Please explain how Ubuntu installed on a Solid State Drive with Logical Volume Mgmt?

[oldfred]

I went from 10.10 to 12.04 and installed fallback, so I could have menus. Also my screen is 4:3 so top & bottom for panels work better for me.
I am not sure there was a working fallback with 12.10 or 13.04? As it now needs Gnome 3.8.

Just today I installed flashback into my 14.04 install and it seems to be similar, but menu items have moved all over the place. Also with 14.04 getting regular errors, but it seems to keep working.

[bc9]

As mentioned, the PC is having an issue and I haven't yet figured out the cause (I don't THINK it's due to Ubuntu) per the attached photo I took of the screen following one of the many freezes/crashes it had today.

Tomorrow I will re-seat all the RAM, check to see that the Nvidia drivers are the most current and if neither of those alleviate the problem, I guess I'll take out the SSD and try booting 13.04 from a regular hard drive instead to see if that makes a difference. If it's STILL happening after all of that, I'll put in a Windows 7 system/boot drive and see whether the freeze/hang happens with that... if so, it's gotta be hardware. I'm loathe to remove/reinstall the CPU, but I'll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.

It's always something.

[oldfred]

What system, cpu etc.
Some need extra boot parameters to work well or work around various bugs.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions
Info on other boot parameters
http://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentat...parameters.txt

[mc4man]

From all I've read & from my ssd maker don't see any reason to add discard, nor to worry about trim in newer ssd's, the drive will take care of itself.
Though to give a little 'helping' hand I do leave some unallocated space at end of drive, 10gb here.

[bc9]

Well, I haven't managed to get the freezing/hanging problem resolved... I thought I did yesterday, but it's happening again today though I'm not positive it's the same problem as before.

Yesterday I re-seated all the RAM and the video card. Then I updated the system software (Software and Updates from System Settings) ...it wanted 140MB of various updates. I'm not sure why it needed so much since I only just installed everything the day before and I thought that it's supposed to go online to get all the updates at that time. Finally, I changed from the installed open-source (default I suppose) display driver to the proprietary/tested one: changingNvidiaDriver.jpg

...after all that the system ran fine (as far as I know/could tell) for 12 hours straight. That was yesterday... and today it's hanging again. Of the three times it froze today, I only happened to be in front of it to see it happen once. I had Chrome open and a file downloading and I was editing a file name in a folder window. Literally mid-edit the system stopped taking any input from the keyboard and mouse at all, though the GUI itself was still updating (I could see the download stats changing, so that process was still running and the lights on the router were still blinking). After X amount of time, the screen saver cut in so the display went black, though I assume the download was still going. I did try unplugging and replugging the USB keyboard and mouse, but that didn't help/wake it up to accept input. Eventually, I power-cycled the machine (by unplugging it from the wall) just as I had to to twice earlier today.

Things I could try now:

I could update from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10 to see if some bug got fixed in the update (I normally decline incremental version updates)
I could install 13.04 on a regular hard drive and see if the system runs any better than way (instead of running it from the install on the SSD)
I could boot the system from Windows (using a different hard drive) instead but I'm not really interested in running Windows at all.

...other than that, I'm out of ideas at the moment. Obviously, I'd like to get the machine running/stable and THEN I can worry later about noatime or other tweaks.

System specs :

Intel DX58SO logic board with Intel Xeon CPU W3540 @ 2.93GHz (8 cores)
8GB RAM (shows as 7.8 in system details)
NVIDIA Geforce PNY GTX480 PCIe/SSE2 display card using NVIDIA binary Xorg driver, kernel module and VDPAU library from nvidia-310 (propietary, tested)
Ubuntu 13.04 (64 bit) updated yesterday, booting from Kingston 120GB SSD (purchased last week from Newegg)

If anyone's interested/able to suggest something to help, and requires more info (I'm happy to go find a logfile or whatever if told where/which one to examine) please do. TIA!

[oldfred]

First do not power cycle except as a last resort. Better to remember the elephants. And it may work even if keyboard seems locked.

Never force shutdown your system. Use Alt+SysRq R-E-I-S-U-B instead. (For newer laptops they don't bother adding the SysRq print to the key, but it's the same as the PrtScr key)

Holding down Alt and SysRq (which is the Print Screen key) while slowly typing REISUB
R-E-I-S-U-B to force shutdown
A good way to remember it is.
Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring ...or
Reboot System Even If Ultimately Broken ...LOL.
http://kember.net/articles/reisub-th...linux-restart/
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...4#post12543274

If it hangs, switch to terminal and run top to see what is running and consumming resorces. Or look at system monitor if you can get to that.

[bc9]

Thanks for the info oldfred... I've never heard of that before (REISUB) but will try it next time (the elephant acromyn is very good ). When it happens, I can't get a terminal window or open anything... literally every keyboard and mouse input seems to be ignored, as if they were unplugged. But I'll try the REISUB next time despite my impression that the system isn't listening to the keyboard at all by that point.

I was busy w/work but am back at it... last night I began what seemed like the next-least-drastic step: upgrading from 13.04 to 13.10 but (of course) my system froze partway through the installation. After waiting forever (hoping it might come back and finish, or at least exit the install gracefully) it was clear that it was totally hung. After rebooting (I was relieved that it did) 13.04 still ran but I think the Software Updater no longer works... when I tried to use it again to proceed/finish the update, it just 'checked for updates' indefinitely.

Maybe there is a problem with my particular SSD, or maybe there's some problem with Ubuntu on my particular bits of hardware... I don't know. Since the crash during upgrade last night seems to have crippled Software Updater, I figure I should probably start over since I don't have much confidence in the integrity of the install of 13.04 now on my machine. So, I'll wipe the SSD and start again... I'll also try the current Mint to see if there's any difference (I know it's from the same branch of the Linux family tree as Ubuntu, but (I'm told) it might be worth trying, just to see if my freeze/hang problem goes away or not).

Then there's the option of starting over without the SSD. It's all a bit demoralizing... I don't really have the time to futz with this due to work, nor did I expect changing PCs and versions of Ubuntu would have eaten up as much of my time as it has over the past week.

I'll keep you updated. Thanks again SINCERELY for your help.

ADDED LATER: the same freezing of the system happens under Mint. Also: as suspected, the alt+SysRq then REISUB doesn't work (I tried a few times, with and without caps, etc...). I put in a regular hard drive and am currently installing the OS (yet again) on it to remove the SSD from the equation. More to follow...

ADDED STILL LATER: thought that I'd solved the problem (again) when it ran for three hours today once I removed the SSD and put Mint on a regular hard drive. But of course, I was mistaken... it froze again a little while ago. I've tried two distributions of Linux, two different graphics adapters, three different quantities of RAM and running with the system on the original SSD as well as a regular hard drive. I also re-seated all the RAM and tried having the boot drive on different SATA ports. Eventually, it freezes/crashes with each of these attempts/configurations and I'm sort of out of ideas.