Known issues

The most frequent issues you may encounter with DoudouLinux are listed on this page. This does not at all mean that they happen often –DoudouLinux is generally working well– but rather that they are the most well-known! Please note that you can use our tool to report a hardware issue if your problem is networking, display or sound.

System issues

DoudouLinux is not starting…

A very large majority of computers can start a system on CD spontaneously; however, depending on the way yours is set up, it may happen that you cannot launch DoudouLinux. The reasons may be the following.

1. You were not quick enough at inserting the CD and the installed computer system started instead. You should only need to restart the computer while leaving the CD inside the CD drive [1].
2. If the computer system is starting again, even after rebooting, then it is likely that your computer is not spontaneously starting on the CD, either because the CDROM does not have priority over the hard disk, or because booting from a CD is not activated.
3. If you are using a version on a USB key, please note that starting a system on a USB key is less supported on older computers (prior to 2005 approximately). This feature is also often more difficult to activate when it is not done by default on your computer. This version, then, targets people who are sufficiently at ease with their computer!

For the second case, we can give the following helpful clues:

• The device start order can often be modified by pressing specific keyboard keys just after the computer power-up (usually one of the keys F9 to F12 or Supr, Ins, Esc), you then need to choose the CD drive from the list of devices shown.
• On Macintosh you may need to keep the key “C” pressed as soon as the computer is powered up and until DoudouLinux is starting.
• It is possible to tell the computer to always boot the CDROM first, this can be set up in the [BIOS?], please read your computer manual to do this.
• If your computer really cannot start a CDROM, it is possible to do this using a special floppy disk, but we do not have such disk available yet…

Black screen after booting

You’ve heard the boot music but you end with a black screen and kind of console prompt? This means that the video driver has not been correctly detected or does not correctly handle your hardware. Please refer to the section Manual tuning of the page Screen settings to find information to solve your issue. If you find a more recent version of DoudouLinux that works (for example the development version), you can send us a hardware issue report to let us diagnose your problem.

The boot music is truncated

Usually this is due to the fact that sound data are not loaded quickly enough during the computer boot. Most likely this will happen on old equipment running DoudouLinux from CD. Try to install DoudouLinux on it!

Booting is looping on messages « Buffer I/O error »

This kind of message means that the system cannot read the DVD. Depending on the DVD area on which these messages are happening, the system can be blocked or can succeed in starting though; however, the DVD is not being correctly read and going on this way is not recommended. The reasons can be the following:

• the DVD burner did not correctly burn (try to clean it)
• the DVD is of poor quality (try another DVD)
• the burning software did not burn the DVD correctly (try another software)
• the DVD drive cannot correctly read the DVD burnt

Unfortunately, we cannot offer you much more help, than to try again. You may also need to set the slowest burning speed to prevent as much as possible reading errors to occur.

System is crashing unexpectedly

This is usually due to a DVD media that cannot be perfectly read. The system starts, is running a bit, then for an unpredictable reason, it crashes when opening an application, which requires disk data transfer. Read the previous issue that is similar.

Hardware issues

The screen resolution is not correct

If you believe that the resolution of your screen is not the expected one, try to press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace [2]. This will restart the DoudouLinux video system and will lead you back to the menu of activities. It may also happen that DoudouLinux is not correctly detecting the screen or the video card at the first attempt. If nothing has improved and your computer is recent, your video chip is probably not correctly detected. It may also happen that your screen is not correctly detected; however, there is no simple method to improve resolution in this case.

Network or Wifi is not functioning

DoudouLinux is tuned to automatically configure networking using the first network card found. Therefore there are several possible explanations in case of no network connection:

• Your network is not supplying automatic setup, this should normally not be the case at home with ADSL boxes.
• You have several network cards. Unfortunately the order the cards are detected cannot be predicted and this order may change from one boot to another.
• Your networking hardware is not correctly handled by DoudouLinux, which may be the case of recent hardware.

If you are in the later case, you will have to wait for a newer release of DoudouLinux that would ship fresher drivers for networking hardware.

Sound is not functioning

Similarly to network cards, DoudouLinux is tuned to automatically setup sound using the first audio card found. In case sound is not functioning, there are three possible explanations:

• Your sound card has not been correctly detected. In this case only very technical operations could give more information.
• Your card needs non-standard options (frequent on laptops) and, again, only technical operations can fix the issue…
• You have several sound cards. Unfortunately the order the cards are detected at each boot cannot be predicted. Please use the tool to select the sound output and try to have sound. If you do not want to repeat this operation after each boot, you need to activate data persistence.

In any case, please, first try to change sound volumes and the sound output before complaining about sound not working!

My webcam is not functioning

DoudouLinux native support for webcams is good but not perfect! Most webcams should work as soon as plugged without any action, but a few of them, generally the most recent ones, may not function. You may, in this case, have to wait for a newer release of DoudouLinux that would ship fresher drivers for webcams.

My computer is recent and everything is not working, what to do?

When released, Linux is natively shipped with almost all of the existing hardware drivers for Linux [3]. The older the release date, the more likely that recent hardware may not be perfectly handled. The problem is that hardware providers often do not provide Linux drivers on their website (and adding an external driver is generally a technical operation anyway). This why we rather recommend to wait for a newer version of DoudouLinux instead…

Software issues

The top right panel has moved

Sometimes, when an application running full screen is closed, the top right panel has changed of place to adapt to the full screen resolution. It should go back to its normal place after few seconds.

A full screen application modified the screen resolution

It may happen that an application started full screen does not set the screen back to its previous settings after closing it. To go back to the standard settings, you have two solutions:

• the quick and dirty method is to simultaneously press the keys Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to go back to the menu of activities
• a more standard way consists in using the tool to set the screen resolution called lxrandr

For the second method, if you are in the activity “Whole DoudouLinux”, you need to click on the tab “Tune” then on “System”. If you are not in this activity or cannot see this tab, press the keys Alt + F2 to show the command launcher. You can then type lxrandr in the text area then Enter to start lxrandr.

Foobillard and Super TuxKart do not function

Both these applications require 3D graphics functionalities, which in turn requires a 3D graphics card. As of writing, DoudouLinux is only able to activate these functionalities for 3D graphics chipset from the brands Intel and ATI [4]. If you have an nVidia card, it will not be natively handled for 3D but for 2D only graphics; however, installing 3D specific drivers makes it possible to have these cards run 3D graphics. Some technical operations are nonetheless required if you want to have your 3D driver back at each DoudouLinux start. These operations have unfortunately neither been written nor tested.

I cannot get a MOV, MPG or AVI movie with Stopmotion

Stopmotion currently only handles the free and open video standard OGG in DoudouLinux. This is not a limitation of Stopmotion but a design choice of DoudouLinux. There are several reasons which lead us make this choice:

1. most of video formats have patent restrictions that may require us to pay for shipping them in some countries
2. adding video formats to DoudouLinux would increase the CD size of about 10 MB
3. children cannot know which video format to choose!
4. there is no common video format that is natively available on both Apple and Microsoft platforms, choice is then difficult to make for you [5]

As a result Stopmotion in DoudouLinux is always using a file extension ovg (OGG video), even if you put a mov or mpg. If you want to convert this file into another format, please install the required conversion software on another computer or on an installed DoudouLinux. You can have a look at VLC, Mplayer or Ffmpeg.

Stop button does not work in Songwrite

There is a known issue with the stop button in Songwrite: it doesn’t stop the music anymore. You can try to use the space bar or the menu entry “stop” instead. Pressing the play button after the stop button may also stop the music!

Some applications are not working

Since DoudouLinux 2.0, this may not be due to video system detection or limitations anymore [6]. Most likely, this should rather be due to your computer RAM memory size: if it is too small, some applications can crash because they require more memory than what is available. Because the LiveCD does not use the available disks to write its own data [7], the system is not able to get additional memory space using swap. If you are in this case, you probably have interest of installing DoudouLinux definitively since our installer activates swap.

Miscellaneous

The key manager is asking me a password

When you have entered your wireless network key, the key manager asks you the a password to store the network key on the machine. This password cannot be changed due to an unresolved issue. It is set to live as in LiveCD, but all lowercase. This password is simple enough to be used by children if you decide to give them autonomy to connect to the Internet. Note however that if your language is using a non-Latin alphabet, you first need to switch to a Latin alphabet using both left Alt and left Shift keys.

The name of the project, for US speakers

Please consider that this is not really an issue :). Concerning the name, yes we are already aware of a possible confusion in the USA. However please note that not only the orthography is not identical, but the pronunciation too for Americans. Of course you could try to pronounce it like the French or the Chinese word but, for sure, if you tell your kid to go doodoo Linux on the computer, you may have really bad surprises as a result! ;) You may know that having a short word, easy to pronounce that sounds good in every language on the earth is really a huge task if not impossible…

The installer is asking me a password

First of all, this should not happen if you are using the official DVD or an USB key made using our official USB write tool. We have never encountered this issue using our own tools so we believe this can only happen when using an USB key made with third-party tools. If you are facing this issue, which is the installer is asking you a password and you cannot find any working password, we have no solution to offer. This may be due to incorrect boot options, that the third-party tool would have written onto the key. You should retry using the tools that are shipping within DoudouLinux.