8 replies to this topic

[second2try]

I am a newbie who bought my ASUS Eee PC 901 W006 Netbook, Linux Preloaded, 1GB RAM, 20GB SSD about six months ago.

Not knowing any better (I should have visited here earlier), I have been downloading most of the updates. They download automatically and I get a pop up box telling me that updates are available.

It's been working fine, until a recent set of five updates were downloaded. None of them will install when I click on 'install', instead the system hangs or slows right down until I do a restart. Leaving the pc for some time does not resolve the issue, only a restart.

One of them sounds like something I would like (Touchpad Patch Ver 1.0 2008-08-05) and there is also an OpenSSL Security Update (Ver.0..8c-4etch5, 2009-04-09).

If I use the Storage Wizard in the diagnostic tools, it tells me that:
/dev/sda1 3.1G 100% used
/dev/sda2 680M 90% used
/dev/sdb1 15G 12% used

I know very little about Linux and am not a programmer (long time Windows user though). Any suggestions?

[DaVince]

Don't install the update, on the Eee's default Linux system they're a bad, bad thing, eat up disk space, possibly crash your Eee... I suggest you do an F9 restore.

[Jack]

Welcome aboard.

Quote

Don't install the update, on the Eee's default Linux system they're a bad, bad thing, eat up disk space, possibly crash your Eee... I suggest you do an F9 restore.

This is correct. Always try to avoid Asus' updates. It filled up the 4 gig main ssd.

In my opinion the built in Xandros Linux is useful only if you don't try to change it. If you like to experiment you will probably want to change to a different distro. The standard Ubuntu 9.04 and the standard Puppy 4.20 are my favorites.

Avoid Pupeee, it is made for the 701s, and does not support the hardware in the newer EeePCs.

This is old information Pupeee version 4.20 works good on my 901, and should work good on all EeePCs.

Edited by Jack, 16 June 2009 - 08:31 PM.

[Flo]

Quote

One of them sounds like something I would like (Touchpad Patch Ver 1.0 2008-08-05) and there is also an OpenSSL Security Update (Ver.0..8c-4etch5, 2009-04-09).

Is your touchpad not working? Do you ever use, or intend to use, OpenSSL?

With only 600MB of free space to begin with, you have to be *very* selective about what you install. Few, if any, of the Asus updates will actually improve the performance of your eee. A lot of them will actively degrade it.

An F9 is the easiest way to get rid of all the useless stuff - unfortunately, since in many instances you don't actually know what Asus installed, or where, it's difficult to get rid of them by uninstalling. I think the 901s with two drives have an option for only performing the restore on the small 4GB drive, leaving your personal files in your user partition intact, but back up anyway just in case.

[Bron]

Heed what Flo says!

Do an [F9] restore and then go into /usr/sbin and edit services.sh to turn off the update service (find the line about invoking the updates service and comment it out). That's what I did to protect my 900A after having this happen to me several times. Warning!!! Even if you have changed your settings to "don't download updates" if you go into the settings and update, it *will* download the update pkgs and screw up your system. So beware.

I did the [F9] restore several times. It takes only a minute and I finally decided that the best option was to run a "stock" setup intentionally at all times. If ever there are any problems, I will just do an [F9] restore and "refresh" my system. I keep all my personal data and anything I will need on an SD card or USB drive and I'm good. I use FEBE to backup any Firefox extensions, my bookmarks, and so on, so I can restore them as needed. All my videos, mp3's and other stuff are kept on an external USB flash or disk drive.

Once I went this route, life got a lot simpler and my worries a lot less. ;)

[second2try]

Wow, thank you. I had no idea you could even do a [F9] restore (luckily I found a Youtube video showing how to do it). My /dev/sda2 is now down to 3%. I will turn off updates as suggested also.

Thanks again.

[second2try]

[60 minutes later] Ok, remembering that I said I am not a programmer. With extensive googling I managed to open a window with ctrl-alt-T, switched directories with 'cd', found 'services.sh', opened it first with 'edit' then when I couldn't get that to work, subsequently with 'vi', found the line that starts the Updates and figured out how to 'comment it out' with #.

At this point, with both 'edit' and 'vi', the file refuses to save. In 'edit' it just says save failed, in 'vi' it says it is read only and to add '!' to overwrite, which I do, then it still says it can't save it.

Then I gave up.

[Flo]

vi is not the most user-friendly of text editors :). Try this: Open a terminal (ctrl-alt-t) and type:

sudo kwrite /usr/sbin/services.sh

This will open it in the external text editor Kwrite, which is similar to Notepad. (you might get a few complaints in the terminal, just ignore them). You should be able to edit and save it as you would normally.

(your problem with vi might have been that you didn't run it with the sudo command, if you want to try it again that way just type sudo vi /usr/sbin/services.sh - you don't need to cd to the actual directory)

Edited by Flo, 09 May 2009 - 09:53 AM.

[second2try]

Thank you for explaining in simpler language, I have now done that successfully.

Thank you to everyone for your help.