[ale] Dell Mini 12 Ubuntu problems

[Brian Pitts]

On 12/01/2009 04:43 PM, Ken Cochran wrote:
> Hey folks, I have a misbehaving Dell Mini 12.
> It runs Ubuntu, I think 8.0.4 (can't tell where to find the
> version) with uname -a reporting kernel 2.6.24-19.

'lsb_release -d' should show it. 2.6.24 is 8.04

> Trying to start the web browser (firefox?), it appears to load
> (on the taskbar) but it shuts down & never displays anything.
> I get the same thing when trying to access any system help.

Yeah, Yelp (GNOME's help viewer) uses the gecko rendering engine just
like Firefox.

> The OS appears to be up to date when checking & fetching the
> package info.

I don't think this is true unless you're purposely booting an older
kernel. The latest in 8.04 is 2.6.24-24. Did you run 'apt-get update'
and 'apt-get dist-upgrade' from a terminal?

>  If I try running firefox from a terminal window I
> get a message about incompatible GRE.  I'm not finding anything
> unusual/useful in /var/log/syslog or Xorg.0.log.

What's the output of 'xulrunner --gre-version'? What files are in
/etc/gre.d/?

> Where can I find some troubleshooting hints/FAQs for this setup?

Google. ;-)

Once you're certain your system is up to date, I'd try 'apt-get install
--reinstall xulrunner-1.9'.

> So far, the only thing I can make work is terminal.
> Would also like to make sure such things as Java and Adobe
> bits are up to date too.

If you installed the from the Ubuntu repositories (sun-java6-plugin and
flashplugin-nonfree) you keep them up-to-date like anything else.

-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts