek]

https://www.linuxbabe.com/desktop-li...s-vs-uefi-bios

[DoYouKubuntu]

Does this look okay? I could not delete or use the two 1MB free spaces, but that's trivial:



ETA: it's cranking away...

[claydoh]

Leave the boot loader setting alone, the default setting is good, you would only change that if you had an efi dir on a different device. That setting option is a relic from the old days, and is not very clear.

Swap can be smaller if you like, unless you enable hibernation. In that case, you need a touch more than your total ram size. But nothing wrong leaving everything as is

[DoYouKubuntu]

UPDATE: For the source of the problem, see this post.

Okay, something's up--with SeaMonkey.

Two nights ago, I noticed at one point that the connection issue I posted about wasn't happening--and SeaMonkey wasn't running. Yesterday, I did the clean install--and deliberately let my continuous ping/sleep test run for over an hour--without opening SM. As I reviewed its output, there was not ONE single hiccup. Not one.

Then I opened SM.

And it IMMEDIATELY started losing its connectivity.

I'm running SM from the same location I always put it in, /usr/local/share/seamonkey, which has my usual permissions.

I'm nowhere NEAR being any kind of expert on how software like SM can intermittently and randomly destroy a computer's Internet connectivity. I also can't carve in stone that SM *is* the problem. I mean this could be some bizarre coincidence.

What do you make of this? I'm stumped. I rely on SM...but I also rely on being connected to the Internet. I'm on my phone right now, but when I use the laptop I'm going to try putting SM somewhere else, like $HOME, and see if that changes anything.

ETA: I've wiped / and am reinstalling right now.

[GreyGeek]

I had a similar problem last year. Random disconnects that were characterized by the speed dropping to 1Mb and no apparent connectivity. For some other reason I turned off my cable modem and wifi and then turned them back on. The problem didn't reoccur. Now I do that somewhat regularly.

[dequire]

Indeed, the 1st step of every electronics manual since the beginning of time - unplug it and plug it back in!

[DoYouKubuntu]

Thanks, guys. Unfortunately, in the thread I referenced above, I noted: "I've unplugged and rebooted my modem and router, just on the remote chance there was some glitch [that mysteriously only affected ONE device out of 15], but, no." So that wasn't the problem.

And after today's fun...I don't know what to think. I've wiped/reinstalled several times, and without fail my connectivity is fine until... Until WHAT?, you're asking. I don't know. At no point did I run SeaMonkey, but the problem always eventually starts. If I just run a continuous ping/sleep test in Konsole, I never lose connectivity, not for one second. But once I *do* anything--and what that is varies--it eventually conks out. When it happened after a flawless hour of testing, and it was immediately after opening SM, I thought SM was the culprit. Until it wasn't.

Among other things that triggered it: adjusting system settings, running Synaptic, opening Dolphin, installing Samba, and more.

So if I want to teleport back to 1985 and only use CLI, I'm good! Once I start using any normal stuff, I'm screwed.

I *did* install the System76 drivers that [I think] @claydoh pointed me to...but that didn't help.

I think I may contact System76. They're very friendly and helpful, based on past experience. Maybe there's a known issue and they'll have a solution. Worst-case scenario I guess would be sending it back for repair or replacement.

[jglen490]

Wow, that's just nuts! This is probably not going to be helpful to your current situation, but this is the reason I either build my own PC or buy used general laptops (Lenovo, Toshiba, Dell). I've not been impressed by the issues that some are running into with "Linux" PC/laptop systems - very pricey, very persnickety!

[GreyGeek]

It's starting to look more and more like a wifi chip problem on your new mobo

[DoYouKubuntu]

Yeah, it's a head-scratcher. Even back when I had to manually install and configure, via ndiswrapper, drivers for the infamous Broadcom BCM43xx winmodems, once I got it working, IT WORKED. Period. End of story. This? Not something I even remotely thought possible...