[buug] Redhat 9 comatose problem

[Michael Paoli]

After making sure you've got the BIOS power saving stuff disabled (or
at least set to a sufficiently long timeout that you know that's not the
origin of the problem) then you need to look at the OS and installed
software.  Check also for similar hardware and OS/software - even if
it's not an exact match, you may find a handy answer or major clue by
searching that way (and Google is your friend - and don't forget to
search Usenet also).

Next, when it goes "comatose", see if you can "wake it up".  How one can
"wake up" the system, will vary greatly by hardware.  These (particularly
also including laptops) include the following:
+ all keys/keycaps on the keyboard
+ mouse / pointing device
+ "power"/reset buttons/switches (not that some of these may be
multi-purpose, for example a "power" switch may work as sleep / wake up,
reset / power on / power off depending how things are set and how (or
how long) it is pressed
+ other buttons/switches (for example, closing lid/screen and re-opening
will reawaken some laptops)
+ etc.

Along with that, one can also check things such as network response,
wake-on-LAN response, magic keystroke (e.g. Control-Alt-[numeric
plus|numeric minus|Backspace], etc.), etc.

Also note all indicators on the system to try to better determine state
(is it really fully powered off, or is it in a state less than that?).

Look over all processes carefully - make sure you know what they all do.
Be sure to investigate suspicious/probable ones (apm/sleepd/power/...).
Also check all "rootly"(superuserly) stuff that may be launched by
cron/atd and friends (e.g. anacron), and be sure to check all relevant
places for such (some distributions take such actions as enhancing cron
so there's more than one place to look for a superuser cron job) and
follow such scripts/programs down until you're sure you know what they
do (or can be sure they have nothing to do with the problem you're
investigating).

I know I originally had similar problems with another LINUX distribution
on a laptop - through my investigations I found:
+ There were two different "services" (/processes) putting the system to
"sleep"
+ The software was capable of putting the system into at least two
distinct "sleep" modes
+ Of those two modes I encountered, one I could never recover usefully
from, and the other the system *mostly* recovered okay by simply closing
and reopening the display lid.
+ It turns out there were actually three distinct "sleep" modes
available (one of which wasn't available unless suitably configured),
and among hardware vendor and OS vendors (and possibly also BIOS author)
they tended to use at least somewhat inconsistent naming for each of the
three distinct "sleep" modes.

> Message-ID: <3F9459B9.2060108 at ncseweb.org>
> From: Skip Evans <skip at ncseweb.org>
> Reply-To: skip at ncseweb.org
> To: buug at weak.org
> Subject: [buug] Redhat 9 comatose problem
> Sender: buug-admin at weak.org
> List-Post: <mailto:buug at weak.org>
> Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2003 14:55:05 -0700

> Hey all,

> I've got a Redhat 9 install up and working good on a machine that
> used to run Windows XP. Everything works very good, including
> Wine running a few MS apps. But if I leave the machine alone for
> say 5 or 10 minutes, I typically come back to, instead of the
> screen saver, just a blank screen that won't wake up by keyboard
> or mouse activity. I've tried to narrow it down to one or two
> apps, maybe the MS stuff for example, but haven't really come up
> with anything.

> I've turned off all power management functions I can find in the
> bios, and scoured Redhat discussion boards for anyone with a
> similar problem, but haven't found anything yet.

> Any ideas?

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