Boot Time

[GuSec]

If it's frozen you can of course still shut the power by holding it. But, this is a programmable feature, the button can be remapped because it's software controlled.
That is not entirely accurate. Regular power modes are software controlled and programmable. The emergency power down (hold power button for several seconds) is not. This is a feature that is built into the hardware and cannot be disabled or programmed to another button. The shutdown command is tied directly into the power supply, so no matter how badly you've locked up the system, the power shuts off.

Thanks for clearing that up Chip, I guess I misunderstood MW there. The Power + Menu (+ Start) isn't programmable either, right?

 

[cb88]

@RavenX you forkbomb much XD

heh... pretty easy to fork bomb pearl as well in one line

It is HIGHLY doubtful that anyone would put any such code in a program unless they just wanted to pull a prank on you

oh and that bash fork bomb is really funny in cygwin ..... windows eventually runs out of ram and starts moving everything to swap its hilarious

 

[Klaus]

Ah, forkbombs, reminds me of the good old days in school. Telnet to other pupils' machines, throw forkbomb and watch them suffer.

 

[Username]

If it's frozen you can of course still shut the power by holding it. But, this is a programmable feature, the button can be remapped because it's software controlled.
That is not entirely accurate. Regular power modes are software controlled and programmable. The emergency power down (hold power button for several seconds) is not. This is a feature that is built into the hardware and cannot be disabled or programmed to another button. The shutdown command is tied directly into the power supply, so no matter how badly you've locked up the system, the power shuts off.
Thanks for that Chip, when I read that I started to worry.

 

[aliking]

...

What I really would like to know is if suspend is already working on the current software.

I'd also like to know that. Suspend was and still one of the huge pains with the OLPC. It's Geode chip was hailed as having amazing power management capabilities, but they still don't work really well in the latest firmware even over a year in.

Obviously OMAP <> Geode for any number of reasons, but I hope suspend is something that is being given priority by the firmware devs.

a

 

[foft]

Would be awesome if Linux on Pandora booted as fast as the GP32 did. I wonder what takes the time - must be initializing the SCSI disks and stuff! The only thing that should take over a few ms seems to be checking and mounting the filesystem. + possibly running the bogomips loop!

 

[hch]

It's Linux. If an app crashes, it shouldn't affect the whole Linux system.

can't stop memory leaks though...

 

[Kramy]

As ledow said, it's not that uncommon that a system will hang until you press reset, or ssh to the machine from a different computer to fix things. By "not that uncommon" I mean, it happens to me a few times a year with an average uptime of about a month. The introduction of kernel-based mode-setting should make it even rarer (given support in the graphics driver).

A month? I've been playing with Ubuntu for a month or so, and already hard-locked it six times.

1) Dismounting NTFS volume without closing torrent client. (oops)
2) Attempted to install VIA Graphics driver. Silly me. I assumed several-years-newer would have better support for OpenGL.
3) Tried to install a game in Wine.
4) Started SuperTux and SuperTux again. (oops)
5) ...don't remember exactly.
6) ...meh.

My Windows boxes have slightly better uptime. My System Idle Process in the task manager often hits ~1000 hours before I need to reboot.

But lately I've had to reboot a lot due to failing HDDs.

Honestly, I don't care how much I have to reboot, as long as the OS boots fast. I run a stripped down version of XP, which takes about 15 seconds to start. (faster than hibernation)

 

[Pseudonym]

I've had an ubuntu comp. for 3-4 months and not one crash. and I use that computer for everything. WINE + Compiz fusion + etc. and 0 crashes.Before I used a windows computer and crashed every 1-2 weeks or so. but I used vista...

 

[sindbad]

A month? I've been playing with Ubuntu for a month or so, and already hard-locked it six times.

1) Dismounting NTFS volume without closing torrent client. (oops)
2) Attempted to install VIA Graphics driver. Silly me. I assumed several-years-newer would have better support for OpenGL.
3) Tried to install a game in Wine.
4) Started SuperTux and SuperTux again. (oops)
5) ...don't remember exactly.
6) ...meh.
You seem to have some serious trouble with your video drivers. Have you checked the forums/wiki? Have you tried reporting them as bugs?
I've only had two kernel panics on linux, one of which was with a pre-release build. I can count X freezes/crashes on my fingers.

 

[Kramy]

I threw Ubuntu on a fanless VIA Eden 1.2ghz. It has a Unichrome Pro IGP, which apparently isn't that well supported. It works fine for watching videos, playing a single OpenGL game at once, etc., but there are definitely issues with the video drivers.

I don't see it improving much. I suppose I could try recompiling the drivers from SVN sources, but I'm not sure if that'd improve it over the drivers Ubuntu shipped with.

CODE
http://www.openchrome.org/

 

[Zarneth]

It's Linux. If an app crashes, it shouldn't affect the whole Linux system.
The key word there being shouldn't. That's a lot different to doesn't.

Now I love linux, I think it's more stable than windows. But the number of times I've seen linux slow to a crawl, had to ctrl+alt+backspace, found ctrl+alt+backspace wouldn't respond (sometimes while the mouse still moving around fine) etc.... Over many years, hardware, installs.... (Not to mention the amount of times I've hard reset my gp2x... I still wonder whether it's hardware issue or just bad software design)

Sure I run compiz, wine with fullscreen games and lots of random apps. But what do you think people will put on their pandoras? Lots of homebrew apps full of bad code and dodgy hacks. Or worse, badly ported x86 programs.

I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised but you've got you're work cut out to make a setup robust enough to handle all that.

 

[sindbad]

I threw Ubuntu on a fanless VIA Eden 1.2ghz. It has a Unichrome Pro IGP, which apparently isn't that well supported. It works fine for watching videos, playing a single OpenGL game at once, etc., but there are definitely issues with the video drivers.
It would seem that Chrome drivers are really crap, then. And I was thinking of getting a mini-itx to build some entertainment stuff

 

[WizardStan]

It's Linux. If an app crashes, it shouldn't affect the whole Linux system.

can't stop memory leaks though...

Yes and no. It can't prevent a program from leaking memory, but once that program is killed, it will recover even the leaked memory. To be fair, I'm pretty sure Windows does the same though.

 

[valhalla]

Now I love linux, I think it's more stable than windows. But the number of times I've seen linux slow to a crawl, had to ctrl+alt+backspace, found ctrl+alt+backspace wouldn't respond (sometimes while the mouse still moving around fine) etc.... Over many years, hardware, installs.... (Not to mention the amount of times I've hard reset my gp2x... I still wonder whether it's hardware issue or just bad software design)

Sure I run compiz, wine with fullscreen games and lots of random apps. But what do you think people will put on their pandoras? Lots of homebrew apps full of bad code and dodgy hacks. Or worse, badly ported x86 programs.

I've managed to properly reboot many similar situations by ssh-ing in the computer and finding that the system was perfectly working, the only dead thing was the graphical system. The issue is not much bad software design in the end apps but rather bad hacks in the drivers, especially 3d ones. The VIA ones are quite (in)famous in that regard; hopefully now that VIA is collaborating with the OpenChrome project there will be improvements.

The only other cases when I've seen linux slow to a crawl were issues with the konqueror browser + too much javascript, and they are easily solved by killing konqueror.

Hopefully the graphical drivers on pandora won't be bad hacks on reverse engeneered hardware, so I hope that the main cause of linux instability can be ruled out, and there won't be need for reboots except for kernel updates.

 

[VinylPusher]

I'm going to guess that there will likely be quite a number of kernel/os updates for Pandora in the first few months after release, whilst things settle down. Boot times are something that anti-pandorites will cite as an issue but those actually using it will just get used to.

Reliability and stability are way more important than fast boot times!

 

[Klaus]

I've managed to properly reboot many similar situations by ssh-ing in the computer and finding that the system was perfectly working, the only dead thing was the graphical system.

Those are the exact situations in which kernel-based mode-setting should be able to help. Does anybody know if our driver already supports it?

 

[Zarneth]

I've managed to properly reboot many similar situations by ssh-ing in the computer and finding that the system was perfectly working, the only dead thing was the graphical system. The issue is not much bad software design in the end apps but rather bad hacks in the drivers, especially 3d ones. The VIA ones are quite (in)famous in that regard; hopefully now that VIA is collaborating with the OpenChrome project there will be improvements.
Interesting to know. I've always been using nvidia myself. Wouldn't put it past it to be the cause.