I Have To Reboot My Unit To Run Things Such As The Cpu-Speed, Nub Sett

[asimov-solensan]

First of all hello everybody, I have been reading these forums since I bought a gp2x but never wrote here, and now I need to explain about what's happening to me.

The thing is that I got a pandora three weeks ago and everything worked quite well. After a week or so I found that I can't run a few programs without rebooting the unit. For instance: I shut down the handheld (not hibernate), and when I turn on there are things that don't run, like the CPU-speed, Toogle wifi, Usermanager, Nub configuration, Switch gui ... But the other applications works, emulators, tools like the terminal or thunar, games ...

If I want to execute the first ones all I have to do is to reboot the unit, then everything works.

The first thing I noticed is that all the applications that fail are the "pandora specific" tools, I don't know wich are they commands so I can't try them via terminal (that's the first thing I want to know).

The las thing I have to say is that the hotfix is installed, I reinstalled the firmware but the same happens, and the things I made to the systems are: install cifs and vlc from the repositories and change the uid and gid of the default user (that's something related with the samba server i've got at home).

That's all, again, knowing the commands for the cpu-speed, or the others I mentioned would be the first step to test a few things, thanks everybody.

P.S.
As you may notice english is not my native language, I apologize for the mistakes in the text.

 

[b1ueskycomp1ex]

First of all hello everybody, I have been reading these forums since I bought a gp2x but never wrote here, and now I need to explain about what's happening to me.

The thing is that I got a pandora three weeks ago and everything worked quite well. After a week or so I found that I can't run a few programs without rebooting the unit. For instance: I shut down the handheld (not hibernate), and when I turn on there are things that don't run, like the CPU-speed, Toogle wifi, Usermanager, Nub configuration, Switch gui ... But the other applications works, emulators, tools like the terminal or thunar, games ...

If I want to execute the first ones all I have to do is to reboot the unit, then everything works.

The first thing I noticed is that all the applications that fail are the "pandora specific" tools, I don't know wich are they commands so I can't try them via terminal (that's the first thing I want to know).

The las thing I have to say is that the hotfix is installed, I reinstalled the firmware but the same happens, and the things I made to the systems are: install cifs and vlc from the repositories and change the uid and gid of the default user (that's something related with the samba server i've got at home).

That's all, again, knowing the commands for the cpu-speed, or the others I mentioned would be the first step to test a few things, thanks everybody.

P.S.
As you may notice english is not my native language, I apologize for the mistakes in the text.

Have you tried changing the UID and GID back to default? You might be having some sort of permission issues. Running some of those apps in a terminal would probably tell you.

Edit: Although you said you have to reboot the unit for those to work again. That's strange. perhaps something is hanging or crashing. Does the pandora have something like top you can use in the terminal to see if there's any hanging processes?

 

[tsh]

If you want to find the underlying scripts, look in /usr/pandora/scripts
The menu entries point to pnd_run /usr/pandora/apps/op_xxx.pnd
Running a pnd should gnerate a log file in /tmp/pndrunxxx.log

That might be enough for you to find the problem, or at least narrow it down a bit

 

[Eniko]

This sounds exactly like what happened to me. After a lot of messing around trying to figure out the problem, I reflashed my Pandora and that fixed it for me.

 

[asimov-solensan]

Thanks for the answers.

Here is what i tried: First of all i can't see any zombie process in top, then tried to run those scripts directñy from the terminal and here is what I found.

The applications I can't run give me messages concerning the permissions to create or modify some files, if I run the scripts with sudo they work ok. Well at least that has got sense. I repeated the test with my "modified" user and with another user created via usermanager, the result was the same.

And of course when I reboot there are no permission problems. What's happening is that users has diferent permissions from one boot to another?

By the way thanks for the suggestion Eniko but if you read the first post you will see that I tried that before.

Edit:

Eniko I have been reading your thread and I noticed that both of us installed cifs, ok, it has no sense but, after reinstalling the firmware you tried to install cifs again?

 

[Pleng]

I'd like to chip in and say that I installed cifs on my first unit, and had no issues with script permissions at all. That was using hotfix 2 iirc.

 

[asimov-solensan]

I focused on the CPU-speed script. It overwrites the file /proc/pandora/cpu_mhz_max, the funny thing is that when I try to create a file in the folder it does not say that the user has not permission, it says "No such file or directory".

Furthermore I loked at the /etc/group and it's exactly the same in every boot.

 

[sebt3]

I focused on the CPU-speed script. It overwrites the file /proc/pandora/cpu_mhz_max, the funny thing is that when I try to create a file in the folder it does not say that the user has not permission, it says "No such file or directory".

Furthermore I loked at the /etc/group and it's exactly the same in every boot.

/proc is a special filesysem. It act as an interface to kernel memory parameters. With that you can change most of the kernel behaviour at run-time
File there are created by the kernel and creating a new file there don't have any meaning : what the kernel will do with that ?
Oh and the FS is volatile (as in not stored physically).

 

[asimov-solensan]

Didn't know, thanks for the info.

 

[Eniko]

Eniko I have been reading your thread and I noticed that both of us installed cifs, ok, it has no sense but, after reinstalling the firmware you tried to install cifs again?

I reflashed my Pandora twice. It may have had the same problem before the first time I did it, as I do vaguely recall this behaviour then but I'm not 100% positive. I had installed cifs the first two times, when I had problems. The third time (after reflashing for a second time) I didn't because I didn't want to risk this being the problem and because at this point USB mass storage was working.

So yes, cifs might be the issue here. Though if that's true, why didn't Pleng have issues? Maybe a different way of installing it? I don't know.

 

[asimov-solensan]

I finally reinstalled the firmware and everything is working. I will do the same modificatons step by step to see if the problem happens again.

I will post here whatever I find.

 

[Eniko]

Any update to this?

 

[asimov-solensan]

Nope, after reinstalling the firmware I repeated the changes step by step and found nothing. But then the problem started again, there is something I'm doing but I can't see.

Now I have a fresh install, but my intention is to reproduce the error again, and try to find any clue.

 

[Eniko]

How very strange... good luck. All I know is that I haven't done anything besides install and run PNDs after I got it fixed myself, and the problem hasn't reoccurred.

 

[WizardStan]

Those Pandora specific config apps are actually in a PND file on the NAND. As a result, they also have a pandora/appdata directory: it exists at the root of nand (/pandora/appdata). It also means they have error logs at /tmp/pndrunXXXX.out (ie, pndrunop_cpuspeed.out)
This "running once but then can't run again" is exactly the same as that which Prometheus had with NESEMU and one other user had with some other stuff.
To help diagnose the problem, first restart; a complete shutdown and power on, we want a clean environment. Second, run the CPU speed app (or any other one that you've been having problems with). Third, paste the log file (/tmp/pndrunop_cpuspeed.out) of that run here so we can have a look and make sure it's closing correctly. A simple way to do that would either be to open that file on the Pandora, log into the forum from your Pandora over the network, and copy/paste the file into a post. Alternatively, copy the log file onto your SD card, rename as "pndrunop_cpuspeed.first" (there's going to be a second one in a minute) and post it from your PC when ready. Fourth, run the CPU speed app again; this should fail, if I understand the problem correctly. Fifth and final, save the results of that run the same way that you did for step the third.
By looking at the log for the first and second time the app is run, I should be able to tell if it's actually a similar problem to what Prometheus had or if it's something new.