I searched Google to no avail.  I was completely unable to use the correct search terms to find anything relevant, except to find that others were having the same problems.  But, I found no solutions in any of the posts I found, or even hints of how to diagnose such a thing.  So, I finally decided that I should be a programmer instead of a user.  After all, I moved to Ubuntu so that I could be a user; I don't really have the time to be tinkering with my system these days.

My new system is made up of the following core components

• ASUS P8P67 EVO motherboard
• I7 2600k
• eVGA GeForce GTX 460 video card

So, after having put on my programmers cap, I decided to go fishing.  Obviously the first place I looked was /var/log/syslog.  In there, I found the following...

Jul 20 21:56:39 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9607.079961] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800384] irq 16: nobody cared (try booting with the "irqpoll" option)
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800386] Pid: 0, comm: swapper Tainted: P            2.6.38-10-generic #46-Ubuntu
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800387] Call Trace:
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800389]  <IRQ>  [<ffffffff810d51ab>] ? __report_bad_irq.clone.2+0x2b/0xa0
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800395]  [<ffffffff810d55aa>] ? note_interrupt+0x19a/0x1e0
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800396]  [<ffffffff810d649d>] ? handle_fasteoi_irq+0xdd/0x110
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800399]  [<ffffffff8100e9c2>] ? handle_irq+0x22/0x40
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800402]  [<ffffffff815cb33d>] ? do_IRQ+0x5d/0xe0
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800404]  [<ffffffff815c3693>] ? ret_from_intr+0x0/0x15
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800405]  <EOI>  [<ffffffff81336c8a>] ? intel_idle+0xca/0x120
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800409]  [<ffffffff81336c69>] ? intel_idle+0xa9/0x120
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800411]  [<ffffffff814a3e5a>] ? cpuidle_idle_call+0xaa/0x1b0
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800414]  [<ffffffff8100a266>] ? cpu_idle+0xa6/0xf0
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800416]  [<ffffffff815a94d5>] ? rest_init+0x75/0x80
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800418]  [<ffffffff81acac90>] ? start_kernel+0x3f5/0x400
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800421]  [<ffffffff81aca388>] ? x86_64_start_reservations+0x132/0x136
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800423]  [<ffffffff81aca45d>] ? x86_64_start_kernel+0xd1/0xe0
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800424] handlers:
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800425] [<ffffffffa0698e90>] (nv_kern_isr+0x0/0x80 [nvidia])
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800526] [<ffffffffa0c66020>] (rtl8169_interrupt+0x0/0x250 [r8169])
Jul 20 21:57:06 tda-desktop kernel: [ 9633.800529] Disabling IRQ #16

As you can see, two drivers are in use on IRQ 16; the nvidia and rtl8169 drivers. I ended up doing some more analysis by running lspci -v, which resulted in finding that my USB 3.0 devices, my rtl8169 ethernet chip, and my nVidia GTX 460 were all using the same interrupt (IRQ 16).  Normally sharing IRQs isn't so bad, so I'm thinking one or more of the drivers has a bug that occurs during idle times.

So, the thought came to me to restart my ethernet interface.  After doing that, my system was back to normal until the next time it happened.  Seeing that my motherboard has two ethernet interfaces, I plan on disabling the RealTek one, and activating the intel one, and see if that resolves it permanently.

Add the following to your /etc/ssh/sshd_config

GSSAPIAuthentication no
GSSAPICleanupCredentials no

• The process android.process.acore has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again.

First I tried some suggestions to wipe the contact data by going into Settings->Application->Manage applications->All and then to force stop and wipe the data of the "Contacts" and "Contacts Storage" applications.  This made the application sync the data from gmail again.  I opened the contacts, and watched the data being synced live, and then suddenly a "Force Close" button pops up once again.

Then I decided to investigate using the "adb logcat" command using the Android Development environment.  This resulted in the stack trace at the bottom of this page.  This clued me in that there was something wrong with my contacts with photos.  So, I went to gmail, removed all my photos from my contacts, and synced.  This did not resolve the issue, but I was watching from within the contacts application, as the contacts were syncing, and saw that it was also showing my twitter contacts, with photos.  Suddenly, the force close box came up again.

So, I simply uninstalled twitter, and all is now fine.  I hope this helps someone resolve their issue.

E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): FATAL EXCEPTION: main
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): java.lang.NullPointerException: key == null || value == null
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.util.LruCache.put(LruCache.java:146)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.ContactPhotoManagerImpl.loadCachedPhoto(ContactPhotoManager.java:291)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.ContactPhotoManagerImpl.loadPhotoByIdOrUri(ContactPhotoManager.java:248)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.ContactPhotoManagerImpl.loadPhoto(ContactPhotoManager.java:232)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.list.ContactListAdapter.bindPhoto(ContactListAdapter.java:256)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.list.DefaultContactListAdapter.bindView(DefaultContactListAdapter.java:224)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.common.widget.CompositeCursorAdapter.getView(CompositeCursorAdapter.java:392)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.common.widget.CompositeCursorAdapter.getView(CompositeCursorAdapter.java:341)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.HeaderViewListAdapter.getView(HeaderViewListAdapter.java:220)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.AbsListView.obtainView(AbsListView.java:1970)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.ListView.makeAndAddView(ListView.java:1756)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.ListView.fillDown(ListView.java:656)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.ListView.fillSpecific(ListView.java:1314)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.ListView.layoutChildren(ListView.java:1587)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.widget.AutoScrollListView.layoutChildren(AutoScrollListView.java:65)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.AbsListView.onLayout(AbsListView.java:1800)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.widget.PinnedHeaderListView.onLayout(PinnedHeaderListView.java:125)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.setChildFrame(LinearLayout.java:1542)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.layoutVertical(LinearLayout.java:1403)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.onLayout(LinearLayout.java:1314)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.setChildFrame(LinearLayout.java:1542)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.layoutVertical(LinearLayout.java:1403)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.onLayout(LinearLayout.java:1314)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.contacts.widget.InterpolatingLayout.onLayout(InterpolatingLayout.java:309)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.FrameLayout.onLayout(FrameLayout.java:400)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.FrameLayout.onLayout(FrameLayout.java:400)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.setChildFrame(LinearLayout.java:1542)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.layoutVertical(LinearLayout.java:1403)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.LinearLayout.onLayout(LinearLayout.java:1314)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.widget.FrameLayout.onLayout(FrameLayout.java:400)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.View.layout(View.java:9588)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewGroup.layout(ViewGroup.java:3877)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewRoot.performTraversals(ViewRoot.java:1259)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.view.ViewRoot.handleMessage(ViewRoot.java:2009)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:132)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4025)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:491)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:841)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:599)
E/AndroidRuntime( 8243): 	at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
W/ActivityManager(  143):   Force finishing activity com.android.contacts/.activities.ContactBrowserActivity

So, if you are still looking for it, let me know, and I can scrounge up the source for you. I do have it on my system.

First and foremost, it is very important that you realize the need to run both update-initramfs and update-grub.  update-grub re-configures grub based on your current system configuration.  Things like where /boot resides,  and things of that nature, will be automagically updated in the grub configuration by running update-grub.  update-initramfs takes care of any booting issues you might have post grub, such as raid.  So, any time you make a system change that might affect booting, run these commands before rebooting (thanks to Jordan_U on irc.freenode.org for tips)...

update-grub
update-initramfs -ck all # all kernels and create (not update) the initramfs.

In the event of changing your /boot fs to another location, you should run the following as well.  Thanks again to Jordan_U.

dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc

This ensure that

1. You can configure the devices that grub will install to
2. Ubuntu is aware of proper system configurations, for when upgrades occurs and what not, so that it doesn't write the improper grub.cfg
3. update-grub is run automatically
4. installs grub to the devices configured

Now, the particular problem I was having, even though I was running the above commands, is that I kept getting dropped to a shell, with an error that said "ALERT! /dev/mapper/sys-ubuntu does not exist. Dropping to a shell".   So, as we can see, it was not finding my lvm root system.  So, the big question is "Why?"  Well, after poking around the system a bit, to find out what update-initramfs was doing, I found a file in /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/mdadm that was copying /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf verbatim to the initramfs.  Well, it's supposed to "auto detect" my raid arrays, with that configuration, but it doesn't.  So, the way I fixed it was to run the following commands...

mdadm --detail --scan > /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf
update-initramfs -ck all

I then rebooted, and my system was very happy, and booted up very quickly. I have since filed a bug report on ubuntu's launchpad.

I use dash (-) for the final space replacement, as it looks sharp IMO.

find ./ -name '* *' -type f -print0 | \
while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' file; do 
 echo "$file" "${file// /-}"; 
done

I figured if it takes me a few minutes each time to figure it out, it's worth documenting. And, if it's worth documenting, it's worth sharing with others. I hope this was useful. If it is, please leave a comment.

Shrinking

Shrinking an ext3 volume is fairly straight forward, but it's important you don't mount your drive and start doing stuff, before you verify everything worked correctly.

1. e2fsck -f /dev/vg/lv1
2. resize2fs -p /dev/vg/lv1 ###G
3. e2fsck /dev/vg/lv1
4. lvresize -L ###G /dev/vg/lv1
5. e2fsck /dev/vg/lv1

Step #5 is the most important step; as steps 1-3 will not have any problems unless you have a system failure, a corrupted file system to start with, disk failure, or hardware failure.  Step 5 however, could be due to sys-admin error, from shrinking the LVM volume too much.  If you receive an error similar to the following, then you probably shrunk the volume too much, and your file system is not completely accessible.

e2fsck 1.41.9 (22-Aug-2009)
The filesystem size (according to the superblock) is 113634135 blocks
The physical size of the device is 112197632 blocks
Either the superblock or the partition table is likely to be corrupt!
Abort<y>? cancelled!

If the error is due to shrinking too far, then this is easy to recover from; simply do another lvresize, with a large size specified, and do another e2fsck afterward.

Generally speaking, you should make the LVM maybe 2% or so larger than the file system was reduced to, so that there's room for file system overhead.

Recently I started having problems with my Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5300 AGN card.  It simply quit working after I did a kernel upgrade.  It was giving errors like "Unknown error 132", and "deauthenticated (Reason: 9)".  The hardware switch did not seem to affect it, and the errors were the same whether I had the switch on, or off; so I'm assuming it had to do with the hardware not being initialized properly when the module loaded.

I'm using gentoo linux, and I had previously been using kernel "2.6.30-gentoo-r5".  when I upgraded to "2.6.31-gentoo-r6", my system started having trouble with the Intel Wifi.  I was getting errors like the following.

tdanotebook ~ # /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 restart
* Stopping wlan0
*   Bringing down wlan0
*     Shutting down wlan0 ...                                    [ ok ]
*     Stopping wpa_cli on wlan0 ...                              [ ok ]
*     Stopping wpa_supplicant on wlan0 ...                       [ ok ]
* Starting wlan0
RTNETLINK answers: Unknown error 132
RTNETLINK answers: Unknown error 132
*   Starting wpa_supplicant on wlan0 ...                         [ ok ]
*   Starting wpa_cli on wlan0 ...                                [ ok ]
*     Backgrounding ...

/var/log/messages
Dec 20 15:20:04 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: direct probe to AP 00:1f:f3:c3:88:b4 try 1
Dec 20 15:20:04 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0 direct probe responded
Dec 20 15:20:04 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: authenticate with AP 00:1f:f3:c3:88:b4
Dec 20 15:20:04 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: authenticated
Dec 20 15:20:04 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: associate with AP 00:1f:f3:c3:88:b4
Dec 20 15:20:05 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: associate with AP 00:1f:f3:c3:88:b4
Dec 20 15:20:05 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: deauthenticated (Reason: 9)
Dec 20 15:20:05 tdanotebook kernel: wlan0: deauthenticating by local choice (reason=3)

So, I decided to try the latest unmasked vanilla kernel "2.6.31.6", and everything just started working.

Performing Global Updates: /usr/portage/profiles/updates/3Q-2009
(Could take a couple of minutes if you have a lot of binary packages.)
 .='update pass'  *='binary update'  #='/var/db update'  @='/var/db move'
 s='/var/db SLOT move'  %='binary move'  S='binary SLOT move'
 p='update /etc/portage/package.*'
......................................................                    

Performing Global Updates: /usr/portage/profiles/updates/4Q-2009
(Could take a couple of minutes if you have a lot of binary packages.)
 .='update pass'  *='binary update'  #='/var/db update'  @='/var/db move'
 s='/var/db SLOT move'  %='binary move'  S='binary SLOT move'
 p='update /etc/portage/package.*'
..................
Traceback (most recent call last):
 File "/usr/bin/emerge", line 40, in <module>
 retval = emerge_main()
 File "/usr/lib64/portage/pym/_emerge/main.py", line 1328, in emerge_main
 return action_sync(settings, trees, mtimedb, myopts, myaction)
 File "/usr/lib64/portage/pym/_emerge/actions.py", line 2173, in action_sync
 if portage._global_updates(trees, mtimedb["updates"]):
 File "/usr/lib64/portage/pym/portage/__init__.py", line 8572, in _global_updates
 moves = bindb.move_ent(update_cmd)
 File "/usr/lib64/portage/pym/portage/dbapi/bintree.py", line 273, in move_ent
 mytbz2.recompose_mem(portage.xpak.xpak_mem(mydata))
 File "/usr/lib64/portage/pym/portage/xpak.py", line 106, in xpak_mem
 indexglob=indexglob+encodeint(len(x))+x+encodeint(datapos)+encodeint(mydatasize)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 49: ordinal not in range(128)

The solution is simple, but not necessarily easy to think of.  All that needs to be done is to move the 4Q-2009 and 3Q-2009 files somehwere else, and then update python/portage.

[19:31 root@joseph updates] # eselect python list                    
Available python interpreters:                                       
 [1]   python2.4                                                    
 [2]   python2.5 *                                                  
 [3]   python2.6                                                    
[19:31 root@joseph updates] # eselect python set 3
[19:35 root@joseph updates] # emerge -1 portage

Then, move the 4Q-2009 and 3Q-2009 back to the proper locations, and everything should be working.  Next, it's probably good to do a "python-updater -p", followed by your world update.

I quickly found a few places that talked about setting the model to 3stack, and various other options.  But, none of that worked for me.  So, I decided to search for the problem on my own.  I ended up checking out the alsamixer again, from the command line.  Last time I checked, I saw that the "Speaker" volume was set to about two thirds, but I had thought that was referring to the volume of the PC Speaker, as on many sound cards, it is actually an option.  As it is, that is actually the volume of the external speaker.  Once you pump that puppy up to 100% the volume level is good.  From there, you can simply adjust the master or PCM volumes as you choose.