[ltp] Z61p/Z61m experiences needed

[Brian D. Ropers-Huilman]

As a quick follow-up to my own message, I booted my Z61p machine in
"rescue" mode (no X) this morning and it is still up and running,
which is lending more credence to my concerns about the fglrx driver.
I might drop back to the plain radeon driver, or even a vesa driver
just to see. I will let people know what I learn.

Also, both hibernate and suspend to RAM failed with the radeon driver,
I have not tried them with the fglrx but will test this before
back-leveling for my other tests.

On 1/14/07, Brian D. Ropers-Huilman <brian.ropers.huilman@gmail.com> wrote:
> I have just started a new job and had to give up my trusty T43p. I
> chose to go with a Z61p (9450-GAU).
>
> Unfortunately, my experiences are not the best, though I'm hoping
> there is some defect in the machine and not something about Linux
> running on the machine. Basically, I experience random power loss --
> the machine simply shuts itself off. In my job I am off to meetings
> quite frequently and sometimes the system is off when I get back to my
> office. However, I have been using the machine -- typing emails,
> browsing the web, or at the command-line ssh'ing into another system,
> and it's powered off as well.
>
> I have tried to very carefully experiment with various hardware and
> software components to see if I could isolate the problem. I have
> either added or removed being docked, having a battery in the system,
> turning off ACPI, and turning off xscreensaver in _ALL_ possible
> combinations but it still powers off.
>
> Just last night I upgraded the fglrx driver from the Kubuntu provided
> 8.28.8 (on Xorg 7.1.1 w/ 2.6.17-10 kernel) to the latest ATI.com
> provided 8.32.5 [ http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html ]. An lspci
> shows:
>
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 71c4
>
> which is a Mobility FireGL V5200 and is confirmed by ThinkWiki [
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ATI_Mobility_FireGL_V5200 ].  I note
> that Lenovo provides a 8.26.22 driver for SLED 10 for a T60p. But, for
> the Z61p, they only have a CD drive firmware update [
> http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/product.do?template=/product.do?template=%2Fproductpage%2Flandingpages%2FproductPageLandingPage.vm&sitestyle=lenovo&brandind=10&familyind=317531&machineind=317560&modelind=339067&partnumberind=0&subcategoryind=0&doctypeind=9&doccategoryind=0&operatingsystemind=52305&validate=true
> ]
>
> For what it's worth, my organization is having an IBM/Lenovo tech out
> next week to look at the machine. We'll see what that produces. I
> would be very curious to hear others' experiences on a Z61p.
>
> Thanks all,
>

-- 
Brian D. Ropers-Huilman, Director
Systems Administration and Technical Operations    <bropers@msi.umn.edu>
Supercomputing Institute for Digital Simulation and Advanced Computation
599 Walter Library                                   +1 612-626-5948 (V)
117 Pleasant Street S.E.                             +1 612-624-8861 (F)
University of Minnesota                               Twin Cities Campus
Minneapolis, MN 55455-0255                       http://www.msi.umn.edu/