[Alexm920]

UPDATE: Memtest86+ has issues with the way the Mini's BIOS is laid out. Use the on-board diagnostic instead. The freezing issue was resolved by implementing the xorg.conf tweaks found HERE. Also, sammyboy405 is a god among men!

I've been having freezing issues with my Dell Mini 10 running both Ubuntu 9.04 and Xubuntu 9.04, and decided to test the RAM. The option to run Memtest86+ from the GRUB bootloader yielded the incredibly unhelpful response: "Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory" which seems impossible as it's only several kilobytes large. I discovered, upon reading around, that this occurs when the BIOS image on the machine is larger than Memtest86+ expects it to be. Another culprit that's been suggested has been the shifting of allocated memory addresses as support for floppy disk drives is phased out.

When I used Bart's mkbt and VFD (both on my windows boot) to get my USB drive bootable with the Memtest86+ floppy image, it had a similar problem. It kept printing the same error code, 0104 over and over again.

A bit more detail on the freezing issue: It occurs regardless of what programs I have open, and seemingly at random (sometimes within five minutes of booting, other times it will run for hours). I've been able to SSH into the machine after one of these freezes, and despite killing pretty much every display-related process, the display on the mini never changes. I usually just force a reboot using the magic sysreq key and this sequence. During these I also cannot switch to a different virtual terminal, which is rough.

Software wise is running a new Xubuntu install, with the latest batch of updates and the PSB video driver (for native resolution support). Hoping the driver isn't the issue, going back to a skewed screen would be less than fun Has anyone else had issues with Jaunty freezing on a Mini 10, or any advice regarding memory testing?

[Alexm920]

Small update:

Realized that the Dell Diagnostic bootable partition was able to test memory, but when I tried booting to it by normal means (F12 during boot, holding Fn during boot, etc.) it would push me straight to the GRUB bootloader. I wrote a new GRUB entry (edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst where l is a L). This amounted to copying the entry for windows XP to the line below it, with a different title and partition indicator, and tossing it at the end of the file.

title[TAB][TAB]Dell Diagnostic!
root[TAB][TAB](hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader[TAB]+1

I was able to test my memory and all the critical systems, and everything came back fine. So that leaves me wondering what's broken with either the 9.04 release, or with the PSB video drivers (only other thing I'd installed).

[reflex]

Since you have a Mini 10 (with the GMA500), and since the freezes don't freeze the machine, just the display, I expect the problem is with the graphics driver or hardware.

[Alexm920]

From what I've seen that definitely looks to be the case. The diagnostic checked over the display fairly thoroughly (had to do about 100 of those 'hit y if you see the colored star' tests), so I'm fairly certain the hardware is fine. The driver that I'm using now is the PSBX one, consisting of the following packages:

psb-firmware
psb-kernel-source
psb-modules
xpsb-glx
xserver-xorg-video-psb

I've read that the Minis Dell ships with Ubuntu run a modified Hardy Heron (Frakenharon or Dellbuntu people have called it), as 9.04 didn't have proper support for the video chipset. I'm hoping that's still not the case right now. If it is, I'm wondering where to grab the driver they're using, so I can drop back to Hardy until it gets sorted out.

Does anyone know which log file in /var/log/ would be the relevant one to watch when it freezes again?

[Alexm920]

I think the xorg.conf tweaks outlined in this post: http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell...0-not-10v.html were the magic touch. Have had almost 4 hours without a freeze!