Dell Inspiron 3000 intermittent boot problem

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

I recently acquired a Dell Inspiron 17 3000.

I was very happy with it and straight away went about installing Linux Mint as a dual boot.

That’s when the problems started.

Windows 10 works perfectly (I use the word in the sense that it did what it was supposed to do albeit very slowly) as did Mint. I had split the main 1Tb disk in two and all was fine except for the boot process.

Switching on from a cold start was generally fine. Mint (my default, of course) ran perfectly. The problem would arise on a reboot. The boot loader would fail and I would either get a blank screen with a GRUB curser – “C:grub>” – or the bootloader showing the two operating systems but neither choice would work and just display an “error: command failed”. A soft reboot (Ctrl+Alt+Del) just brought me the the start of the loop again. A hard reboot (switch off/on) wasn’t much better. Eventually after several soft or hard reboots I would be able to get into either OS.

I tried many things to fix this problem. I had scanned the hard drive from both systems so I knew there were no flaws there. I did a factory restore but that didn’t fix anything. I reloaded Mint. I ran Boot Repair with varying options. I mucked around in the bewildering settings in the Dell Boot Setup. Nothing worked.

I resigned myself to a lot of future frustration but at least I could eventually get into the OS I wanted.

Then I got an email from an old friend in the States – Thanks KirkM – giving a link to the solution.

So, for my own future reference –

sudo cp /etc/grub.d/40_custom /etc/grub.d/06_notpm
sudo bash -c 'echo "rmmod tpm" >> /etc/grub.d/06_notpm'
sudo update-grub

I’m naturally wary of code like this just copied off the Web but frustration got the better of me. I tried it.

It works!

Installing Linux Mint 20

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

I installed the Beta version of Mint 20 some time ago and updated it over time.

However, for various reasons I decided to do a complete reinstall on a newly formatted partition.

The first thing I noticed was that the Boot Loader screen was different from the Beta version. I had heard that this was the case and was prepared for it. However I liked the Beta screen and decided to run with it even though it is a very trivial matter.

apt install --reinstall -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confmiss" grub2-theme-mint

or if you have a HiDPI screen

apt install --reinstall -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-confmiss" grub2-theme-mint-2k

The second slightly more serious problem I had discovered in the Beta version – Shutter is no longer available in the repositories. It’s a screen-grab programme that I had been using for years and would like it back. Fortunately I found an excellent solution over on Linux Uprising –

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/shutter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install shutter

Enjoy!

To kill or not to kill

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

I see it’s over 500 days since I posted anything here.

Ouch!

One of the main reasons I haven’t posted is that software of late has become remarkably stable and I just don’t seem to be coming up against problems these days.

I recently set up Matomo Web Analytics on a server. One of the many reasons I did this was to compare traffic over several sites. I run quite a few sites both for myself and for others and wanted to see if there were any sites that could be culled. To my surprise, this site is still getting visits: nothing hectic but it is still active, and is by no means bottom of the pile.

The majority of visits seem to be concerned about the Iomega iConnect which is a piece of kit which has long vanished off the market. It was always very problematic and my one is now gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. Obviously others are still using it and by the sound of it, still having problems.

The majority of other posts are mainly concerned with issues I had found in previous versions of Linux Mint or WordPress. Over time these issues seem to have been resolved, but presumably people are still running older versions of Mint (or WordPress) and are still coming across those problems.

So the question is whether or not to consign this site to history. I originally set it up as a sort of reference notebook for myself which I could refer to if a problem reoccurred. I haven’t used it for that purpose for a very long time.

Or maybe I’ll start posting again?

On second thoughts, I have enough on my plate.

Weaver Extreme Info Bar Spacing

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

I am a great fan of Weaver Extreme and its almost limitless variables and customisations.

One problem that irritated me though was the Info Bar, and in particular the Breadcrumbs.

Example 1 => Home→Books→Short Story Collections→Blackjack

To my eye, that looks cramped.  I needed a space each side of the arrows.  I tried a load of things such as trying CSS, searching forums and anywhere else I could think of.  No one else seemed to have the same problem.

Eventually I resorted to the sledgehammer approach: I changed the coding within Weaver.  I don’t like doing that as it has to be redone in the event of an update.  

The file is “themes/weaver-xtreme/includes/lib-runtime.php”.

The line to be changed ( search for ‘weaverx_breadcrumb’ ) is

$delimiter = apply_filters('weaverx_breadcrumb_delimiter', '→'); //' » ';

In fact a fix is almost in place there as there a commented alternative.  Either insert a space each side of  ‘& rarr’ or use the alternative supplied.  I chose the alternative.

Example 2 => Home » Books » Short Story Collections » Blackjack

I’m happy with that.

FireTray not working

A Pipe and a KeyboardPosted on by

One of the little add-ons for Thunderbird that I like is FireTray.

It’s that little mail notification icon on the task bar that turns into a number when an email arrives and it dispenses with the need to keep checking Thunderbird to see if anything new has arrived.

With the latest release of Thunderbird, FireTray no longer worked. There was no warning – it just failed to appear. As a result I kept missing urgent emails because I wasn’t used to constantly flicking into Thunderbird. I checked Thunderbird’s Add-on area and it merely confirmed that FireTray was incompatible.

I tried the repositories but with no success, but then came across the solution.

In the GitHub site https://github.com/Ximi1970/FireTray/releases/tag/v0.6.2 right click on the file firetray-0.6.2.xpi and save it locally.

Then in Thunderbird, select Tools -> Add Ons. In the window that opens, click on the cog [top right corner] and select “Install Add-On from File” and select the file you have jut downloaded. That will install the updated FireTray.

No more missed emails.