Troubleshooting

This page is intended to help you find consise lists of common problems and quick solutions.

Network Security software

WireShark packet analyzer. Useful for packet capture, protocol decode, and troubleshooting.
tcpDump command-line packet capture program.

Troubleshooting topics

Specific problems

The file /boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly

Symptom is that grub-install fails with the message

The file /boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly

Reason can be that your partition type is incorrect, e.g. like this:

$ fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       19456   156280288+  c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Solution can be to correct your partition type to 83 (Linux) using fdisk.

There can be many other problems. Using the "find" command at the grub> prompt can be helpful to find stage1 files. See grub

only text screen, no graphics

Symptom: When I boot my computer, I only get a text screen, no graphics

Reason: Your X Windowing configuration is wrong

Solution: Fix your X configuration, e.g. with SUSE do

SaX2

Follow the on-screen instructions

init 3
init 5

blank screen after update

See blank screen after update.

BackSpace does not work

Symptom: When I type backspace in a shell, it does not work, instead I get ^? at the cursor position.

Reason: Your stty settings are incorrect.

Solution: Type

stty erase ^?

Firefox is already running

Symptom: You cannot start firefox because on some other terminal server session or so, there is still a firefox running.

Solution: To solve this, open a console and shoot firefox:

killall firefox-bin

Operation not permitted

Symptom: Trying to delete a file with the permissions rwxrwxrwx, I get an error message

rm: cannot remove directory `/what/ever`: Operation not permitted

Reason: Your file has the sticky-bit set

Solution:

Set the file's attributes with setfattr
Delete the file as user root
Delete the file as the owner of the file

cannot talk to klauncher

Symptom: Your konqueror gives you the error message Cannot talk to klauncher when trying to open an html page.

Solution: Call

kbuildsycoca
kdeinit

What to do if the desktop freezes?

In such a situation you dont always need the reset button. This could damage the filesystem or lead to loss of data. In any way the filesystem wont be clean after a hard reset (filesystem not clean). If nothing works, not even changing to a textconsole (alt-ctl-F1) or restarting the X-server (alt-ctl-backspace), there is still hope:

The SYSRQ-key (print-key, on the upper right side of the keyboard) will help you to cleanly reboot a frozen system.

The following sequence of key-combinations are possible:

ALT+SYSRQ+R (should give back control of the keyboard )
ALT+SYSRQ+S (issues a sync)
ALT+SYSRQ+E (Sends term to all processes but init)
ALT+SYSRQ+I (Sends kill to all processes but init)
ALT+SYSRQ+U (filesystems are mounted readonly, prevents fsck at reboot)
ALT+SYSRQ+B (reboots the system, without the previous steps this would be a hard reset).

Best give every step a few seconds to complete, ending all processes for example could take a little while. The needed letters can be easily remembered with: "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring"

Troubleshooting

Contents

Network Security software