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**mardurhack** · May 28, 2011, 09:22 AM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Hi! It's my first post here. By the way I'd like to ( try to ) help you. Could you please post here the content of your /etc/fstab file? From reading those lines it seems to be a partitioning problem.

**jcwinnie** · May 28, 2011, 01:58 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Well, I wish I could respond to your inquiry; I cannot at this time as the PC is no longer working as of approximately 15 minutes ago. (I post this from another system.)

I was running Kubuntu from my USB. Amarok was playing. I also was browsing with Konqueror, trying to learn why after I installed Google Chrome, there was no icon for it in the menu. That is after jumping through hoops to get what is my default browser installed.

Anyway, I saw a system notifier icon, clicked on it and received notice of availability of enhancements for Amarok. Looked at the list (gstreamer add-ons) and affirmed installation. Then went back to reading about having to change to a gtk-theme-kde for Google Chrome browser accommodation.

Checked installation of enhancements. The screen showed a bar at 95% of post installtion process (something or other about libc). Went back to reading, checked back, saw same screen, went back to reading, checked again, same screen. Watched and waited. No change after 10 minutes.

Suspecting that I had run out of storage on the partition, I closed everything and shutdown the PC. Waited a bit, then attempted a restart. Saw a blank screen with blinking cursor. No boot menu. (User panic)

Powered off, wait for a while, restarted. Same problem. If I press Ctrl-Alt-De I get the BIOS menu for selecting which device from which to boot. PC won't boot from either the hard drive or optical drive.

It would seem I've got a dead computer from trying Kubuntu. Sure could do with some expert advice.

**jcwinnie** · May 28, 2011, 02:12 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Originally posted by jcwinnie

attempted a restart. Saw a blank screen with blinking cursor. No boot menu. (User panic)

Powered off, wait for a while, restarted. Same problem. If I press Ctrl-Alt-De I get the BIOS menu for selecting which device from which to boot. PC won't boot from either the hard drive or optical drive.

It would seem I've got a dead computer from trying Kubuntu. Sure could do with some expert advice.

Well, it helped just writing out the situation. I realized that I had not tried with the USB thumb drive back in place. So I did, then started the PC again. After the optical drive finished scanning I saw the device boot menu pass my visual scan and the multi-boot menu appear (current versions of Ubuntu and Xubuntu are on the hard drive.)

Yay! It would seem that things are back to "normal", i.e., able to boot to Xubuntu on hard drive. If I get back more courage, I may see if I can boot off the USB key, so that I might answer the question.

**jcwinnie** · May 28, 2011, 02:39 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Originally posted by mardurhack

Hi! It's my first post here. By the way I'd like to ( try to ) help you. Could you please post here the content of your /etc/fstab file? From reading those lines it seems to be a partitioning problem.

O.K. Back on Kubuntu USB

Contents of my /etc/fstab are:

aufs / aufs rw 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nosuid,nodev 0 0

**jcwinnie** · May 28, 2011, 03:09 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Originally posted by jcwinnie

I was running Kubuntu from my USB. Amarok was playing. I also was browsing with Konqueror, trying to learn why after I installed Google Chrome, there was no icon for it in the menu. That is after jumping through hoops to get what is my default browser installed.

Anyway, I saw a system notifier icon, clicked on it and received notice of availability of enhancements for Amarok. Looked at the list (gstreamer add-ons) and affirmed installation. Then went back to reading about having to change to a gtk-theme-kde for Google Chrome browser accommodation.

Checked installation of enhancements. The screen showed a bar at 95% of post installtion process (something or other about libc). Went back to reading, checked back, saw same screen, went back to reading, checked again, same screen. Watched and waited. No change after 10 minutes.

Suspecting that I had run out of storage on the partition.

GParted tells me that I have 55Mib remaining on the boot partition.

**Snowhog** · May 28, 2011, 03:34 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Originally posted by jcwinnie

GParted tells me that I have 55Mib remaining on the boot partition.

That isn't enough. If you open a console and type:

Code:

df -h

If the line for your root partition shows 95% or greater under Use%, then you need to do some house cleaning to regain needed disk space. The simplest thing to do, assuming you don't/haven't been doing it, is to cleanup the package cache of downloaded .deb packages. To do this, in the console type:

Code:

sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get clean

Then retype:

Code:

df -h

and see how much space you now have on your root partition. Another thing that can be eating up root partition space are installed kernels and associated file. How many kernels are showing in your Grub menu?

**jcwinnie** · May 28, 2011, 08:24 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Thanks for the suggestion. I had not run 'sudo apt-get autoremove -y' or 'sudo apt-get autoclean -y'.

Unfortunately, it made little difference. df -h shows 59MiB and 99% used.

Unsure how to view grub menu. /boot has the following:

abi-2.6.38-8-generic
config-2.6.38-8-generic
initrd.img-2.6.38-8-generic
memtest86+.bin
memtest86+_multiboot.bin
System.map-2.6.38-8-generic
vmcoreinfo-2.6.38-8-generic

**jcwinnie** · May 29, 2011, 03:49 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Originally posted by jcwinnie

Unfortunately, it made little difference. df -h shows 59MiB and 99% used.

O.K. I gave up and started over. (That's why I like Google Chrome, I can come back and not have lost browser settings, history, etc. Is that why Kubuntu takes such pains to stop me from using it?)

This time I set the persistence partition to 1.5 GB. df -h now tells me I have used 35% of what remains of the 8GB USB. That's a good thing.

Same error message upon 'sudo apt-get upgrade' that prompted my initial inquiry. This time during the upgrade I noted an error message that said I was running out of storage in my home directory, did I want to open File Manager. I ignored the message and it went away.

Back to another setup and re-tweaking.

**jcwinnie** · May 29, 2011, 05:00 PM

Re: Persistent USB Woes

Used KPackageKit. Ran into the same problem about lack of space on home directory. Installation of package failed.

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