Update ChrUbuntu 13.04 to 13.10 on the Samsung Chromebook

I logged into my Chromebook with SSH and it displayed a message saying that I can update to Ubuntu 13.10:

New release '13.10' available.
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade to it.

And I thought to myself, why not?

Upgrade Ubuntu

The upgrade it self, was pretty easy. I actually did it remotely, just cause I knew it would take a while. So ssh over to the machine and run the following:

$ screen
$ sudo do-release-upgrade

The screen is just in case you lose the connection (at which point you can re-connect to the machine and then restore the screen session by running screen -r). After you run the above you will see the following:

Reading cache
pcilib: Cannot open /proc/bus/pci
lspci: Cannot find any working access method.

Checking package manager

Continue running under SSH?

This session appears to be running under ssh. It is not recommended
to perform a upgrade over ssh currently because in case of failure it
is harder to recover.

If you continue, an additional ssh daemon will be started at port
'1022'.
Do you want to continue?

Continue [yN] y

Starting additional sshd

And the install will keep going. It actually took about 4 hours for the upgrade process.

Finish the Ubuntu Upgrade with apt-fast

After all the updates have been applied it will ask to reboot. After the restart we can use apt-fast to update the rest of the packages (more information regarding apt-fast can be found here). First let’s install apt-fast:

$ git clone https://github.com/ilikenwf/apt-fast.git
$ cd apt-fast
$ sudo cp apt-fast /usr/bin/.
$ sudo cp apt-fast.conf /etc/.

Now let’s disable the download dialog:

$ sudo vi /etc/apt-fast.conf

and then modify the following line:

DOWNLOADBEFORE=true

apt-fast can use different “download applications”, I just picked one and installed it:

$ sudo apt-get install aria2

Now you can basically replace apt-get with apt-fast. Here is what I did to update the rest of the packages:

$ sudo apt-fast update
$ sudo apt-fast upgrade

PulseAudio Issues

After I finished the update, I realized that my sound wasn’t working. I started alsamixer to check the configuration and all the channels that I enabled during the 13.04 install were still enabled. It was actually a little weird, I would run the following:

$ aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

At the same time I would run the following to check the status of pulseaudio:

$pacmd
Welcome to PulseAudio! Use "help" for usage information.
>>> list-sinks
1 sink(s) available.
  * index: 0
    name: <auto_null>
    driver: <module-null-sink.c>
    flags: DECIBEL_VOLUME LATENCY DYNAMIC_LATENCY
    state: RUNNING <===
    suspend cause:
    priority: 1000
    volume: 0: 100% 1: 100%
            0: 0.00 dB 1: 0.00 dB
            balance 0.00
    base volume: 100%
                 0.00 dB
    volume steps: 65537
    muted: no
    current latency: 112.11 ms
    max request: 21 KiB
    max rewind: 21 KiB
    monitor source: 0
    sample spec: s16le 2ch 44100Hz
    channel map: front-left,front-right
                 Stereo
    used by: 1  <====
    linked by: 1 <====
    configured latency: 125.00 ms; range is 0.50 .. 2000.00 ms
    module: 11
    properties:
        device.description = "Dummy Output"
        device.class = "abstract"
        device.icon_name = "audio-card"

We can see that it said it’s running. I also installed pavumeter and launched it as I was running the aplay command, I saw activity:

pulsemeter output Update ChrUbuntu 13.04 to 13.10 on the Samsung Chromebook

So pulseaudio is receiving the audio, but for some reason it’s not passing it to alsa. I then killed the current pulseaudio process and started it in verbose mode:

$ pulseaudio kill
$ pulseaudio --start -vvvv
I: [pulseaudio] main.c: Daemon startup successful.

I ran the aplay command one more time and here is what I saw in the /var/log/syslog file:

Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] module-augment-properties.c: Looking for .desktop file for aplay
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] module-intended-roles.c: Not setting device for stream ALSA Playback, because it lacks role.
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Trying to change sample rate
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] module-suspend-on-idle.c: Sink auto_null becomes busy, resuming.
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink.c: Suspend cause of sink auto_null is 0x0000, resuming
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] module-suspend-on-idle.c: Sink auto_null becomes idle, timeout in 5 seconds.
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Channel matrix:
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c:        I00
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c:     +------
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: O00 | 1.000
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: O01 | 1.000
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] remap.c: Using mono to stereo remapping
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Using resampler 'speex-float-1'
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Using float32le as working format.
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Resampler:
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c:   rate 48000 -> 44100 (method speex-float-1),
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c:   format s16le -> s16le (intermediate float32le),
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c:   channels 1 -> 2 (resampling 1)
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] resampler.c: Choosing speex quality setting 1.
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] memblockq.c: memblockq requested: maxlength=33554432, tlength=0, base=4, prebuf=0, minreq=1 maxrewind=0
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] memblockq.c: memblockq sanitized: maxlength=33554432, tlength=33554432, base=4, prebuf=0, minreq=4 maxrewind=0
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c: Created input 0 "ALSA Playback" on auto_null with sample spec s16le 1ch 48000Hz and channel map mono
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     media.name = "ALSA Playback"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.name = "ALSA plug-in [aplay]"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     native-protocol.peer = "UNIX socket client"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     native-protocol.version = "28"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.process.id = "5678"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.process.user = "elatov"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.process.host = "crbook.dnsd.me"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.process.binary = "aplay"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.language = "en_US.UTF-8"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.process.machine_id = "aa45185cb44c755e350ea523000007a3"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     application.process.session_id = "1"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] sink-input.c:     module-stream-restore.id = "sink-input-by-application-name:ALSA plug-in [aplay]"
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Requested tlength=500.00 ms, minreq=125.00 ms
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Early requests mode enabled, configuring sink latency to minreq.
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Requested latency=125.00 ms, Received latency=125.00 ms
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] memblockq.c: memblockq requested: maxlength=4194304, tlength=48000, base=2, prebuf=12000, minreq=12000 maxrewind=0
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] memblockq.c: memblockq sanitized: maxlength=4194304, tlength=48000, base=2, prebuf=12000, minreq=12000 maxrewind=0
Oct 20 18:24:44 crbook pulseaudio[5618]: [pulseaudio] protocol-native.c: Final latency 625.00 ms = 250.00 ms + 2*125.00 ms + 125.00 ms

You can see that the application (aplay) wants to use alsa, but pulseaudio is not using it for some reason (it’s using Sink autonull). At first I thought it was a permission issue, so I tried using pulseaudio in system mode (it basically starts as a designated user and any one can connect to it). This is done by editing the /etc/init/pulseaudio.conf file and uncommenting the start line:

# System mode is not the recommended way to run PulseAudio as it has some
# limitations (such as no shared memory access) and could potentially allow
# users to disconnect or redirect each others' audio streams. The
# recommended way to run PulseAudio is as a per-session daemon. For GNOME/KDE/
# Xfce sessions in Ubuntu Lucid/10.04, /etc/xdg/autostart/pulseaudio.desktop
# handles this function of automatically starting PulseAudio on login, and for
# it to work correctly your user must *not* have "autospawn = no" set in
# ~/.pulse/client.conf (or in /etc/pulse/client.conf). By default, autospawn
# is enabled. For other sessions, you can simply start PulseAudio with
# "pulseaudio --daemonize".

start on runlevel [2345]
stop on runlevel [016]

Then you can just start it by running the following:

$ sudo service pulseaudio start

In the same file there is a note about loading modules:

# Prevent users from dynamically loading modules into the PulseAudio sound
# server. Dynamic module loading enhances the flexibility of the PulseAudio
# system, but may pose a security risk.
# 0 = no, 1 = yes
env DISALLOW_MODULE_LOADING=1

I even tried enabling that, but it still didn’t help. I also added by self to all the necessary groups:

$groups
elatov adm sudo audio fuse netdev pulse pulse-access rtkit

At this point I wanted to just load the alsa module manually to see if it works at all. This is done by editing the default profile for pulseaudio located in /etc/pulse/default.pa and commenting out the following line:

load-module module-alsa-sink

Then checking out the verbose logs, I saw the following:

Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: Trying default with SND_PCM_NO_AUTO_FORMAT ...
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: Managed to open default
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: cannot disable ALSA period wakeups
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: Maximum hw buffer size is 743 ms
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: Set buffer size first (to 88200 samples), period size second (to 88200 samples).
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-util.c: ALSA period wakeups were not disabled
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook kernel: [ 2222.963566] exynos-hdmi-audio exynos-hdmi-audio: hdmi not plugged
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-sink.c: Successfully opened device default.
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-sink.c: Successfully enabled mmap() mode.
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] alsa-sink.c: Successfully enabled timer-based scheduling mode.
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] module-device-restore.c: Restoring volume for sink alsa_output.default.
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] module-device-restore.c: Restored volume: 0:  44% 1:  44%
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c: Created sink 0 "alsa_output.default" with sample spec s16le 2ch 44100Hz and channel map front-left,front-right
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.resolution_bits = "16"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.api = "alsa"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.class = "sound"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.class = "generic"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.subclass = "generic-mix"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.name = ""
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.id = "Playback HiFi-0"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.subdevice = "0"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.subdevice_name = "subdevice #0"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.device = "0"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.card = "0"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.card_name = "DAISY-I2S"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     alsa.long_card_name = "DAISY-I2S"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.bus_path = "platform-sound.9"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     sysfs.path = "/devices/sound.9/sound/card0"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.string = "default"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.buffering.buffer_size = "131072"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.buffering.fragment_size = "8192"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.access_mode = "mmap+timer"
Oct 20 18:34:34 crbook pulseaudio[6945]: [pulseaudio] sink.c:     device.description = "DAISY-I2S"

Now we can see that alsa-sink is utilized, and I actually heard sound without issues. Since the above fix still utilized pulseaudio, I was happy with it working as is.

Chromium and PepperFlash

After the update flash video stopped working. So I downgraded chromium to the version that I know works and then flash started working again. Here is the version that I downloaded:

$ ls -1 chro*
chromium-browser_25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu3_armhf.deb
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu3_armhf.deb

I then uninstalled the current version:

$ sudo apt-get remove chromium-browser chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra

and installed the previous working version:

$ sudo dpkg -i chromium-browser_25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu3_armhf.deb chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra_25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu3_armhf.deb

I then held the packages at that version, so they wouldn’t get automatically updated:

$ sudo apt-mark hold chromium-browser
$ sudo apt-mark hold chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra

You can confirm what packages are held, by running the following:

$apt-mark showhold
chromium-browser
chromium-codecs-ffmpeg-extra

You can also check what versions of a package are available with the following command:

$apt-cache showpkg chromium-browser | awk '/Versions:/,/Reverse Depends:/' | grep ^[0-9] | awk '{print $1}'
29.0.1547.65-0ubuntu2
25.0.1364.160-0ubuntu3

If I see a new version of the browser I will try again. Or whenever a newer version of the pepper flash comes out, I will try that as well.

Lastly, the sound for flash stopped working as well. With the above fix, all the local media players were fine but flash didn’t work with pulseaudio. I found a couple links that stated that flash doesn’t support pulseaudio yet (link1). So I decided to get rid pulseaudio for now:

$ sudo apt-get remove pulse-audio --purge
$ sudo apt-get autoremove --purge

and then my sound was working with flash. Here is the version of flash that I was using:

chromium flash Update ChrUbuntu 13.04 to 13.10 on the Samsung Chromebook

Network Manager Scanning Every Two minutes

After the update I noticed a network lag everyone once in a while and I saw the following in the /var/log/kern.log file:

Oct 20 14:06:59 crbook kernel: [ 8128.338599] RTM_NEWLINK: idx=2, flags=0x11043, deliver=3, fail=0, congest=0
Oct 20 14:08:59 crbook kernel: [ 8248.280424] RTM_NEWLINK: idx=2, flags=0x11043, deliver=3, fail=0, congest=0
Oct 20 14:10:59 crbook kernel: [ 8368.294991] RTM_NEWLINK: idx=2, flags=0x11043, deliver=3, fail=0, congest=0
Oct 20 14:12:59 crbook kernel: [ 8488.306522] RTM_NEWLINK: idx=2, flags=0x11043, deliver=3, fail=0, congest=0

We can see that our network driver is doing something every two minutes. I found a couple of forums that talked about the issue:

In summary, this is by design. NetworkManager does a scan every two minutes so it can show you access points as they show up (or if you move to another area). There are two ways around this:

You can recompile NetworkManager with a patch.
You can disable automatic connection to your access point and by specifying the BSSID in the configuration.

I decided to take the latter approach. So start the network-manager connection editor:

$ nm-connection-editor

Then click on your acess point and select Edit. Then go the General tab and uncheck “Automatically connect to this network when it is available”:

gen tab con editor Update ChrUbuntu 13.04 to 13.10 on the Samsung Chromebook

and under the Wi-Fi tab choose the BSSID from the dropdown:

wi fi tab con edit g Update ChrUbuntu 13.04 to 13.10 on the Samsung Chromebook

Now that it won’t connect automatically, you can either run the following at boot (/etc/rc.local) or at login (~/.icewm/startup):

$ /usr/bin/nmcli c up id ACCCES_POINT

After I set that up, the network lags stop and it was still automatically connecting to the network. If I ever need to connect to another Access Point, I can launch the nm-applet and it will manually kick off a scan.

Lightdm Greeter Requires two logins

For some reason, after the update, the greeter kept asking me for my password twice, and only after that it would log me in. I found a bug on that, here is the link to that, but it hasn’t been fixed yet. To get around that, I installed the gtk greeter and it fixed my issue:

$ sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

Now to enable the new greeter, we edit the /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf file and modify the following line:

greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

I then rebooted and saw the new greeter and it didn’t ask for my password twice.

X11 Crashes when Opening another TTY

Sometimes I would want to troubleshoot an issue and I would click “Cntr-Alt-F2”. Rather than giving me another TTY, it would kill my Xorg Server and would not show me the TTY. It would just always throw back to the lightdm greeter. Checking out the /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old file, I just saw the following:

[    18.510] (EE)
[    18.511] (EE) Backtrace:
[    18.512] (EE)
[    18.513] (EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x0
[    18.514] (EE)
Fatal server error:
[    18.515] (EE) Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
[    18.516] (EE)
[    18.516] (EE)
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support
         at http://wiki.x.org
 for help.

Wasn’t very useful. Usually Xorg crashes due to Video Driver issues, so I decided disable the armsoc driver. I did this by editing the /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf file and modify the following lines:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Mali FBDEV"
#       Driver          "armsoc"
        Driver          "fbdev"

After another restart I was able to open other TTYs without issues. I will admit I wasn’t doing anything crazy with display, plus with glxgears I didn’t see that much of performance decrease. Here is with the armsoc driver:

$ glxgears
libGL error: failed to load driver: armsoc
libGL error: Try again with LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose for more details.
508 frames in 5.0 seconds = 101.521 FPS
506 frames in 5.0 seconds = 101.108 FPS
479 frames in 5.0 seconds = 95.703 FPS
509 frames in 5.0 seconds = 101.664 FPS

and here is without:

$ glxgears
564 frames in 5.0 seconds = 112.789 FPS
597 frames in 5.0 seconds = 119.206 FPS

Anyways, I didn’t feel that much of a difference.

Moc SegFaults

For some reason, mocp stated to seg fault after the update:

$/usr/bin/mocp
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

So I compiled a new version without ffmpeg support and it started up without issues. Here are the steps I took to compile that. First grab the source:

$ wget http://ftp.daper.net/pub/soft/moc/stable/moc-2.4.4.tar.bz2

Now let’s grab the prerequites:

$ sudo apt-fast install libncurses5-dev libid3tag0-dev

Now to configure the package:

$ tar xvjf moc-2.4.4.tar.bz2; cd moc-2.4.4
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/moc --without-ffmpeg

To compile the package

$ make -j 2

And finally to install the package:

$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/moc
$ sudo chown elatov:elatov /usr/local/moc
$ make install

If you have /usr/local/bin/ in your path, you can create a symlink as well:

$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/moc/bin/mocp /usr/local/bin/mocp

Cuse Module not found

After the update, I would see the following message during boot up:

FATAL: cuse module not found

It turned out that the osspd package was trying to load it for some reason. I was just using alsa anyways, so I just uninstalled that package and the error went away:

$ sudo apt-get remove --purge osspd

And now my update is done :) If I discover any new issues, I will try to post them as they come up.