Thanks Steve,
[Copying Bcc to Steve Isard, not on the ctwm list, who has been helping me]
I think my response appended below may be a lot more than you wanted.. but I
can't
tell whether any of it is useful. At the end is a note about catching up on some
sleep!
You wrote:
> If what I suggest *doesn't* work, please post the error message.
>
> HTH,
>
> SteveT
> ...
Here's a lot more than an error message, including some screen contents that I
managed
to get with mouse in local window and paste into a remotely logged in xterm
window
(with problems caused by changed keyboard mapping that makes typing commands
difficult!)
[
I have no idea how it lost my normal keyboard mappings -- making typing
tiresome.
E.g. shift on top row doesn't produce the characters printed above the numerals,
for UK users, but what I suspect might come from a USA keyboard
]
> a.slo...@bham.ac.uk said on Tue, 31 Jan 2023 17:14:57 GMT
> ...
> >But any attempt to start ctwm fails.
>
> [snip]
>
[AS]
> >Do I have any alternative to running gparted on a usb stick, and using
> >it to remove one of the /boot directories (which one: HDD or SSD?) and
> >then try running the bios-fixing program again, and then try to boot
> >the installed Ubuntu, or failing that, as a last resort create a new
> >version of Ubuntu?
>
[SL]
> No, no, no, no and NO! Don't redo your boot, you've done enough scary
> things already. If you're running X from the command prompt, just
> comment out the standard Ubuntu desktop in ~/.xinitrc and replace with
> the command to start ctwm. If your computer boots directly to X, do the
> same thing in file ~/.xsession.
[AS]
Things are in a pretty bad state.
I don't have .xsession. I get "No such file or directory"
My prompt in an xterm window looks like this (with 'chill' underlined):
chill:/home>
The keyboard mapping is screwed up. E.g. I can't find any key or key+shift
combination that produces tilde ~
E.g. the key marked with # and ~ (uk keyboard, just to the left of ENTER)
produces only \ or |.
If I type who, I get this (transferred here by an obscure sequence of select,
copy and paste operations in xterm windows on various machines using remote
logins!):
root@chill:/home# who
axs pts/0 2023-01-31 05:34 (192.168.0.6)
axs tty2 2023-01-31 05:45 (tty2)
axs pts/2 2023-01-31 13:45 (192.168.0.6)
axs pts/3 2023-01-31 16:10
axs pts/4 2023-01-31 16:12 (192.168.0.23)
axs pts/6 2023-01-31 21:10 (192.168.0.6)
axs pts/7 2023-01-31 21:11 (192.168.0.6)
=======================
If I type 'top' in a remote login window, I get this:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
top - 05:12:20 up 23:45, 7 users, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.03
Tasks: 253 total, 1 running, 252 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.0 us, 0.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 99.7 id, 0.3 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 15876.4 total, 12255.9 free, 943.5 used, 2677.0 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 34125.0 total, 34125.0 free, 0.0 used. 14388.6 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
63233 axs 20 0 21884 4096 3236 R 0.3 0.0 0:00.04 top
1 root 20 0 168860 14176 8244 S 0.0 0.1 0:09.94 systemd
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.05 kthreadd
3 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_gp
4 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
rcu_par_gp
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
slub_flushwq
6 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
8 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kworker/0:0H-events_highpri
10 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
mm_percpu_wq
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
rcu_tasks_rude_
12 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
rcu_tasks_trace
13 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.32
ksoftirqd/0
14 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:21.30 rcu_sched
15 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.34
migration/0
16 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
idle_inject/0
18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/0
19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/1
20 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
idle_inject/1
21 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.43
migration/1
22 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.22
ksoftirqd/1
24 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kworker/1:0H-events_highpri
25 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/2
26 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
idle_inject/2
27 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.46
migration/2
28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.27
ksoftirqd/2
30 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kworker/2:0H-events_highpri
31 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuhp/3
32 root -51 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
idle_inject/3
33 root rt 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.46
migration/3
34 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:04.33
ksoftirqd/3
36 root 0 -20 0 0 0 I 0.0 0.0 0:00.00
kworker/3:0H-events_highpri
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
followed by lots more.
If I try to launch firefox (by clicking on the icon), which worked earlier,
I see a rotating wheel for a while, then nothing.
If I click on "show applications" indicated bottom left by a 3x3 array of dots,
and I then select
"show devices and locations" it shows
This computer
Home folder
/home/axs
chill 25.0 GB available 41.4 GBtotal
/
and a whole lot of volumes all 'Unmounted'
If I click on /media/axs/Home I get
Could not scan folder "/media/axs/Home"
Error opening directory: '/media/axs/Home' permission denied.
If an interactive session could be useful, on my old PC I should be able to run
whereby.com in
firefox (using an old, fairly low resolution, display). I've now moved that
PC (vig, for viglen) to be close to my broken new PC (chill, for chillblast).
[both named after suppliers.]
Is there anything specific I should look for that could provide useful
information?
[Which time zone are you in? It's 06:21 here. I had a sleep earlier but have
been at my
computers for several hours...]
If you are reading email now send a message to let me know and I'll wait at
my terminal for more. If I don't hear anything in the next 15 minutes I'll
retire for a while and check email in a few hours.
I hope I'm making sense, half asleep..
Aaron
