October 2008 - Direct2Dell

Following up from my blog post from last week, we now have a simple and robust resolution for the drive partitioning issue on the Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux. Since some systems with 8GB or 16GB solid state drives (SSD's) only have 4 GB of space formatted, we needed a simple method to extend the existing root partition and filesystem to fill the entire disk. The solution we decided upon is to add the fix to one of the operating system packages, and push this package out to customers via the software update process, so that the resolution is relatively transparent.

For customers that regularly update their system software, this problem will be automatically resolved the next time an update is performed. For those that don't regularly update their system software, perform the following steps:

1. From the Ubuntu main menu in the top-left corner of the screen, select System -> Administration -> Update Manager
2. Once the Update Manager window loads, click on "Check", and enter your password when prompted
3. Click on Install Updates to update your system software
4. Once all of the updates are installed, restart your system when prompted.

During your system restart, the system partition will be resized, after which your operating system will have access to the entire drive. To verify that you this process is successful, from the Ubuntu main menu, select System -> Administration -> System Monitor, and then select the "File Systems" tab. Look for a line that starts with "/dev/sda2"; for a system with an 8GB drive, the "Total" column should list something above "6 GiB", while for a 16GB drive, this should list something above "14 GiB".

For those interested in the specific details, the fix for this has been added to the ume-config-belmont package, version 0.77.3 and later, and posted to the Ubuntu Mini apt repository.

Update: If you have already partitioned the remaining space manually, this update will not make any changes to your partitioning, and will have no effect.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve shared information about How to Chat When Your System is Feeling Under the Weather and Where in the World is Dell Chat? Today, I wanted to share some insight about Chat Support from our customers.

With nearly three years experience in offering Chat support to our customers, we’re still listening to what our customers really like and what they would like improved. Here are some lessons learned:

We often see comments about ‘speed’, and ‘ease’ of Chat support. A click of a Chat icon, enter your service tag and voila’ you’re magically transported to the right support team. We get kudos about the ease of access to chat and about agents being concise and to the point. On the flip-side we lose points with our customers when the agent doesn’t respond quickly. This year, we added an indicator to let our customers see, “the agent is typing” in an effort to make the agent work activity on the other side of the chat interaction more transparent.

It’s common when troubleshooting a system to have the customer power down and re-start the system. If you are chatting on the same system you’re troubleshooting, a system re-start will naturally disconnect your Chat. While we’ve almost always had the capability to resume the Chat session with the same agent after a planned disconnect, the process of getting back to that agent often led to confusion, customer missteps and starting all over with a new agent. In recent months, we’ve greatly simplified what we call the “suspend and resume” process and see a much higher success rate in reuniting the customer with their agent.

In situations of an unplanned disconnect, our customers are clear in their disappointment of having to start over with a new agent or wait to be transferred back to their original agent. We’ll be working closely with our vendor in the coming months to build a reconnect solution for these situations.

We do see comments about the Chat interface needing …a facelift. No surgical procedures required but we’ll be unveiling the Chat makeover at the end of the year! One of the most beloved aspects of chat support is getting the entire transcript delivered via email automatically at the close of the chat interaction. Rest assured, this functionality remains in place.

Other enhancements on the horizon:

• Ability to accept payment as part of the chat interaction – great for Chat customers looking to purchase systems, parts or pay for out of warranty repair services
• We’ll be adding an estimated wait time for times when customers are in queue
• Often times when troubleshooting, an agent will send the customer a link to a page/site to review. We’ve learned that the customer’s click of this link sometimes causes the chat session to end. The new interface is designed to resolve this problem.

We always appreciate your open and honest feedback about chat support. We will continue to work on improvements to make it one of the easiest methods to get support from Dell.

Lots of folks within Dell are committed to Linux initiatives.  Ubuntu is a good example. Since we committed to offer it on certain consumer systems back in May last year, we've added many countries outside the US. Beyond just making it available though, we've also spent a lot of time to make it work right out of the box.

And that's why I wanted to take a few minutes to congratulate Dell's own Mario Limonciello for being named to the Ubuntu Core Development Team.   Core-Dev members have the ability to update packages in the Ubuntu 'main' and 'restricted' components.  Mario joins this elite team of developers based on the strength of his long-standing contributions as as Master of the Universe (MOTU), development of the Mythbuntu distribution, and the excellent work ensuring Ubuntu on Dell desktops and notebooks "just works".  Because 'main' packages are on every install CD, his work will benefit all Ubuntu users, not just Dell owners.

WITH GREAT POWER THERE MUST ALSO COME - - GREAT RESPONSIBILITY! Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) - The first Spider-Man story. (credit Wikipedia)

Good job Mario!

Several customers (notably feranick and aysui on IdeaStorm) and tech websites (Boy Genius Report, Gizmodo, and Mobile Computer Mag) have pointed out that 8GB and 16GB drives on the Inspiron Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux are not fully formatted. The manufacturing facility has only been partitioning the hard drives up to 4GB, leaving the extra space on the hard drive unformatted. This essentially leaves that space unuseable by customers until it is partitioned and formatted by the operating system. This problem has been corrected in our factory, and future shipments of the Mini 9 with Ubuntu Linux should have fully-formatted hard drives.

Update from Lionel: On Friday last week, John posted details on a fix for this issue.

For customers wishing to be able to use the extra unformatted disk space immediately, if you purchased a USB DVD drive with your Mini, you may use the system restore DVD included with your system to completely reinstall the operating system. The installation process will completely reformat the entire hard drive and reinstall the OS, allowing you access to the entire drive. If you use this method, be sure to back up any data you have on the system, as this process will overwrite all data on the drive.

We're working on a simple method for customers to use to format/reclaim the unused hard drive space without reinstalling the OS. As our expert Linux customers know, there are several methods for doing this. However, we're evaluating which methods are both the easy and safe to use. I'll post that information soon when we have a recommendation.

In July, Eoghan O'Sullivan blogged about enhancements in Drivers & Downloads section of support.dell.com. Back then, Direct2Dell readers like Joseph Thornley thought it was a step in the right direction.

We've recently expanded drivers by tag globally for selected platforms across Inspiron, Latitude, Optiplex, Dimension, Vostro and Studio lines. Plans are in place to continue the rollout across other products, with Dell Precision workstations up next followed closely by our XPS line of business.

To get a better idea of what I'm talking about, below is a picture of an old system of mine, a Dimension 8400. If you click on the image to see a larger version, you will see that out of a total of 64 files for the system, my tag only lists 20 total files. It's especially visible in places like video drivers. In the case of my system, it shows only 2 files there—one for the actual driver and a second for a related utility.

Along with the continued rollout of drivers by tag, there's a new ‘Download All’ option across all Dell.com sites. This new functionality provides you with the ability to add multiple drivers to a list for easy download as one file. Hopefully, these enhancements should make downloading your files a lot easier.

While this is progress, it's clear there's more work to do. Direct2Dell readers like Leeper, sugarbear and jervis961 all recommended that we include a scan utility. Other readers like Steven and AllenC asked us to remove the Flash capability on the support.dell.com website screen where you enter in the kind of system you have. Eogan himself weighed in here saying we do have plans to remove Flash, and that we continue to look at options for scan functionality.