Asus AM1M-A issues

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wh7qq
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Asus AM1M-A issues

Post by wh7qq »

This is an AMD AM-1 motherboard for the "Kabini" series SOC's. It is quite inexpensive, with the mobo and processor coming in under $100 and its power consumption is also quite low. I have been running 17.1 Xfce on it for some time but my main complaint is that the Xfce power manager does not play well with its implementation of the APM power states. "pm-suspend" was completely non-functional even from the terminal and only "poweroff" could be implemented from the desktop.

I recently messed around with some settings in the bios APM and found that enabling the WOL function would allow the pm-suspend to work from the terminal so I got the bright idea that I could update the box remotely using ssh. Using "apt-get upgrade" worked a charm but brought with it the Firefox version 39. This turned out to be disastrous, as this version crashes spontaneously for no apparent reason and with no discernible pattern. It is a common problem if you google it. It can happen when you first start Firefox or any time after that. You cannot go back to 38, as the repos only have 28 and 39 available.

So I thought, "Why not upgrade to 17.2, as it still has version 38?" I had downloaded the RC iso and it worked very nicely from a thumb drive but when I tried to install, the installation would invariably fail with an error of some file or another failing to load. I went back to my saved iso for 17.1 and had the same problem. It occurred to me that it might be a bios issue, so I went back in and set the bios to "Optimized Defaults". The box now has 17.1 installed on it with Firefox 33 (I think) and is working well.

The morals to this sad tale are:
1). Do not expect the power management to work from the Desktop with Xfce on this mobo.
2). DO NOT use the "apt-get upgrade" method for updating the software. Stick with the "Mint Update" GUI as they filter out bad stuff like Firefox 39 which is to be avoided at all cost.
3). The pm-suspend function seems to work ok from the terminal if you enable WOL from the Advanced>APM> WOL menu in the bios but stick with the bios defaults until you get Mint installed and working.

Update 7/27/15:
Having gotten the box apparently stable on 17.1, I updated 17.1 via Mint Update and then upgraded to 17.2 which did bring in the Firefox 39 version, but through the Mint update process. It seems to be happy now...no spontaneous crashes yet. Perhaps the Mint team worked some magic on it to fix the problem.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 3 times in total.
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MtnDewManiac
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Re: Asus AM1M-A issues

Post by MtnDewManiac »

I would guess that you'd receive Firefox 39 as an update in Mint 17.2 as soon as you run Update Manager, since that appears to be the version that is "current" in Mint's repos (at least, that's the one I have on this particular partition and its (this version of Mint's Update Manager) sources list does not have a Firefox PPA in it).

Thankfully, I have not experienced any issues with Firefox - they must only occur on some systems, I guess. But it must be stressful to you and any others who are experiencing difficulties with it, since the Firefox developers tend to have security updates - along with the usual annoying changes I mean progress - with each new version... If you are stuck using an older version of Firefox, you are without whichever security updates have come with the newer ones.

Regards,
MDM
Mint 18 Xfce 4.12.

If guns kill people, then pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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