Troubleshooting

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

Network Security software

Main page: Security

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

Troubleshooting topics

• Troubleshooting printers
• Distribution specific tips and tricks
• Troubleshooting sound problems
• Troubleshooting network
• System Recovery
• Software Repo / Package Manager FAQ

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"