DSL freezes on IBM ThinkPad 390e

Forum: Laptops
Topic: DSL freezes on IBM ThinkPad 390e
started by: RayRoko

Posted by RayRoko on Sep. 04 2006,01:27

Hi,

I have IBM ThinkPad 390e with 250 Mb of Ram and no hardrive. I copy DSL image to RAM upon booting.

The DSL always freezes after 5 min of inactivity. However if I'm doing smth like typing on keyboard our using mouse, it doesn't freeze. It leads me to believe this is a power management problem. Now I've tried to use apm=off and acpi=off cheat codes at start, but it doesn't help.

Other Debian-based LiveCDs like Knoppix or Kanotix run on this machine fine without any freezes. But they're just a bit heavy on this Pentium 2 old man.

I've experienced same Issue on older DSL distros as well, like on 2.2.

Anyone could help? Thanks a lot

Posted by RayRoko on Sep. 04 2006,15:35

I figure now it's not the power management problem, but the freeze occurs right before the screensaver kicks in.. Could anyone say in what file can I configure the screensaver off Thanks!

Posted by RayRoko on Sep. 04 2006,16:31

It seems I've been able to switch off the screensaver, or is it screen blanking, with
sudo xset s off &
Now the laptop doesn't hang.

Posted by AwPhuch on Sep. 08 2006,06:47

wow great job...aint it great to figure it out on your own!?

Posted by RayRoko on Sep. 08 2006,15:15

Quote (AwPhuch @ Sep. 08 2006,02:47)

wow great job...aint it great to figure it out on your own!?

Yes it is, but still it's strange that the comp hangs with DSL. It doesn't hang with any other Live Distros.

Posted by Atreo on Oct. 31 2006,14:07

Hey!!
I have the same laptop so I suffer the same problem.

So, you're kind of sure it's due to screensaver activity.
How did you switch it off?

Thanks a lot.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Oct. 31 2006,14:27

Quote (RayRoko @ Sep. 04 2006,12:31)

It seems I've been able to switch off the screensaver, or is it screen blanking, with
sudo xset s off &
Now the laptop doesn't hang.

See his post

Posted by Atreo on Oct. 31 2006,15:08

I see... (sudo...)

Sorry, I'm very vey newbie with these things.

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 20 2006,10:01

Hey Atreo,
you should add the line
sudo xset s off &
to .xinitrc startup script. Read how to do it here:
< https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN....2104528 >

Otherwise you have to type this command into a shell window ("counterpart" to Command Prompt in Windows) everytime you start DSL.
Ray.

Posted by Atreo on Nov. 20 2006,13:21

That's right.

Thank you

I'll do it.

Cheers :laugh:

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 22 2006,12:12

I've solved the screensaver problem but my 390e still freezes when I close the screen lid or when I press ctrl+alt+del. And it happens every time. The same thing happens in DSL-N. Very frustrating, cos I've tried everything, disabled all APM features in BIOS, dpms and screensaver are turned off with xset, but still it doesnt' help.

In this state DSL is unusable because I can't leave the laptop on overnight without keeping the screen up (the LCD backlight will wear off prematurely).

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 22 2006,14:17

Well, you can disable ctrl+alt+del if you want.. but I'm guessing the all of these things are under one root problem.

I suppose you already tried noapm noacpi apm=off acpi=off nolapic noapic ... perhaps it's some hardware driver that's doing it? You could try disabling some and see if that helps (maybe paste out your stats.txt). Does it also happen with failsafe? What if you don't go into X but i.e. boot into runlevel 2?

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 22 2006,17:45

THanks for your tips, ^thehatsrule^! I'll try nolapic and failsafe, didn't know about them. I think it would be great to solve this, because it seems to be a general problem on 390E model, because I've been getting emails with questions about it from other users as well. And it impedes use of otherwise a pefect distro for this comp. I'll let you know very soon if the new options were to any avail.

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 22 2006,17:58

by the way, what's the difference between apm=off and noapm etc? and what's nolapic? and difference between apic and acpi?

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 22 2006,18:11

well not sure myself... other distros seem to use both. I seem to remember some reporting one working over the other if used separately.

the l is for local apic; acpi is for power stuff; apic is for interrupts something... could google for more info, but I'm just pulling stuff out of nowhere here.

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 22 2006,18:14

how do i get stats.txt ? i foudn the stat command but it deals with the filesystem..

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 28 2006,19:47

Update on the freezing issue: if I start DSL with
dsl toram dma noapic apic=off noapm apm=off noacpi acpi=off nolapic lapic=off , it still freezes when i closed the screen lid or press ctrl+alt+del.
If i start to the runlevel 2, it doesn't freeze after closing the screen lid, and starts shutdown procedure as expected after pressing ctrl+alt+del. So, the problem must be in Xserver somewhere.
DSL gurus, can you help?

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 28 2006,19:57

I think stats.txt is found in ~/
you could also just run that system stats thing.

So it's an X problem. Try fiddling around with `xset` perhaps.

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 28 2006,20:24

i've went through all xset options as su but to no avail.. i'm thinking can it be because of the window manager? cos if i press ctrl+alt+backspace it also freezes.. i didn't find any stats.txt in /

Posted by roberts on Nov. 28 2006,20:32

stats.txt is generated by access to Stats which is in DSLpanel as System Stats.

You can try the alternate window manager JWM.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 28 2006,20:49

FYI, ~/ means /home/dsl , not /

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 28 2006,22:06

Hooray, the problem is FINALLY solved! Thanks guys for all your help. The issue was in that I didn't use the framebuffer mode. So when I started DSL by
dsl dma fb1024x768 xsetup
and chose the framebuffer x server
everything started to work like a breeze, I can close the screen lid now, do the ctrl+alt+del, ctrl+alt+backspace and all

Now I can finally do the hdd install and kiss Windows goodbye

Posted by RayRoko on Nov. 28 2006,22:09

and to all the users who had the same problem, you don't have to switch off the screensaver any more!

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Nov. 28 2006,23:35

Nice work finding it out!

I'll try to remember this just in case for future reference