Have just installed MATE 16.10 on my netbook. Seems to be working OK except that the Restart option doesn’t seem to be. It powers off, the Mate logo appears and disappears, but then nothing - the machine sits there with a slightly lit screen. I then have to switch off and switch back on to continue. Any fix for this?
Sounds like a hardware problem.
Maybe check and see if there’s a BIOS update for your machine?
Thanks. Will have a look and report back.
I do have the latest bios. This afternoon I tried it several times after ensuring that all latest updates were installed. It failed a couple of times but the system has now begun to restart correctly although it is very slow, especially if I’ve run programs (observation suggests that it’s the shutdown that’s holding it up).
Of course, we are talking about a Toshiba netbook — not the fastest machine on the planet, although web surfing is surprisingly smooth and seems better than given by the original Windows 7 starter system.
It’s possible you’re hit with item #4 on this thread:
Hit F1 while shutting down and if you see the process hanging on “A stop job is running for X”, you’ll know.
Not wanting to dismiss the other options that you have been given into this thread, for me, this also sounds like a hardware problem.
I would however like to point the fact that it’s possible to see where the system breaks by changing TTY (Pressing CTRL+ALT+F1).
Therefore, next time you boot your laptop and it stalls, issue CTRL+ALT+F1 and the on-screen content should change giving detailed informations (Such as a monitor filled up by text). At this point you’d be interested to look at the last couple of lines (and possibly just the last one) as to what the “real” problem is.
Also, if CTRL+ALT+F1 doesn’t show that verbose screen, it might be hidden under CTRL+ALT+F2 (CTRL+ALT+Fx should works from F1 to F7, all giving back different results, and only 1 will show you the system’s dmesg output).
Hope this helps,
DLS
Thanks Daniel.
Tried it but saw nothing of note, in fact, saw very little. Suspect that the main problem is the limited capability of the netbook. However, MATE runs very well on it, very responsive. It’s only bootup and restart that are slow. Restart seems to have stabilised for some reason. Today, the first boot took four minutes, a trial restart shortly after took two. Full shutdown is much quicker.
Graham Rippon
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Possibly that the bottleneck is really the flash HDD as, if my memory serves me right, when those netbook dropped SSDs were (at best) a starting technology.
Now the question that arises: is the internal “HD” faster than the netbook’s USB port? Last I checked, one of the first upgrade (and possibly last) that was soughted after was upgrading the internal micro HDD. Finding a fitting P/N however proved challenging and that’s when I started focussing on other stuffs.
Just my 2 cents 
Cheers,
To me it sounds like a systemd problem. Run and post
systemd-analyze && systemd-analyze blame
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Thanks. When you say “run and post” do you mean post the results here? If so, how do I do that? (i haven’t yet learnt how to cut and paste in Ubuntu - next thing to investigate!).
Things are looking good apart from these slowness issues.
CTRL+ALT+T. That opens a pseudo-virtual-terminal. There write down the command:
systemd-analyze && systemd-analyze blame
Select the text on the screen with the cursor, right click copy and the paste it here. It’s just copy & paste.
Hope this is what you expected
Startup finished in 7.837s (kernel) + 41.896s (userspace) = 49.734s
25.441s networking.service
21.169s loadcpufreq.service
21.001s grub-common.service
20.539s speech-dispatcher.service
20.506s irqbalance.service
20.421s apport.service
14.415s [email protected]
12.433s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
11.510s snapd.firstboot.service
9.875s NetworkManager.service
9.664s ModemManager.service
8.621s dev-sda1.device
8.476s accounts-daemon.service
6.920s apparmor.service
5.818s polkitd.service
5.163s gpu-manager.service
4.099s ufw.service
3.188s rsyslog.service
2.729s systemd-udevd.service
2.233s keyboard-setup.service
1.981s thermald.service
1.981s avahi-daemon.service
1.695s wpa_supplicant.service
lines 1-23...skipping...
25.441s networking.service
21.169s loadcpufreq.service
21.001s grub-common.service
20.539s speech-dispatcher.service
20.506s irqbalance.service
20.421s apport.service
14.415s [email protected]
12.433s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
11.510s snapd.firstboot.service
9.875s NetworkManager.service
9.664s ModemManager.service
8.621s dev-sda1.device
8.476s accounts-daemon.service
6.920s apparmor.service
5.818s polkitd.service
5.163s gpu-manager.service
4.099s ufw.service
3.188s rsyslog.service
2.729s systemd-udevd.service
2.233s keyboard-setup.service
1.981s thermald.service
1.981s avahi-daemon.service
1.695s wpa_supplicant.service
1.327s lm-sensors.service
1.263s colord.service
1.251s plymouth-start.service
1.137s systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
1.025s resolvconf.service
1.021s pppd-dns.service
lines 1-29Are you sure it takes 2 minutes? It says 49 seconds. Probably is as @DLS said that that machine is old hardware.
You can discover all the hardware with.
inxi -F
The service speech-dispatcher.service can be deactivated not to be run at boot time, Am I right?
How accurate is this analysis?
I ran it this morning and it gave me 50 seconds and yet my watch told me that from pressing the on switch and the activity light showing, to seeing the desktop was 1 minute and 20 seconds.
It has speeded up since I raised the question - possibly because I ran Bleachbit for the first time two days ago and it did clear out a lot of junk.
However - something else has changed. Yesterday and today, the first bootup of the day failed. Got as far as the Logo splash screen then nothing else happened, just a blank dark screen - I waited a few minutes just in case, but to no avail. Usually a line of instruction appears briefly on screen after the logo splash, but it did not appear - which I suppose pinpoints the problem area.
I got round this by switching the machine off then switching on again several seconds later and everything works fine.
By the way, I’m very grateful for your help - Thank you.
As systemd-analyze is a program running in Linux, it can’t possibly account for the time:
- Where the computer is running the Power On Self Test (POST)
- Where the computer is loading the Linux Kernel
Thanks. Makes sense. I’m learning all the time.
Exactly, it can’t measure all. 1:20 is an okey time for an old pc.
It may be because for HDD has errors. Please, DO CHECK for them with SMART data.
Thanks again. I’ve found the Smart/Self-test option. There’s data there already. Not at all sure what I’m looking at but every category shows assessment as OK. I don’t understand most of the columns, but what catches my eye is that in the Type column there only seems to be two results - Old-Age and Pre-Fail. Is that significant?
Graham Rippon
Don’t worry about it. 
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I think the machine has taken pity on me - it’s behaved itself today! Hopefully, problem solved. Thanks for all the useful advice.