Go ahead and ignore the bleeding obvious

Ubuntu
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My 8 Gb Pi4 running Ubuntu 21.04 wasn’t booting after some update or other… I kinda gave up on it - “too hard basket” - intention to start again from scratch when 22.04 is released (I will try new releases on things like the Pi - but not my daily driver workstations)…

So anyway - I hadn’t powered it up since maybe December? It eventually powered up and went online…

All sorts of errors and issues (refused to update, nevermind upgrade) - I’m hunting around for all sorts of symptoms, verifying DNS was working… Almost considered the wipe and re-install…

Just out of curiousity I did a “df” and my freaking root was full! Doh! That’s what happens when you get complacent!

Cleaned out a bunch of stuff that was obvious.

Then I hit this ItsFoss article :

That was very handy with a script to remove unused snap storage - what a WASTEFUL piece of shit system, obsolete snaps were consuming 4 GB of storage - may not sound like a lot - but it’s a SHITLOAD on something like a Pi! Thanks for that article @Abishek

also learned about “apt install -fy” today - which was also pretty much “bleeding obvious” : but for me - the “fy” aren’t mnemonics for “force and yes” - they’re mnemonic for “F–K YOU” :smiley: :heart_eyes: - and per UNIX philosophy, if I wanna shoot myself in the foot, please assist!

oh - and yeah - this was also useful (clear systemd journal logs - mine was using 4 GB on the Pi) :

more fury and frustation!
Because BOTH Chromium, and Firefox, on Ubuntu 21.04, are SNAPS - NEITHER will allow the “Gnome Extensions” “Extension” !
I had snap remove firefox…
Then find an arm64 version for ubuntu - found it here:
http://ports.ubuntu.com/pool/main/f/firefox/
http://ports.ubuntu.com/pool/main/f/firefox/firefox-locale-af_98.0.1+build2-0ubuntu0.21.10.1_arm64.deb

I wish there was another name for arm64, as it looks WAY too much like amd64 to shitty old eyes like mine! But more so, I wish everything that says “amd64” got changed to x86_64!

I “NEEDED” that Firefox extension to find and install gnome extensions, it’s the best way - but looks like Canonical have tried to break it in 21.04… I’m guessing 22.04 won’t be much / any better…

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Glad you got your Pi4 figured out. Don’t be too hard on yourself, I’ve had similar issues. When there are flaky or inconsistent issues I always think of DNS, like you did. Disk space can do something similar. It’s kind of odd that it can be a “silent” issue. Nothing is complaining, it just doesn’t work.

“Easy” solution. Whew!

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Doh!

Did it again… Struggling with RHEL 8 (why? for shits and giggles? it’s the main distro I support for my job anyway) on physical, Gigabyte Brix, 2core Celeron with 16 GB DDR3 and 256GB mSATA SSD…

Trying to read the tiny tiny tiny writing on the console on a 13" 1080p screen!

Got the NIC configured (I can’t believe Red Hat still use the same clunky method since forever) : /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-${NIC-DEVICE} - in my case enp3s0
ifup enp3s0, nada, it shows up in “ip a” - bit it can’t ping, or be pinged…
Pulling my hair out, tweaking that ifcfg-enp3s0 file… Nada… Reboot… Nada… Tweak some more… Nada…

Hours later (the next day) :
Replace the piece of crap ethernet cable?

FIXED!

The HOURS I WASTED, when it was a dodgy cable!

OKAY - rebuilt that RHEL 8 machine again - wasn’t happy with the default partition layout (I prefer simple /boot, /boot/efi, swap, / … None of this penny pinching pissanting /home and /var rubbish! I can’t stand that shit - having to micromanage the crap out of this rubbish, and it’s the bane of my life where some “architect” with a 1990’s mindset, despite having a TERABYTE of storage to play with, dictates that /boot should only be 250 mb, “/” 4 GB, “/var” 4 GB, “/home” 20 GB and “/opt/” 20 GB - and the sysadmins are basically f–ked after this GENIUS level MORON has locked those values in! Some of these people walk among us, breathing (mostly through their mouths) and some even manage to NOT lose their jobs!

Also wiped my Thinkpad E495 Ubuntu 20.04 and I’m now running Fedora 35 on it… I figure if I can’t get Checkpoint SSLVPN to work on it - no big drama, my desktop machine can, and I may not be needing that much longer… So I’ll be using a bit of Red Hat stuff (i.e. REL 8 server [installed a minimal GUI but probably won’t use it] and Fedora Workstation 35). So far so good with Fedora…

I’ll probably stick with Ubuntu twenty something on my desktop gaming machine, which is also due for a rebuild - man - coming up 18 months now! That’s way too long for an O/S !