Testdriving daily build 24.04 (Noble Numbat)

Thoughts & Feedback
, ,
#5

Hurray ! :slight_smile:
Ubuntu-MATE 24.04 LTS (Pre-Alpha / in developement) running smooth on two pretty ancient laptops :slight_smile:

ASUS F3T (2005):

CPU: dual core AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-52 (-MCP-)
speed/min/max: 800/800/1600 MHz Kernel: 6.6.0-14-generic x86_64 Up: 39m
Mem: 761.6 MiB/2.87 GiB (25.9%) Storage: 111.79 GiB (17.6% used) Procs: 180
Graphics: NVIDIA G72M [Quadro NVS 110M/GeForce Go 7300] driver: nouveau

ASUS_F3T
ASUS_F3T1280×800 83.9 KB

Toshiba Sattelite C670D-10H (2011):

CPU: dual core AMD E-350 (-MCP-) speed/min/max: 799/800/1600 MHz
Kernel: 6.6.0-14-generic x86_64 Up: 34m Mem: 1014.4 MiB/5.4 GiB (18.3%)
Storage: 298.09 GiB (6.3% used) Procs: 187 Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.31
Graphics: AMD Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310] driver: radeon v: kernel

Toshiba_C670D
Toshiba_C670D1600×900 99.8 KB

2 Likes
#6

Update today brought an updated network manager and a new kernel

It broke my networking on the ASUS F3T :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
Both wired and WiFi, and now:

  • A cold boot gives me a working network
  • A reboot (warm boot) gives me no network at all
    Rebooting with the older kernel didn't solve the problem.

Very strange, because on the T420 and the C670D all is well :thinking:

With all networking down I tried:

  • ip a
    which shows both networkadaptors DOWN
  • sudo ip link set dev wlp1s0 up
    does not give an error but even so does not bring the network up.

After a cold boot and with networking up I tried disabling Wifi, which worked, but then enabling again didn't work for some reason. Exactly the same with wired ethernet

So, I can bring the network down but can't bring it up again
I am completely baffled. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

If anyone could shed some light on this would appreciate it :slight_smile:

EDIT: The problem is restricted to WiFi, the wired problem was a bad cable :man_facepalming:

EDIT2:
After using nm-applet to disable Wifi, the Wifi becomes hardware(!) blocked
trying to bring the adaptor up
:~$ sudo ifconfig wlp1s0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not possible due to RF-kill
:~$ sudo rfkill unblock all
:~$ sudo rfkill list
phy2: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
:face_with_spiral_eyes:

EDIT3:
Starting with enabled WiFi and listing rfkill:
phy2: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
Using the hardware RF-switch to disable WiFi:
phy2: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
Setting the switch back to its origina position:
phy2: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
:woozy_face:

EDIT4:
Problem partly solved:
The system had blacklisted the driver that worked, so I unblacklisted it:

cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf 
# For some Atheros 5K RF MACs, the madwifi driver loads buts fails to
# correctly initialize the hardware, leaving it in a state from
# which ath5k cannot recover. To prevent this condition, stop
# madwifi from loading by default. Use Jockey to select one driver
# or the other. (Ubuntu: #315056, #323830)
blacklist ath_pci

^this last line I commented out to get everything in working state again.
(the only thing that is still not working quite right is the hardware switch)

So, after all, contrary to expectation, turned out to be a driver problem.
:slight_smile:

3 Likes
#7

l
l646×666 72.9 KB

6 Likes
#8

HAHAHAAA....BRILLIANT!! :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

3 Likes
#9

ASUS F3T:
Brave-browser, when trying to change theme, starts fighting with the Xpresent compositor which results in a weird kind of truce a.k.a. system freeze.
Disabling the compositor solves this.

(This is one of the things that makes Ubuntu-MATE so special.
Disabling or enabling the compositor, on the fly, in real time, is just a few mouseclicks away. )

Another reason to disable the compositor, on this particular piece of antique when using Brave, is youtube videos.
Yes this piece of antique can play youtube videos but it gets a bit too heavy for the CPU/GPU combi (AMD Turion X2/GeForce Go 7300) when the compositor is also enabled.

Keep in mind that you don't need to do this on more modern systems with more capable GPUs (probably anything build after 2012): this F3T laptop is almost two decades old so it is a miracle it runs all this stuff from a pre-alpha 2024 OS anyway. :star_struck:

1 Like
#10

Toshiba Sattelite C670D-10H (2011):
I forgot to tell what's so special about this piece of junk.

This low-budget laptop was generously donated to me by a lovely lady with the lovely, almost romantic, words: "get this piece of crap out of my sight, I hate it !!"

Now I understand this because the poor laptop, which wasn't particularly fast to begin with, had endured some kind of "electrical accident" which had resulted in a blown up battery, a blown up harddisk and some random blown up I/O circuitry in between so it didn't do that much anyway anymore.

It was actually amazing that, after connecting a replacement disk that it came back to life, although pretty crippled: The speed of the I/O was only half its specs.
Swapping the harddisk out for an SSD didn't make any difference speedwise so I left the old replacement "spinning-rust" device installed.

Therefore testing Ubuntu MATE 24.04 on this device can immediately reveal some I/O bottlenecks, including any bloat or overengineering :grin:

Since its I/O is crippled but its RAM is 6GB , I did set vm.swappiness = 5 to keep most of the desktop loaded. It did make the system much more responsive :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#11

More info about the "UBSAN: array-index-out-of-bounds" error

This error always prop up with AMD drivers on newer kernels.

Since the AMD drivers use variable sized arrays, this error is actually a false positive.

See this reference where Alex Deucher (AMD Linux driver developer) explains a bit. There is also some example code.

EDIT: Should be fixed in kernel 6.7

EDIT2: Nope, not yet fixed, running kernel 6.8
There is, however, already a patch accepted and signed off by Alex Deucher:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/uploads/ced912349ff5f6e685aa4744f8263d80/0001-drm-amdgpu-covert-some-variable-sized-arrays-to-styl.patch

2 Likes
#12

T420 is my favorite of all time. The only thing that is annoying is the screen, but I have learned to accept its limitations.

1 Like
#13

Reinstalling Brave-Browser

Brave-Browser did let me know that there is a new version it can't update to so a reinstall was necessary.

I followed this official reinstall procedure:

Which induced the following problem:

So in the file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list
i changed:

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main

to

deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main

which solved the problem. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#14

update-manager became incapable of updating.
but after:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo reboot

update manager worked again.

1 Like
#15

Yay! I hosed my corrupted update-manager. :innocent:
It didn't want to do partial upgrades anymore.

Anyway, I tried for once to let synaptic do the upgrades instead.
I discovered about 3000 files that were not upgraded :crazy_face:

Well, after letting synaptic do the job, everything was back to normal.
update-manager partial upgrades worked again without hiccups.

I hope this incredible simple solution will also be useful for others who encounter the same update-manager troubles. :slight_smile:

EDIT: It also worked on my other two (geriatric) test laptops

1 Like
#16

Installed Ubuntu Mate 24.04 a few day ago on a HP 255G7 AMD Laptop.
Needed 5 times to succeed (had to update the usb install stick before installing to the laptop).
OS is running smooth (as known and expected from Mate :wink: ) - but since the update from 09.04.2024 the mouse (wireless, connected to usb2 port) isn't working, and bluetooth isn't working too.
When connected to the ac power mouse and bluetooth are working.

1 Like
#17

Welcome @McDotter to the community!

#18

I can only guess here, ofcourse, but it seems that the powersave options may be a bit too agressive for your computer.

There is a chance that your USB ports are getting "powersaved". If this is what happens to your USB ports, you might want to check out this post:

2 Likes
#19

Thank you for this information. Testing it.

#20

Updated to Mate 24.04 beta.
Behavior is the same: when ac power is disconnected, usb is off. Applying "on" to usb-devices won't change anything, reconnecting ac don't do it too.
When booting on accu, the usb-mouse stops working shortly after reaching the login screen.
Since this strange behavior don't happens with ubuntu 23.10 or 24.04 beta, I assume that the mate login screen triggers this.

#21

I checked on my three test-laptops with several mice and I can't reproduce what you are experiencing.

Since the USB ports are completely owned by the kernel and the mouse routines by the Xserver I very much doubt that the problem is the MATE-desktop.

Although I strongly suspect a conflict between the newer kernel and your hardware, I advice you to file a bug here anyway:

One thing left to try though: You can completely disable USB powersave in the kernel. The following link explains how to do that:

If this doesn't work then the problem is probably something else, though at the moment I can not imagine what that could be. :slight_smile:

2 Likes
#22

Great,
the grub command line entry works.
Now USB and BT works even without ac power.
Thank you

3 Likes
#23

Dumb question, but is the UM 24.04 LTS release still scheduled for tomorrow the 25th ?

W

#24

Hi, @Watford.

That was NOT a dumb question, at all! :slight_smile: As it turns out, Ubuntu MATE 24.04 LTS ("Noble Numbat") was indeed released today (25th April 2024):

3 Likes