GUI "freaking out"

[eluhnabroad]

Hope the title isn't too technical.

I did an upgrade on my Pi this evening, and also ran a firmware upgrade. Now when I go into the GUI (in this case, I'm in SSH using Windows Remote Desktop Connection) what is apparently the menu bar, now blank and at the top of the screen, keeps popping open & closed. The rest of the icons on the desktop are jumping up and down as well.

What do I kick?

TIA

[fruitoftheloom]

Hope the title isn't too technical.

I did an upgrade on my Pi this evening, and also ran a firmware upgrade. Now when I go into the GUI (in this case, I'm in SSH using Windows Remote Desktop Connection) what is apparently the menu bar, now blank and at the top of the screen, keeps popping open & closed. The rest of the icons on the desktop are jumping up and down as well.

What do I kick?

TIA

Were you advised to undertake a rpi-update to fix an issue, if not then it was not advisable

The following should be sufficient for Raspbian

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[eluhnabroad]

No, I was not. In reading a book on the RPi, it explained how to do a firmware upgrade, and I figured I might as well get up-to-date. I've never before heard of an upgrade being 'inadvisable.'

Now that I know that it was a mistake, what do I do? Have I essentially bricked it because I ran a published upgrade on it?

[RaTTuS]

go back to your backup .

or if you do not have one then start again

[drgeoff]

Have I essentially bricked it..

No. FYI it is virtually impossible to "brick" a RPi in the generally accepted meaning of the term. There is no readily modifiable software on the RPi itself. It is all on the (micro-)SD card.

[eluhnabroad]

Can I just say, it seems terribly unfair that I have to start all over because I followed instructions being given to beginners and did what one would expect would be a stable upgrade.

[DougieLawson]

Can I just say, it seems terribly unfair that I have to start all over because I followed instructions being given to beginners and did what one would expect would be a stable upgrade.

If you ran rpi-update then you have not done "a stable upgrade", there's nothing stable about rpi-update and 99.9% of users should NEVER need to run it.

If you do run rpi-update you need to know how to undo anything it may do to your system, that can mean having a good bootable backup SDCcard that's ready to use when rpi-update breaks your system.

It's not very difficult to build a new NOOBS (or plain Raspbian) card, but it's a pain if you have to do that because of running something that's not needed by most users.

[rpdom]

Can I just say, it seems terribly unfair that I have to start all over because I followed instructions being given to beginners and did what one would expect would be a stable upgrade.

In the early days that was common advice because there were issues that needed fixing and that was the way to get the latest firmware and kernel.

Now that the situation is more settled the apt-get upgrade will upgrade the kernel and firmware to a known good version.

rpi-update is now mostly used in the case when you have a specific problem and one of the RPF people suggest trying it.

You may be able to revert by doing "sudo apt-get --reinstall install raspberrypi-bootloader", which will reinstall the current kernel and firmware.

[eluhnabroad]

I know it's just 40 bucks, and being open-source there's a certain "wild west" culture involved, but this is the fifth time I've followed a web tutorial, or instructions in a book, that left out vital information or was just flat wrong.

I would think that when someone writes, publishes and sells a book to beginners, and gives them instructions on how to install upgrades, they might include some sidebar to the effect of, "oh by the way, upgrading your computer will make it useless." I mean, come on.

[rpdom]

I would think that when someone writes, publishes and sells a book to beginners, and gives them instructions on how to install upgrades, they might include some sidebar to the effect of, "oh by the way, upgrading your computer will make it useless." I mean, come on.

But when they wrote that book the instructions were correct. Things change. Books get out of date. So do web sites, unless they are constantly updated.

[jojopi]

While I agree that rpi-update should not be recommended routinely or to beginners these days, it does not automatically hose the system. I used it yesterday for a particular reason, and everything was fine. In this thread I am not convinced that the rpi-update has anything to do with the problem.

There have been at least two other recent threads about the GUI menu bar repeatedly restarting, with apparently varying causes: 105829, 111984. I would call that a GUI bug (even if it does happen to be somehow related to a firmware change).