[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] Reboot Cycle

[From: Michael Wiktowy]

On 10/19/06, Marius Gedminas <marius at pov.lt> wrote:

> It is a known mweather home applet bug: it crashes the desktop app on
> startup, usually.  Disable the applet, and you won't get reboot loops.
>
> If you have an ssh server on the device, I think you could ssh into it
> and sudo apt-get remove mweather.  Or just keep rebooting until you get
> lucky and mweather doesn't crash for you -- it doesn't *always* crash.


I suppose I should have looked up that applet on the
ApplicationCatalogue2006 wiki as there is a big fat warning that this applet
is unstable and a WIP. I just installed it from the Application Manager
having no idea it was still a WIP.

In any case, I successfully got my 770 desktop not to crash with the
following steps:
- powerup until you get the white screen of death
- plug the charger in
- "power off" the 770 (which actually just suspends it when the charger is
in) by pressing the power button and choosing "Switch off!"
- power on after you see the lone charging symbol in the middle of the
screen by pressing the power button

When the desktop screen finally did come up, it was missing the middle
Contact button along the left hand side of the screen and the applet had a
"Failed" message in it.

I also found that I didn't need the lifeguard disable hack to stop the
rebooting cycle. If I pressed and held the power key as soon as I saw the
Nokia hands, I could stop it in the white screen of death state. Then a
second press of the power button would switch the 770 off.

So I am back to normal without having to reflash my firmware. Thanks for
confirming that this app was causing me trouble. Just figured that I would
relate some details of my unpleasant experience in hopes that it might help
others get out of their future reboot cycles.

Nokia should consider some sort of "Safe mode" when lifeguard resets the 770
a few times in sequence as the endless rebooting is not a fun experience. I
know X will only retry its start 3 times before dropping to the command
line. I think gdm may dump you to a extremely simple session manager if it
can't start the Gnome desktop too. You can start Firefox up in a safe mode
that will not load any extensions. This is likely the best model to follow.

However, an even better model would be to not allow crashing applets to take
down your entire desktop.

/Mike
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