Geexbox 2 impossibly slow on Acer Aspire One

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This topic has 3 voices, contains 21 replies, and was last updated by  chrisisbd 1 hour ago.

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May 8, 2012 at 14:59 #3719

chrisisbd

I have just tried GeexBox 2.0 on my Acer Aspire One netbook, it’s completely unusable. It boots OK (if a little slowly) but the cursor just jerks around the screen seconds after you move the mouse. It’s quite impossible to actually do anything.

Is this a known problem on the Acer (1.33Mhz Z520 Atom processor) or have I done something horribly wrong somewhere?

May 9, 2012 at 05:16 #3720

chrisisbd

I’ve played a little more with this.

It’s xbmc that isn’t working properly on the Acer Aspire. I can telnet into Geexbox and the command line works fine and is responsive, it’s just the xbmc user interface that’s so slow it’s unusable. Running top shows xbmc using over 50% of processor 1 all the time even when doing nothing at all. Just trying to move the cursor provokes USB-disk activity.

I tried setting /usr/lib/xbmc/xbmc.bin non-exectuable and then killed xbmc. The xorg left behind is OK, I can move the cursor with the mouse quite normally, so it does seem that it’s xbmc that’s not running right.

So, any ideas anyone for what might be wrong?

May 9, 2012 at 07:07 #3721

David75

Try r14230 from
http://download.openbricks.org/

r14246 is x64 and not easy to use.

May 9, 2012 at 07:55 #3722

chrisisbd

I have just tried that (r14246), it fails during the boot with:-

[ 3.9866606] EXT2-fs (loop1): error: ext2-lookup: deleted inode referenced: 20481
mount: mounting none on /newroot failed: Invalid argument
Cannot mount aufs, dropping to shell

… and then, as it says, it drops out to a shell prompt.

May 9, 2012 at 08:10 #3723

David75

I think I wrote NOT TO USE r14246 but USE r14230 instead ;)

May 9, 2012 at 08:15 #3724

chrisisbd

Oops, a second attempt works better (well at least it boots), the first USB stick must have got corrupted somehow.

Anyway it’s now better but the mouse is still close to unusable, keyboard navigation is OK’ish.

Can I get XBMC/Geexbox to play streamed audio from a DLNA/upnp server?

May 9, 2012 at 08:17 #3725

chrisisbd

… and, yes, I was trying r14246 in both cases - I just reported it wrong in my reply.

May 9, 2012 at 09:28 #3726

chrisisbd

… and I STILL can’t say it right! :-) I was trying r14230 - *not* r14246.

May 9, 2012 at 09:31 #3727

David75

For DLNA I don’t know, I’m just a user… and do not have DLNA shares.

For the version number, I guess you have it wrong again :D

For your xbmc problem, maybe upgrading your video driver could help.

Switch to TTY2 with Ctrl+Alt+F2
Login is root
password is root

Then
wget http://download.openbricks.org/r14230/xf86-video-nvidia_295.33-1_i686.opk
opkg install xf86-video-nvidia_295.33-1_i686.opk
reboot

Ideally you have another computer on your network and can do the same via telnet where you can use copy and paste
Your geexbox ip is in the system info
telnet access login is also root root

May 9, 2012 at 12:02 #3728

chrisisbd

OK, thanks.

The trouble is that this is a USB stick I’m booting from so when I do:-

wget http://download.openbricks.org/r14230/xf86-video-nvidia_295.33-1_i686.opk
opkg install xf86-video-nvidia_295.33-1_i686.opk

I get lots of “No space left on device.” errors plus various associated ones.

I don’t want to install to the hard disk on the Acer Aspire because I want to use the existing xubuntu installation there.

There’s loads of spare space on the USB stick.

May 9, 2012 at 12:11 #3729

David75

Ok
That means your persistence partition is too small… because it’s the default one.
I prepare my usb stick with unetbootin under windows and generally set 512MB as persistence space, as it’s a nice balance between space and the time needed to create that space on the usb stick.

If you prepare your stick from another linux distro, I think unetbootin also exist there. Otherwise you’ll have to search for a way to setup that persistence. I think it might be really easy, but since I never did it myself, I can’t help you more than telling you to search for it ;)

May 9, 2012 at 14:06 #3730

chrisisbd

Thanks for keeping with me.

I’ve given it 512MB of persistence space as you suggested and I have got the nvidia drivers installed. Now it fails to display at all.

The initial geexbox splash screen appears, then the command line login (as when it works), then nothing. The system is running OK as I can telnet into it.

May 9, 2012 at 14:13 #3731

chrisisbd

… and there’s a good reason why xf86-video-nvidia_295.33-1_i686.opk doesn’t work too well, the Acer Aspire I have has an Intel video chipset.

May 9, 2012 at 14:46 #3733

David75

My bad, I thought this was a Ion powered.
I do not think there’s an intel alternative yet.
But as I said, I’m a user myself, so I’m very prone to mistakes. Sorry.

May 10, 2012 at 10:17 #3735

chrisisbd

OK, no problem! :-)

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