problems booting and shutting down

[heylookitsmewow]

I recently installed Kubuntu on an acer aspire 5610 notebook. This is my first time using anything other than windows. I have it installed as a dual boot system with windows XP. After getting it set up I timed both systems booting and Kubuntu was significantly faster than windows to start up. After a week or so now when I boot Kubuntu it now takes forever to boot and prints several screens worth of text on the screen while it is booting. It is also now hanging up when I shut it down and goes to either a blank screen or a screen with jumbled up colors. Also since this has been happening the internet connection works for a few minutes and then often becomes intermittent or just goes away completely until I reboot. It does this if I am connected to my router both with wireless or a hard wire. Ever since this started I have been using windows on this computer with no problems except windows can't find the built in webcam ever since this started. I have no ideas if that is related. I don't know what may have happened between working fine in the beginning and this stuff all of a sudden happening. Any idea what could be wrong?

[askrieger]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

It seems that there is a difference in the performance of the Acer Aspire 5610 and the Acer Aspire 5610z. According to this page for the 5610andthis page for the 5610z at the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki. Reading between the lines, it appears that the webcam might (or might not) be part of the problem. Do you have a way of turning it off before you boot. Kubuntu?

Another thing to do is take a look at all those messages that fly by. Start a Konsole (K>System>Konsole) and enter the command "dmesg | more", where the vertical bar is Shift-\ (at least on my keyboard). PLEASE DON'T POST IT but look for anything that says "error ", "failed", or "warning". Those you can post without ticking people off.

[heylookitsmewow]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

The webcam does not have an external switch so I don't know that there is a way to turn it off. Below are the errors I found. If I try to use the webcam in windows it says the usb device is not pluged in so maybe there is a connection with these errors.

[ 6.728000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 7.064000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 7.288000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 7.912000] usb 2-2: device not accepting address 5, error -71
[ 8.432000] usb 2-2: device not accepting address 6, error -71
[ 111.316000] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7
[ 111.436000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 111.660000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 111.876000] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 8
[ 111.996000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 112.220000] usb 2-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[ 112.436000] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 9
[ 112.852000] usb 2-2: device not accepting address 9, error -71
[ 112.964000] usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 10
[ 113.380000] usb 2-2: device not accepting address 10, error -71
[ 7.128000] PM: Resume from disk failed.

[askrieger]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

It seems to be a real problem. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a specific solution. On Launchpad, the developers referred the complaining user to this Wiki page, but he didn't go away happy. The best piece of advice on the wiki page is turn off the bad HW in the BIOS. Personally, I went through 400 references (mostly, totally irrelevant) on google/linux without finding anything better than that. But you might have better luck.

[heylookitsmewow]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

It looks like it can't be turned off in the bios. Do you think the webcam could be causing the internet connection problem too?

[heylookitsmewow]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

I had acer restore reformat and reinstall windows and this time it didn't install the webcam software like it's supposed to and I don't see any trace of it in windows. So I am wondering if the webcam is just dead. If that is the case is there a way to configure kubuntu so it will ignore or stop looking for the webcam or whatever it is doing? I don't care about getting the webcam to work so much as just getting kubuntu to work right.

[askrieger]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

I believe that the two problems that you're having are unrelated. Both the Acer 5610 and the 5610z worked fine with wired internet for members of the laptop testing team, who are experienced users. But both laptops required the installation of (different) special drivers in order to make wireless work. So unless your wired ethernet is somehow connected through usb, I suspect that these are separate problems.

The problem with the webcam is that usb devices don't always come up with the same address, so you can't simply tell the usb driver to ignore usb 2-2. The next time, it might be 3-1, or 1-4. therefore we have to find the identity of the webcam, normally, I would suggest getting it's id by running the konsole command "lsusb" but I suspect that that is very command that is failing and causing your porblem. I suppose that it's worth a try, though.

Start a konsole, K>System>Konsole and type in the command "lsusb" (without the quotation marks). Then post the results here.

[heylookitsmewow]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

Here are the results of lsusb.

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

when it is booting it goes through the text pretty fast except for one part where it hangs up for a long time. I wrote down the line that it appears to be hanging up on, at least it's the one at the bottom of the screen when it does.

*starting common unix printing system:cupsd

If I remember right I did have to install a driver to get the wireless to work when I first installed and after I did that it worked fine.

[heylookitsmewow]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

I think I have most of the problem fixed. My ISP requires manual configuration of IP subtnet etc. I usually have that set in my router and the computer is set on automatic to connect to the router. My router got zapped by lightning and while it was being replaced I connected the computer directly to the modem. To do that I had to configure the IP etc on the computer. When I got a new router apparently someone only set the wireless back to automatic on kubuntu but didn't set the ethernet back to automatic. That someone was most likely me. Since I am only using wireless I wouldn't think it would matter that ethernet was still set to manual. Apparently it does because when I set it to automatic the internet is now working fine and kubuntu is now booting up fine without printing out all that junk. The shut down is still hanging up, sometimes it's not for long but sometimes it's so long that I just hit the power button to shut it off. Could changing those ethernet settings have actually been the problem or just a coincidence?

[askrieger]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

I still don't see how the ethernet settings could have affected your webcam or vice-versa. I wouldn't worry too much about the CUPS delay because CUPS is probing your internal network looking for network printers. You can probably turn off that behavior, if the delay bothers you.

As I feared, your lsusb was obviously of no use, on my machines it lists the id's of all the things that are plugged in both in the form of 8 hexadecimal digits, but also in the form of names like "Iomega Corp. Zip 250 (version 2)". I was hoping that if we could a name for the usb webcam we could write a magical incantation called a udev rule that would cause the system to ignore it. However, I'm not sure whether the system looks at udev rules before it polls the usb bus. It would seem pointless to do so.

BTW, connecting a computer directly to the internet without a firewall equipped router is VERY BAD IDEA. I wrote about my experiences doing that a while ago.

[heylookitsmewow]

Re: problems booting and shutting down

I still don't see how the ethernet settings could have affected your webcam or vice-versa. I wouldn't worry too much about the CUPS delay because CUPS is probing your internal network looking for network printers. You can probably turn off that behavior, if the delay bothers you.

As I feared, your lsusb was obviously of no use, on my machines it lists the id's of all the things that are plugged in both in the form of 8 hexadecimal digits, but also in the form of names like "Iomega Corp. Zip 250 (version 2)". I was hoping that if we could a name for the usb webcam we could write a magical incantation called a udev rule that would cause the system to ignore it. However, I'm not sure whether the system looks at udev rules before it polls the usb bus. It would seem pointless to do so.

BTW, connecting a computer directly to the internet without a firewall equipped router is VERY BAD IDEA. I wrote about my experiences doing that a while ago.

The webcam still doesn't work so I am guessing the webcam was not causing the other problems. So what I was asking is if the boot problem and the wireless problem could have been caused by the ethernet settings regardless of the webcam. Either way it's working fine now except for still hanging up on shutdown. Usually if I push the power button it will then continue and shut down.