Re: Rapid beeps and system lock up
Thank you. I was running sawfish. Shouldn't the installation
procedure have some kind of warning? I see there's another update,
so this will be my chance to get it right.
I have two questions. First, what is the SYSREQ key (I have a MS
Natural keyboard--windows oriented)?
Second, how do I get out of X? I think I'm running gdm, set so I go
straight into the graphical environment. If I try to exit, I think it
just comes right back. And do I need to exit X, or just sawfish?
On Sat, Sep 23, 2000 at 12:07:16PM +1100, Damon Muller wrote:
> Hi Ross,
>
> I have certainly experienced the beeping, but I don't recall ever having
> had my computer lock because of it.
>
> I'm pretty sure that it's because sawfish/sawmill doesn't like to be
> upgraded while it's running (at least, for the helix-gnome packages).
> Generally Bad Things happen, of which the beeping is just one of
> several.
>
> Maybe your crash happened because sawfish caused X to crash, taking the
> keyboard with it. At such times you can sometimes telnet in and shut it
> down gracefully (if you have a nothing computer), or else sometimes the
> magic sysreq key will work (ALT-SYSREQ-s ALT-SYSREQ-u), from which you
> can safely hit the reset switch.
>
> Whenever I do an apt-get upgrade of helix gnome, I always use the -u
> switch to see if it's going to upgrade sawfish. If it does I'll log off
> X first, update, then log back in, which seems to work, but is a pain.
>
> Of course, if you're not running sawfish, then I have no idea...
>
> HTH,
>
> damon
>
> Quoth Ross Boylan,
> > A little earlier this evening I did an apt-get upgrade, which picked
> > up about 6 packages. I am getting them from potato and helix-gnome,
> > so probably they came from the latter.
> >
> > I came back well after everything had finished; it all looked OK. I
> > dial up. But when I tried to switch windows, I couldn't and I got a
> > very rapid beeping noise. At first I thought it was my modem having
> > troubles, but I think it was the computer's beeper or even some other
> > hardware (crazy disk accessing?).
> >
> > The only thing I could do was click on the GNOME start menu and select
> > log off. I hit yes when asked to confirm. After that the system was
> > totally unresponsive (though still beeping). ctl-alt-del did nothing
> > (AMD K6-2 CPU and ASUS P5A motherboard). I had to hit the computer's
> > restart switch. Just like MS-Windows (ouch!)
> >
> > Unfortunately the script I recorded with the download vanished (fsck
> > had to fix up the disks), so I can't say exactly what got downloaded.
> >
> > So ... does anyone know what the beeping might indicate? Is this a
> > well-known mode the system gets into?
> >
> > And has anyone else had this problem, or have any ideas what might be
> > going on.
> >
> > The reboot seems to have cleared things up, so I'm not in any pain
> > from the problem--just curious.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
> > --
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>
> --
> Damon Muller | Did a large procession wave their torches
> Criminologist/Linux Geek | As my head fell in the basket,
> http://killfilter.com | And was everybody dancing on the casket...
> PGP (GnuPG): A136E829 | - TBMG, "Dead"
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