[ltp] Strange intermittent problem with T23, RH 8.0--best way to sleep?

[Lu Li]

Julian's observation is true. I also found the HDD light lying.  My T23 a=
nd OS=20
are very similar with Julian's except for 2.4.18-24.8.0 kernel. I haven't=
=20
seen his problem for a long time. What I did is: unplug the power cord fi=
rst,=20
then close the lid. The "moon" led will lite. After gone home, open the l=
id,=20
then everything is OK. If close the lid with the power cord connected, th=
e=20
"moon" led will not appear.

On Saturday 15 March 2003 09:36 pm, Richard Neill wrote:
> julian underwood wrote:
> >>My investigations so far lead to:
> >>
> >>1)The problem is that, somehow, the HDD doesn't wake up. On unsuccess=
ful
> >>wakes, you don't hear the start up 'kerchunk', and the system blocks =
on
> >>HDD i/o. The consequences are:
> >
> > Yes, I forgot to mention that the HDD activity light is solid when th=
is
> > happens.  Although it doesn't sound like there is any activity.  The
> > drive is of course spinning however.
>
> Odd. So, your HDD is responding? (I'm assuming that the HDD light is
> controlled in hardware, not by any software, so can't be lying).
>
> > I've noticed for some reason, if I put my unit to sleep while running
> > the latest version of VMWare, it seems to happen _much_ more
> > frequently--about 1 out of 3 times.  Which is weird.
> >
> >>=09*Programs still in RAM appear to work - that's why X seems
> >>=09 partly normal at first.
> >>
> >>=09*Debugging is impossible - something like
> >>          "apm -s >apmerror.txt 2>&1" never works, because if there i=
s an
> >>=09error, the system can't write to disk.
> >>
> >>=09*You can do "Alt-SysRq-B" to reboot. But none of the other
> >>=09sysrq things work properly (it may try to sync, but can't)
> >>
> >>2)A good test is this script
> >>
> >>=09#!/bin/bash
> >>
> >>=09for i in `seq 1 100` ; do
> >>         =09echo -e "This is attempt $i"
> >>=09=09touch foo=09#timestamp of last successful write
> >>         =09sleep 1
> >>         =09apm -s
> >>=09done
> >
> > Not sure I fully understand what that does, but I'll
>
> Just sleeps 100 times, printing a log to the screen, and attempting to
> write the HDD. With a fail rate of about 1 in 10 to 1 in 20, I'd expect
> to need 100 successes to be statistically convinced the apm problem is
> fixed.
>
> >>You'll have to keep pressing 'Fn' every 20 secs. But I would be very
> >>surprised if the script gets to the end.
> >>
> >>
> >>3)The only fix I can imagine is to add an SysRq key combination for
> >>"wake the hard disk, yes really". But I don't know how to do that.
> >>(I tried to contact the sysrq maintainers, their email is bouncing - =
I
> >>think that code has been abandoned!)
> >>I think it would have to be done in the kernel, since there's no
> >>filesystem to work with if the hdd isn't alive.
> >>
> >>4)Does anyone know how to do this? Could it actually just be a config
> >>error? Is it a BIOS bug after all? Would the use of ACPI (supposedly
> >>planned for Mandrake 9.1) be better  ?
> >>
> >>
> >>Best wishes
> >>
> >>Richard

--=20
Lu Li=20
Electrical and Computer Engineering=20
Iowa State University=20
258K Metals Development=20
phone: 515-294-5612 (office)
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cosper