[ltp] T61 locking up

[Richard Neill]

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> I just spent half an hour writing this message to the Ubuntu forums.
> After I completed it I hit "send" only to be greeted by "error 303,
> service temporarily unavailable." The Ubuntu forums are down, and all
> my writing efforts are lost. Now I get to write it all over again.
> Grrrrrr.

On most browsers, if you hit "back", you'll get the form submission 
page, complete with the text you typed.  Or, you could open a new tab, 
wait till the site is back up, then reload the tab in which you 
submitted the original post.


> 
> Well, I should have written it here first, anyway.
> 
> The computer is a T61 with Hardy x86_64 completely up to date. 

Including the latest BIOS? Worth doing that too, if necessary. See 
thinkwiki - basically you download a bootable CD from lenovo.

It
> sits in a docking station where it is connected to mains power 99% of
> the time. Occasionally it takes a trip with me to the university,
> where it runs on AC or battery. In either event, saving battery power
> is not an issue.
> 
> The computer never locks up when I am using it. When I return after a
> period of time either the screen saver will be running or the screen
> will be black. In either case, moving the mouse or hitting any key
> will restore the screen. However, about twice a week I will return to
> find a black screen and the computer locked up. By "locked up" I mean
> the mouse and the keyboard cannot restore the screen. The only option
> is to reboot.

Has the system crashed completely, or is it just the screensaver?

Can you SSH in? If so, try running "chvt 1; chvt7" and try top/ps/kill, 
or restarting the gdm service.  Can you ping the machine?

Do any of the following do anything?

- Ctrl-Alt-F1  then F7
	= just switch to text console and back

- Alt-SysRq-R, then Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-F7
	= force X to return keyboard to raw mode, then switch
	
- Alt-SysRq-S
	= sync the disk. Should make the disk activity led flash, and
          tells you that the kernel is still alive. SysRq cannot be 	
	trapped by X.

- Ctrl-Alt-Bksp
	= kill the X-server

- Alt-SysRq- R, S, E , I, U, B
	= Reboot gracefully


> Using Ubuntu with Gnome there are various options. In System >
> Preferences > Screensaver I have set "Regard the computer as idle
> after" to one hour. The "Activate screensaver when computer is idle"
> box is checked. The "Lock screen when screensaver is active" is
> unchecked.
> 

These sound correct. The screensaver  shouldn't be suspending your 
machine. For what it's worth, I recommend blanking the backlight after 
about an hour - backlight life is shortened by either excessive use, or 
too many switch-ons.


Try the above, and see if you can diagnose the error.

One possibility is that some of the screensaver programs have bugs. On 
my A22p, Euphoria used to trigger a bug in the radeon driver.  In 
current versions of xscreensaver, some demos don't release the mouse.


Regards,

Richard