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Support issue: recommended way to ask for support?
Hello
I have a question regarding support, which I hope someone from the Project Sputnik team can give an official answer. What is the recommended official way to ask for support when something goes wrong?
I just encountered a serious technical problem with my Dell Linux laptop, but contacting (whether via phone or email or online chat) the local Dell Technical Support has been an awful experience, as described below.
I recently purchased (in NZ) a Dell Precision 3510 with Ubuntu 14.04 pre-installed. I only got this for less than a week. I have just run into a problem where deb packages (including drivers for wifi, bluetooth, etc) were removed erroneously by the system, so these basic functions no longer worked. I can identify exactly which packages were removed, but they are no longer on my system and also not part of any repository (Canonical or Dell). I needed to contact Dell to provide me with these deb files.
When I purchased the laptop, the Sales person gave me a 3-year Pro Support package as part of the deal. I suspected that this would be of little value, since contacting the normal Dell Technical Support (via either phone call or email or online chat) regarding Linux would likely not be met with a helpful response, but I decided to try anyway. Sure enough, they claimed that they are only trained on Windows, and although they have not yet said it out right that they would not help me, I feel that it is a complete waste of time. In fact I don't expect my issue to move forward using this approach.
I see that many people are getting help on this forum, mostly from other fellow Dell customers and sometimes also from someone from the Project Sputnik team, which is great to see. But it feels like that they want to make it clear that this is *not* an official support forum. If that's the case, then that's fair enough, but what should I (as a Dell customer) do when I encounter a technical problem and need support (as I did just now)? The normal "contact local Dell Technical Support" way has proved a waste of time so far, and I have very little confidence in that approach helping me in the future; how do I get any support in a timely manner, both now and for any issue in the future?
I hope someone from Project Sputnik can answer this, because while you have achieved a lot in pushing to have these great products offered to us (although it has to be said that the XPS 13 is still not available here in NZ! not happy there), you also need to take care of the support (after-sales) side of the equation. My experience so far suggests that this is sorely lacking (maybe except on this forum, but that means very little if this is not an official support channel).
I would appreciate any advice and official position on this.
Thanks
undernz
4 Posts
0
November 21st, 2016 19:00
I have now been told by the local Dell technical support to ask Canonical for help instead. It feels like they are really trying everything they can to NOT do anything about it; they say they will keep the issue open, wait a few days and see what happens. It feels like they are just waiting for me to close the issue.
Here is my advice for anyone with a Dell laptop with Ubuntu pre-installed:
I have only got my new laptop for a week, and so far it has been a nightmare experience to be honest.
I'm still hoping that someone from Dell would help me and also answer my question about support more generally.
xps_ubuntu16
49 Posts
0
November 22nd, 2016 02:00
Hi,
sorry to hear you're having a hard time with your new laptop.
Maybe it would help if you told us which packages were previously uninstalled or updated. You can probably check this by doing a tail on one of those logs...
# tail -500 /
var/log/apt/history.logor
# tail -500
/var/log/dpkg.log
I think most of their drivers should be upstream now (meaning included in the linux kernel provided by the Ubuntu Kernel team).
cheers,
theresa
DELL-Barton George
7 Technologist
7 Technologist
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538 Posts
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November 22nd, 2016 08:00
Hi,
I apologize for your experience and have just sent a note to the team to look into this
thanks!
DELL-Justin C
4 Operator
4 Operator
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783 Posts
0
November 22nd, 2016 15:00
@Undernz,
Barton is passing on your feedback on up the ladder and ask me to engage on the technical part.
Please note that I'm not a Ubuntu expert yet but I'll try my best to help. Here goes:
The technical issue, as you described it, reminded me of an issue we had a while back where after certain updates were run and if secure boot was turned ON, functions like bluetooth and WIFI would stop working. I know you advised of certain files being removed so maybe it's a different issue. However, I'd still recommend you disable secure boot to rule this out completely. I assume you know how to do that but get back if any questions.
If that doesn't help I would recommend you simply backup all your stuff reload 14.04 and start over. Factory reload process can be found here:
http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN265750/en
undernz
4 Posts
0
November 22nd, 2016 21:00
Thanks everyone for your input. It's highly appreciated.
@xps_ubuntu16: Yeah thanks for that, actually I looked into those logs as soon as the problem occurred, and then I gave the exact list of packages to the support person, but they just didn't do anything about it. Anyway I got wifi working earlier, and just now I believe I got everything back again (see below).
@Barton: Thanks for passing on the feedback. Please know that you and your team are doing great work, and I recognize it's a challenge to get the local Dell Support to cooperate, but I really hope to see any future support calls to at least get somewhere. Keep up the good work!
@Justin: Thanks for offering to help. I have a question for you at the end, but I think I just got things going again. I think the Secure Boot was a different issue. I believe I turned it off before I encountered the problem. As I said in one of my posts above, the GUI uninstalls things as a side effect, and I'm guessing that's how it "normally" works (although it's not ideal), but the main cause is that the removed packages themselves are not in any of the repositories in /etc/apt/sources.d/, so once removed they are lost forever. But I think I got everything back just a few moments ago:
These are the packages that were removed:
I found the deb file for the first of these packages elsewhere on this forum -- apparently some poor soul suffered a similar problem and someone from Dell gave them a link to the deb file -- so this problem is not new!
And just now I found the deb files for all these packages. I noticed that there is a file in $HOME/Downloads/factory_image.iso which I think is the recovery image that I'm supposed to copy to a USB stick. Anyway I mounted this:
$ sudo mount -o ro,loop ~/Downloads/factory_image.iso /path/to/mountpoint
and then the deb files are found in the directory called 'debs' under the mount point. I reinstalled the six packages with no issues, and now everything seems to be back to normal again.
IMHO, the debs in this directory should be placed in a repository that is set up under /etc/apt/sources.d unless they are already included in the kernel, and evidently in this case they are not. (Note that this system is on 14.04 with a 3.19.x kernel, possibly with some backports).
I'm glad that I found this and did not have to re-install the OS from scratch, because I had spent way too much time copying data over and installing a whole heap of stuff (such as KDE) and customizing everything.
Many thanks for dropping in anyway, it's good to see you guys doing your best. While you are here, can I ask a question: is there a driver for the trackpad on the Precision 3510? Currently it seems to work with no problem, but I noticed that I can't change any of its settings (sensitivities etc) in the settings GUI, and in fact issung the "xinput" command in the command line does not show a trackpad among the input devices (there is a "PS/2 mouse" listed instead). This is minor, but this is what led me to the errant Driver Manager screen in the first place that caused my problems.
If someone knows anything about this trackpad issue, I will be glad to hear it.
I'm so glad I found this forum. Thanks again everyone!