How to Brick Your CherryPal
Well, not one day into it and I managed to brick my CherryPal. (For those of you who aren’t in the know on the slang, that means, I’ve broken the machine and turned it into a “brick.”) I am pretty good at exposing any vulnerabilities in a Linux distro in my first day or two of use – without meaning to. It’s a special talent I have. This is potentially a major bug, and CherryPal users should be warned about it, until they have a solution for it.
It is a problem that apparently happens on occasion in Ubuntu, but it is fatal with the CherryPal. I tried to add new username as suggested in the CherryPal email that gave us the default username and password. When I did this, the computer hung and it would not seem to take the name. I tried to add it again but the software would not let me “unlock” the user dialogue all of a sudden.
I thought a reboot would fix it. Nope. Now I cannot login at all and get an error saying “The GDM user ‘gdm’ does not exist. Please correct GDM configuration and restart GDM.”
If you Google this you’ll see it happens on occasion in Ubuntu. The problem is, I cannot reach a prompt and apparently the root user has been deleted somehow. I am unable to use the machine at this time. Because there is no CD I cannot boot from a CD to go in and fix gdm.conf (as suggested when the problem happens on a standard computer). I have tried the reset hole on the back of the box, and I’ve tried getting to a prompt using CTRL-ALT-F1 to no avail.
CherryPal founder Max Seybold is checking with support on how to deal with the issue. My hope is that the CherryPal is able to boot off a USB stick. They use a special distribution of Xubuntu with a kernal made for the CherryPal architecture, so I would need that to download and install onto a flash drive. I’m not hopeful that this is set up yet, and I have a feeling I’m going to end up having to send the CherryPal back to get fixed.
Others who have been using their CherryPal have not gotten around to bricking them in this manner, so the machine does work. I’ll post more thoughts later on a few more things I discovered about the machine when I was able to use it.
I’m not mad or disappointed – I know this stuff can happen with Linux, and I got this machine for free to review and test. It remains to be seen, however, whether this bug is so critical that it’s going to be a major issue with the machines already sent out. Just be aware and don’t try to set up a new username on your new CherryPal until the problem has been resolved.
I prefer Debian anyway.
Thanks for the clear, objective description of this issue with the CherryPal. I would think that the required knowledge of XUbuntu makes this not yet the user friendly, simple computer it aspires to. Had there been a quality control process, the machines would have been put through all these kinds of fail tests prior to shipping. Early adapters are prepared for the painful first 6-12 months of a new product debugging. Appreciate your unbiased approach.
[...] to “unbrick” my CherryPal – hurrah! – but it’s still not out of the woods yet. As I mentioned in my last post, I had tried the reset hole on the bottom of the machine, but it did not seem to do anything. Then [...]