SSD weirdy (was MATE 16.04 weirdy)

[kilaueabart]

Lately I have grown accustomed to my first successful installation of Ubuntu MATE to do things I can't do in AOS4. Yesterday, e.g., I used it so I could create a meeting announcement with Scribus that I used to do with PageStream 5 until I crashed OS4 last summer and PageStream quit working when I reinstalled all my Amiga stuff.

Today I tried to open a new financial report with AmiPDF, but that kept complaining that it failed to "create Franklin Gothic font" and/or things like that, leaving me with colorful pages barren of text. I tried AmiGS a few times, because it often succeeds where AmiPDF fails, but no, it kept crashing the computer, claiming corrupt file.

I thought I would see what Ubuntu Mate could do, but Ubuntu Mate won't finish loading today! After the usual long wait, the northern lights (?) screen opens beautifully with the round Ubuntu emblem in the bottom center, the way it always starts. But that's as far as it goes! An hour later it remains unusable, necessitating a reboot.

I think that is weird, and I wonder what is going on?

Fortunately Ubuntu 12.04 still comes up with only minor problems, such as stopping twice to report there is no disk or the disk isn't ready. Three options offered, I take the third: Wait. So I will shortly see if Ubuntu can read my financial report, but the MATE problem seems the more serious to me at the moment.

[jdupuis]

Lately I have grown accustomed to my first successful installation of Ubuntu MATE to do things I can't do in AOS4. Yesterday, e.g., I used it so I could create a meeting announcement with Scribus that I used to do with PageStream 5 until I crashed OS4 last summer and PageStream quit working when I reinstalled all my Amiga stuff.

Today I tried to open a new financial report with AmiPDF, but that kept complaining that it failed to "create Franklin Gothic font" and/or things like that, leaving me with colorful pages barren of text. I tried AmiGS a few times, because it often succeeds where AmiPDF fails, but no, it kept crashing the computer, claiming corrupt file.

I thought I would see what Ubuntu Mate could do, but Ubuntu Mate won't finish loading today! After the usual long wait, the northern lights (?) screen opens beautifully with the round Ubuntu emblem in the bottom center, the way it always starts. But that's as far as it goes! An hour later it remains unusable, necessitating a reboot.

I think that is weird, and I wonder what is going on?

Fortunately Ubuntu 12.04 still comes up with only minor problems, such as stopping twice to report there is no disk or the disk isn't ready. Three options offered, I take the third: Wait. So I will shortly see if Ubuntu can read my financial report, but the MATE problem seems the more serious to me at the moment.

Hello kilaueabart!

You are really having a time. You are running into intermittent Read/Write errors it would seem. In my ventures with HDD configurations in my X1000, the only HD's that did not cause issues was my 80GB IDE HD's. That being said, I replaced my SATA cables (once and for all) with a set of SATA Cables 60 CM from AmigaKit. They are the "snap-in" type. One end is 90 degrees for rear of SATA HD and the other end straight for Motherboard Header. I have one SATA dedicated for AOS only and the other dedicated to Ubuntu (linux) only. I did not use Media Toolbox to "Install" my Linux Hard Drive, thereby not being visible to AOS at all.
I think, most importantly, replacing my SATA HD cables whether or not "I thought" they needed it or not, addressed some very intermittent problems that I was faced with. Of course, I have a Mac and an External USB HD Case which allowed me to properly erase my Hard Drives and allowed me to start over on a clean slate when I performed my SATA Cable replacement. When I received a Sam460ex, same. I replaced the SATA Cables first thing. I understand your Amiga is your primary. Just lending my thought as I have read and followed your HDD issues. I would replace those SATA cables! The worst connectors ever created since the dawn of mankind!

Cheers!!

John

[kilaueabart]

I very much appreciate the suggestion. I had started to wonder whether it might be a cable issue. A possible test, that I haven't tried yet, might be to switch the cable from my mostly problem free, used-to-be AOS-only) drive to the SSD and see if it works then.

Meanwhile, though, another strange thing. I mentioned how the Ubuntu 16.04 (on the AOS drive) which I had successfully used Monday quit fully loading, stopping at a properly colored (aurora borealis with stars?) screen with the Ubuntu emblem bottom center. It always had started that way, but after a few seconds I had always been asked to "authenticate" and typing my password would move the emblem up and open a Welcome window, and some menus upper left corner. Now it just stops before checking my authentication.

I had previously installed MATE on a flash drive, and it worked just fine as well. I hadn't tried it again until after I posted my post Tuesday, but when I did, guess what! I got the normal Ubuntu screen, except the emblem was bottom center and the acknowlegment request never came.

Does that still sound like a SATA cable problem? I haven't made the effort yet to see what kind of cable the flash drive works from, but even if it is SATA it seems suspicious that two cables would suddenly go bad. Maybe something else?

Anyway, I'll take a look at those cables at AmigaKit. Thank you.

[kilaueabart]

Wait! Another reason to guess it might not be the cable. My mostly AOS drive has no trouble with the many OS4 partitions on it. I have Ubuntu 12.04 on it as, from linux point of view, /dev/sda7. It still boots without any problems except that regularly stalling twice with "disk missing or not ready," and once it comes up, a series of "Problem detected. Report?" alerts.

Just now, I booted /dev/sda9, MATE, on that Amiga disk. I am using Firefox in it now. Didn't fully work yesterday, does today. Could be cable. But why intermittants on just the one partition?

Before booting, I upgraded to the latest stable 4.1 kernel. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the successful boot? I'll give the flash drive another try.

[jdupuis]

Wait! Another reason to guess it might not be the cable. My mostly AOS drive has no trouble with the many OS4 partitions on it. I have Ubuntu 12.04 on it as, from linux point of view, /dev/sda7. It still boots without any problems except that regularly stalling twice with "disk missing or not ready," and once it comes up, a series of "Problem detected. Report?" alerts.

Just now, I booted /dev/sda9, MATE, on that Amiga disk. I am using Firefox in it now. Didn't fully work yesterday, does today. Could be cable. But why intermittants on just the one partition?

Before booting, I upgraded to the latest stable 4.1 kernel. I wonder if that could have anything to do with the successful boot? I'll give the flash drive another try.

Hi!

Looked at AmigaKit and did not see those SATA cables I ordered (Amigakit USA). You can find them elsewhere. 90 degree one end and straight on the other. I find the 60 CM length to be perfect for the X1000 case. Enough slack so there is no stress on connections and long enough to route neatly through the pass-through.
Speaking from my experience only.
I tried using Unallocated space on my AOS Hard Drive. Only to find intermittent booting issues like yours. One day Ubuntu would boot. Next minute "disk not present" or "could not mount" something of that sort. When I decided to wipe the drives clean after cable replacement, I made the decision to dedicate 1 SATA for AOS and 1 SATA for Ubuntu. I saw that once the RDB was installed on the Hard Drive intermittent issues would show up like this in Linux. Maybe RDB changes the Partition Map - I don't know. I am configured with my First bootable SATA as the AOS drive Installed in HD Toolbox and the second SATA as the Ubuntu drive set up under GParted as MS-DOS Partition Table formatted as FAT32 then deleted the FAT32 partition to leave it Unallocated. During Ubuntu 12.04 install I used Entire Drive option. I have been running fine with consistent booting and stability. This works well for me for both AOS and Ubuntu. None of the two crosses each other. Again, this is my personal liked setup. I haven't had the courage yet to learn how to update to Mate yet. Still getting know things.

Cheers!!

[kilaueabart]

Indeed, my secret plan is to go back to the way I had it until a month or so ago: one drive for Amiga, one for Linux.

But hard to do, if GPartEd is going to continue to mistreat me like this.

Doing it as FAT32 gives very similar results, ie, failure.

[jdupuis]

Indeed, my secret plan is to go back to the way I had it until a month or so ago: one drive for Amiga, one for Linux.

But hard to do, if GPartEd is going to continue to mistreat me like this.

gparted.png

Doing it as FAT32 gives very similar results, ie, failure.

Hi Bart,

Pull down "Devices" and Create the MS-DOS Partition Table then Apply. Close GParted. Cold restart Linux. Then open GParted and try to create 1 FAT32 Partition and Apply. If that works, right click on the FAT32 Partition and Delete. Now you'll have an MS-DOS Partition Table and "unallocated" HD space.
Make sure you have SWAPS Off and Unmount active partitions if pop up messages tell you to do such. You are only dealing with erasing and setting up that HD. It's safe to turn off swaps and unmount other Linux partitions. Just don't select them by accident.

Cheers!!

John

[jdupuis]

Indeed, my secret plan is to go back to the way I had it until a month or so ago: one drive for Amiga, one for Linux.

But hard to do, if GPartEd is going to continue to mistreat me like this.

gparted.png

Doing it as FAT32 gives very similar results, ie, failure.

Hi Bart,

Pull down "Devices" and Create the MS-DOS Partition Table then Apply. Close GParted. Cold restart Linux. Then open GParted and try to create 1 FAT32 Partition and Apply. If that works, right click on the FAT32 Partition and Delete. Now you'll have an MS-DOS Partition Table and "unallocated" HD space.
Make sure you have SWAPS Off and Unmount active partitions if pop up messages tell you to do such. You are only dealing with erasing and setting up that HD. It's safe to turn off swaps and unmount other Linux partitions. Just don't select them by accident.

Cheers!!

John

Bart,

I forgot to add that you may have to (Unfortunately) do this operation to your entire drive in order to recover from Bad Block error. Backup Data. If you haven't already. The MS-DOS Partition Table and Formatting as FAT32 (without modifying blocks) in GParted should recover all of your disk space. Then delete FAT32 so it is Labeled Unallocated. You may partition as you like after a Reboot.

Cheers!!

[kilaueabart]

This time I left your instructions on the screen. Indeed I noticed one that I hadn't followed:

Close GParted. Cold restart Linux.

So this time I turned off the machine and let it be for a minute, then rebooted. I was pleased to see that GParted recognized it as an empty drive. So I tried to create a whole drive FAT32 partition and got the usual results:

Now why does GParted open "/dev/sdb (111.79 GiB)" for me to work on, then quit with the excuse "Error opening /dev/sdb: No such file or directory"? I don't think he is playing fair.

And GParted pulled its usual trick when I ran it again. Nomore /dev/sdb, but it kindly opens /dev/sdd (111.79 GiB) now! And if I try to partition that, it'll come up with /dev/sde next time.

[jdupuis]

This time I left your instructions on the screen. Indeed I noticed one that I hadn't followed:

Close GParted. Cold restart Linux.

So this time I turned off the machine and let it be for a minute, then rebooted. I was pleased to see that GParted recognized it as an empty drive. So I tried to create a whole drive FAT32 partition and got the usual results:

FAT32try.png

Now why does GParted open "/dev/sdb (111.79 GiB)" for me to work on, then quit with the excuse "Error opening /dev/sdb: No such file or directory"? I don't think he is playing fair.

And GParted pulled its usual trick when I ran it again. Nomore /dev/sdb, but it kindly opens /dev/sdd (111.79 GiB) now! And if I try to partition that, it'll come up with /dev/sde next time.

Hi Bart,

Dag Nab It All!!! Man if you have someone who could hook that HD to a MAC and give it the Secure Write Zeros Once and MS-DOS it as FAT under Disk Utilities in OSX, you'd be in business. Apparently the Partition Table is not being correctly written in GParted. This could be caused by misaligned block error. Using my Mac, that is how I was able to pull one of my SATA's and CF Cards out of a crack some time ago. Writing Zeros - 1 pass across the entire drive (secure erase) eliminates corrupt Partition Table Data. AOS won't and GParted, I noticed, does Quick erases, writing of Partition Table and formats. Either your HD is not playing nice or GParted for some reason can't complete the operation. Odd. This is just my guess.

Cheers!!