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 is then rather targeting 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…

There are error messages when the computer is starting

Before the splash screen showing the start progress is displayed, you may see error messages, such as, “Splashy: cannot connect to server”. This is not a fatal error and you can ignore them. Indeed the splash screen should appear sooner in the boot process but, as these messages are indicating, a minor issue prevents it and delays the splash screen.

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

It may happen that the system sound configuration is not achieved before the boot music is started. 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 CDROM. Depending on the CD area on which these messages are happening, the system can be blocked or can succeed in starting though; however, the CD is not being correctly read and going on this way is not recommended. The reasons can be the following:

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

Unfortunately, we cannot offer you much more help, than to try again.

Persistence is not working on internal or USB hard disks

This is a known problem due to the way quite recent Windows® systems are configuring hard disks. On large disks, it is frequent to have a disk format called NTFS instead of FAT. DoudouLinux is currently not able to write on NTFS but only on FAT. You may then be concerned if you are using a quite recent Windows® or if you are using an USB hard disk. Indeed, USB hard disks are generally using the Windows® NTFS format, which is not able to read any format except its own. The only solution is thus to use a standard USB key formatted (or re-formatted) with FAT32.

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.

Note: DoudouLinux is trying to select a screen resolution for which the refresh rate is greater than 70 Hz on CRT screens. It is then possible that DoudouLinux did not choose the maximum resolution that is written in your screen manual. This constraint makes it possible to avoid a poorly focused, blinking image which may quickly lead to tired eyes or even head aches…

I can see my USB key twice in the file manager

This is a known upstream mistake: when the file manager is showing and you plug in a USB storage device, it is often displayed twice on the left side of the file manager. If you try to use one of both, the file manager will surely end frozen, it is then recommended to close and launch it again.

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 Wifi hardware.

If you are in the later case, you will have to wait for the release of October 2011 which will 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 the release of August 2011 which will 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 is black

Sometimes icons in the top right panel are not displayed while entering the most advanced activities (see the screenshot below). We still do not know the reason so we can just propose a workaround: pressing Alt+F5 (hold the Alt key then press the key F5). This will restart the panel and should redraw it correctly.

The top right panel is sometimes not correctly drawn: press Alt+F5.

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.

Forward and backward buttons stop the music

There is a bug in the media player Totem which makes it stop playing music when pressing the forward or backward button. This is only happening with MIDI files, whose name is ending with the extension mid (eg. La-truite.mid). Indeed MIDI files are not standard audio files. They contain the music notes to be played instead of the resulting sound. This is why Totem may behave differently with MIDI files.

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.

I cannot see music signs like ♯ and ♭

This is currently an issue in Songwrite when using the staff visualization mode. For an unknown reason, at least sharp (♯) and flat (♭) signs are not correctly displayed but replaced with squares. The issue is also happening while exporting the music score to PDF.

Some applications are not working

If applications or activities Pysycache, Childsplay and Gcompris are not working, this is most likely because DoudouLinux did not correctly detect your video system. You can just press simultaneously the keys Ctrl, Alt and Backspace to restart the video system. If this does not do anything and your computer is very recent, this is likely because DoudouLinux does not support your hardware perfectly, yet.

If you feel sufficiently at ease with your computer, you can try to use a command of DoudouLinux to force the use of a video driver (which requires that you know which one is the correct one…). For example to force the driver intel, you have to type in the console the following command:

sudo video-driver intel

NB: this command is currently a one time command! Using it a second time with another value does not remove the first value used…

Miscellaneous

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…