Embarassingly Nooby Questions From A New Pandora Owner

[shiba77]

I received my pandora today and being a common end-user (never used Linux just windows) I'm having several most likely simple "issues" with my new pandora. I'm sorry if these are laughable but here goes:
When booting up I always receive an error saying "could not look up internet address for(name of pandora). This will prevent Xfce from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding (name of pandora) to the file /etc/hosts on your system. I just click continue anyway and ignore this message as I'm not sure what it means.
Once while using the pandora I had the top bar of the window (containing minimize etc) disappear which was a real hassle and I had no idea how to return it after turning off the pandora (by removing the battery) this seemed to have gone. How did I do this in the first place?
Now the reason I have to remove the battery is because it seems I cannot turn my pandora off. Whenever I choose "log off" I always get some message saying Failed to receive a reply from the session manager. Session manager must be in idle state when requesting a shutdown.
How do I switch to the simple gui? I clicked on switch gui and choose Minimenu but nothing happens. Do I have to restart? I can't shutdown or restart normally as that error about the session manager appears.
I downloaded a few pnd files using midori (saved to internal memory) and I was wondering how do I bring them to the desktop, I tried dragging them from the file manager to the desktop but I always receive a message saying failed to copy etc permission denied.

Sorry for these very stupid questions but I'm completeley clueless when it comes to linux and I bought the pandora just for general use like emulators and browsing. Anyhelp would be greatly appreciated and as a final question is there some sort of beginners guide to pandora or to linux that I can read? Thanks.

 

[mindlord]

I received my pandora today and being a common end-user (never used Linux just windows) I'm having several most likely simple "issues" with my new pandora. I'm sorry if these are laughable but here goes:
When booting up I always receive an error saying "could not look up internet address for(name of pandora). This will prevent Xfce from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding (name of pandora) to the file /etc/hosts on your system. I just click continue anyway and ignore this message as I'm not sure what it means.

The initial setup process when you first turned on your Pandora did not complete correctly. You will likely need to reflash your Pandora to start the process again and correct this issue.

Once while using the pandora I had the top bar of the window (containing minimize etc) disappear which was a real hassle and I had no idea how to return it after turning off the pandora (by removing the battery) this seemed to have gone. How did I do this in the first place?

There is a glitch in xfce that causes the window decorations handler to crash. It depends on the window theme you've chosen in the options, and happens when you double click the titlebar. Which should maximize the window, but makes it crash instead! YAY! Should be fixed in future firmware updates. To recover from this. Click the menu button and choose "Run Program..." and enter:

xfwm

That should restart the window decoration renderer.

Now the reason I have to remove the battery is because it seems I cannot turn my pandora off. Whenever I choose "log off" I always get some message saying Failed to receive a reply from the session manager. Session manager must be in idle state when requesting a shutdown.
How do I switch to the simple gui? I clicked on switch gui and choose Minimenu but nothing happens. Do I have to restart? I can't shutdown or restart normally as that error about the session manager appears.

These issues are related to the first problem. They should go away once you reflash, and complete the setup.
To Hard Reset your Pandora, you need to hold the Pandora button and move the power switch to the right. You shouldn't have to do this under normal circumstances though. It's also important to note that the Pandora will NOT shut off if it is plugged in. It must be on to charge. Flipping the power switch to the right momemtarilly will put the Pandora into Sleep mode and will charge more quickly.

I downloaded a few pnd files using midori (saved to internal memory) and I was wondering how do I bring them to the desktop, I tried dragging them from the file manager to the desktop but I always receive a message saying failed to copy etc permission denied.

Sorry for these very stupid questions but I'm completeley clueless when it comes to linux and I bought the pandora just for general use like emulators and browsing. Anyhelp would be greatly appreciated and as a final question is there some sort of beginners guide to pandora or to linux that I can read? Thanks.

You really should be using an SD card. PND's are to be placed on an SD card in the /pandora/apps, /pandora/menu, or /pandora/desktop folders. When in apps, the program will appear in both the menu, and the desktop, in the other two folders they will appear in either the menu or desktop, respectively.

The Desktop folder in the NAND is read only. You can force it to be read/write by opening a terminal window and issuing the following command:

sudo chown [yourusername]:[yourusername] ~/Desktop

You shouldn't need to do this under normal circumstances either, since you should be saving things to your SD card anyways.

 

[tsh]

Force a shutdown by pressing the pandora button (between the nubs) and pressing the power switch to the right. However, the problem you see with logging out looks like a bug to me...

You want to put the PND files on your SD card. Create these directories (starting from the root of the SD card)
pandora
then below that
apps

Place the PND files in there, and they will appear on your desktop. This is magic, not linux stuff...

You can drag windows with 'shift+mouse click'. It is handy if the window is too big to fit on the screen! Alt-Space should give you the window menu, which might help.

Strangely, the switch-gui application seems not to run any more for me. (fails @line 173, trying to mount) but I also get 'too many arguments' @line 100 (have to go, will investigate later)

 

[shiba77]

Wow thanks mindlord and tsh for the quick replies. I'll reflash my pandora straight away!

 

[shiba77]

The flashing helped alot, but that windows decoration handler problem has returned I typed xfwm on to run program but it says the command failed to run. Any tips?

 

[mali]

^ Try it with

sudo xfwm

 

[javaJake]

^ Try it with

sudo xfwm

Root permissions to run a window manager? Isn't that overkill?

 

[mali]

^ I think the PND system requires some restrictions. I'm just guessing here though and my Linux knowledge is pretty thin anyway.

 

[shiba77]

^ Try it with

sudo xfwm

Just tried with no luck, tried sudo xfwm first on run program entered the command and nothing happened, no error message popped up either. Tried it in terminal and it just says command does not exist. Oh and incidentally this problem started happening after I changed my theme on "appearance" and my cursor is now a cross and I am unable to access workspace 2, the options no longer there.

 

[mindlord]

My bad it should've been
xfwm4 not xfwm

 

[Pleng]

and if that doesn't work:

xfwm4 --replace

 

[Prometheus]

Just wanted to drop in and say thanks for that, guys - I've been getting the loss-of-window-decorations issue ever since I changed mine to "Smallscreen" (which I love and don't want to change), and was having trouble finding that command in the other threads where it's come up here.

 

[mali]

^ Don't forget to mention such handy stuff in the Tweaks Thread I'll let slide a bit from now on to encourage more posting in that thread

 

[adtbm]

I received my pandora today and being a common end-user (never used Linux just windows) I'm having several most likely simple "issues" with my new pandora. I'm sorry if these are laughable but here goes:
When booting up I always receive an error saying "could not look up internet address for(name of pandora). This will prevent Xfce from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding (name of pandora) to the file /etc/hosts on your system. I just click continue anyway and ignore this message as I'm not sure what it means.

I had this one as well. My mistake was that i was using not allowed space in the Pandora name.
i reflashed it and used a simple name for the Pandora without a space. That solved the problem.

If not found allready, this Tutorial helped me quite alot: Pandora WIKI

 

[Aninhumer]

I had this one as well. My mistake was that i was using not allowed space in the Pandora name.
i reflashed it and used a simple name for the Pandora without a space. That solved the problem.

Sounds like something that ought to be checked for.

 

[Pleng]

Ye somebody should file a bug report

 

[tsh]

Sounds like something that ought to be checked for.

http://bugs.openpandora.org/index.php?do=details&task_id=139

So it will be fixed once someone gets round to doing it - or rejected as a non-bug (but I doubt that). Feel free to add to the bug tracker whenever you identify a genuine problem - just mentioning it here is not an effective way of recording it!