[PLUG] Odd Laptop Behavior

[Dick Steffens]

From time to time my laptop has booted up with an error message
claiming that I'm running in lo graphic mode. It lets me proceed and
offers to start up in default mode, which looks like normal. But some
things don't seem to work right. It used to be that a hard boot fixed
the problem, but not this morning. The thing that didn't work right was
Wi-Fi. No Wi-Fi service was available, in spite of a neighborhood of
Wi-Fi devices visible on my wife's laptop. I tried pulling the battery
and waiting 30 seconds or more before putting it back, but got the same
results. Then I tried booting from a thumb drive, and it worked
normally. The installed OS is Ubuntu 16.04. The OS in the thumb drive is
Ubuntu 18.04. After shutting down, pulling the thumb drive, and booting
up again, 16.04 came up telling me I could upgrade to 18. That's not a
message I've seen before. I declined and let the machine boot normally,
and Wi-Fi was working again.

A message came up that I needed to run some updates, after which a
reboot was required. During that reboot I got the lo graphics mode
message again. And again, I don't have Wi-Fi. Hovering over the network
icon no the top bar shows,

"Wi-Fi Networks
  device not ready"

I restarted with the thumb drive again, and  again I was able to connect
to the house Wi-Fi. And again, 16.04 booted up with Wi-Fi working.

Any thoughts on what's going on?

This is a Lenovo X200 Tablet, if that makes any difference.

[Ben Koenig]

Low Graphics mode is a message you get in certain Desktop Environments when
X is unable to properly load hardware accelerated GPU drivers.
It means that all icons, windows, drop shadows, and animations associated
with your window manager are rendered by the CPU, not the GPU.

This typically occurs when a proprietary driver installed manually
conflicts with files used by the open source driver. the X200 uses and
Intel GPU so I'm not sure why you would be getting that message. There is
only 1 driver and it typically doesn't decide to stop working. I would
guess 1 of the following 3 things is happening

1) hardware failure
2) corrupt files in your installation
3) Ubuntu sucks

There are a lot of little files that can get screwed up during an upgrade
so I'm leaning towards #2. It's actually a very common problem in Ubuntu.

Post by Dick Steffens
From time to time my laptop has booted up with an error message
claiming that I'm running in lo graphic mode. It lets me proceed and
offers to start up in default mode, which looks like normal. But some
things don't seem to work right. It used to be that a hard boot fixed
the problem, but not this morning. The thing that didn't work right was
Wi-Fi. No Wi-Fi service was available, in spite of a neighborhood of
Wi-Fi devices visible on my wife's laptop. I tried pulling the battery
and waiting 30 seconds or more before putting it back, but got the same
results. Then I tried booting from a thumb drive, and it worked
normally. The installed OS is Ubuntu 16.04. The OS in the thumb drive is
Ubuntu 18.04. After shutting down, pulling the thumb drive, and booting
up again, 16.04 came up telling me I could upgrade to 18. That's not a
message I've seen before. I declined and let the machine boot normally,
and Wi-Fi was working again.
A message came up that I needed to run some updates, after which a
reboot was required. During that reboot I got the lo graphics mode
message again. And again, I don't have Wi-Fi. Hovering over the network
icon no the top bar shows,
"Wi-Fi Networks
device not ready"
I restarted with the thumb drive again, and again I was able to connect
to the house Wi-Fi. And again, 16.04 booted up with Wi-Fi working.
Any thoughts on what's going on?
This is a Lenovo X200 Tablet, if that makes any difference.
--
Regards,
Dick Steffens
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Dick Steffens]

Post by Ben Koenig
Low Graphics mode is a message you get in certain Desktop Environments when
X is unable to properly load hardware accelerated GPU drivers.
It means that all icons, windows, drop shadows, and animations associated
with your window manager are rendered by the CPU, not the GPU.
This typically occurs when a proprietary driver installed manually
conflicts with files used by the open source driver. the X200 uses and
Intel GPU so I'm not sure why you would be getting that message. There is
only 1 driver and it typically doesn't decide to stop working. I would
guess 1 of the following 3 things is happening
1) hardware failure
2) corrupt files in your installation
3) Ubuntu sucks
There are a lot of little files that can get screwed up during an upgrade
so I'm leaning towards #2. It's actually a very common problem in Ubuntu.

That makes sense. I'm getting a new SSD this weekend and will be putting
18.04 on it, so I expect the problem to go away.

Thanks.

[Ben Koenig]

There's a checkbox somewhere in the update manager to disable the check for
version upgrades. Normally the LTS releases won't prompt unless there is a
newer LTS, but you can completely disable it.

Years ago when Free Geek was using Ubuntu we had to disable that function
because people kept updating by accident. The difference between a regular
security update and a full blown dist-upgrade isn't really that obvious in
the GUI interface. A lot of people brought in systems that were in a half
old, half new state. I expected them to improve the updater, but given how
many times PLUG members mention apt-get issues it looks like nothing has
changed since 12.04.

There is also a feature to use a CDROM or USB installer as a package
source. Since you mentioned you inserted a USB stick with 18.04 and then
booted to 16.04, it might have asked if you wanted to use it for the
update. If you aren't paying super close attention it is really easy to
enable it and start a partial upgrade, thinking that it's just checking for
the latest firefox security patch...

Call it a UX bug... Typically you can easily avoid the problem simply by
being aware that it wants to do it this way.

Post by Dick Steffens

Post by Ben Koenig
Low Graphics mode is a message you get in certain Desktop Environments

when

Post by Ben Koenig
X is unable to properly load hardware accelerated GPU drivers.
It means that all icons, windows, drop shadows, and animations associated
with your window manager are rendered by the CPU, not the GPU.
This typically occurs when a proprietary driver installed manually
conflicts with files used by the open source driver. the X200 uses and
Intel GPU so I'm not sure why you would be getting that message. There is
only 1 driver and it typically doesn't decide to stop working. I would
guess 1 of the following 3 things is happening
1) hardware failure
2) corrupt files in your installation
3) Ubuntu sucks
There are a lot of little files that can get screwed up during an upgrade
so I'm leaning towards #2. It's actually a very common problem in Ubuntu.

That makes sense. I'm getting a new SSD this weekend and will be putting
18.04 on it, so I expect the problem to go away.
Thanks.
--
Regards,
Dick Steffens
_______________________________________________
PLUG mailing list
http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug

[Dick Steffens]

Post by Ben Koenig
There's a checkbox somewhere in the update manager to disable the check for
version upgrades. Normally the LTS releases won't prompt unless there is a
newer LTS, but you can completely disable it.
Years ago when Free Geek was using Ubuntu we had to disable that function
because people kept updating by accident. The difference between a regular
security update and a full blown dist-upgrade isn't really that obvious in
the GUI interface. A lot of people brought in systems that were in a half
old, half new state. I expected them to improve the updater, but given how
many times PLUG members mention apt-get issues it looks like nothing has
changed since 12.04.
There is also a feature to use a CDROM or USB installer as a package
source. Since you mentioned you inserted a USB stick with 18.04 and then
booted to 16.04, it might have asked if you wanted to use it for the
update. If you aren't paying super close attention it is really easy to
enable it and start a partial upgrade, thinking that it's just checking for
the latest firefox security patch...
Call it a UX bug... Typically you can easily avoid the problem simply by
being aware that it wants to do it this way.

When I run updates I do see a notice that an upgrade is available. I
never upgrade. I learned some years ago, probably from this list, that
upgrades are unreliable to some degree. When I want to move to a newer
version, I always start from scratch.

I don't recall seeing anything about doing an upgrade with the USB stick
installed, just the two options of try it or install it. In this case I
tried it.

I've stuck with Ubuntu since 10.04 (I think that was the earliest for
me) because it's what I know. I know that's not a good reason, but I
haven't really had the time and a spare machine to experiment with. I
settled on the MATE version and have been mostly happy with it. There
are some issues with Compiz vs. Marco that are still annoying, with
different problems in each. But I've learned to live with them. The last
one is when I click on a link in an email, if Firefox is minimized, it
comes up without a title bar and the window controls. If I minimize it
and restore it, it's back to normal, but it has moved to the right in
the task bar. Like I said, a minor annoyance that I can live with. I
just try to remember to restore Firefox before clicking on a link in an
email.