Re: Everything seems to cause a reboot
goossens@rsc.anu.edu.au, 20.12.2011:
> I hope I am sending to the right place. I really have no idea how to deal
> with this. I'll have to describe the problem in detail, since I cannot
> assign it to a package or anything. I have tried searching for a similar
> problem but can't find one. I am not a complete newcomer, but I am not
> much of an expert either.
>
> I have a i7 quad core 2600K, running current squeeze 6.0.3 with default
> Gnome installation.
>
> 2.6.32-5-amd64 kernel, 8 GB ram.
>
> When I try to shutdown, reboot, logout, switch user or Ctrl-Alt-Fn to
> switch tty the machine does a hard reset and reboots.
>
> It does not do this if I use sysv-rc-conf to turn off gdm, so that it
> boots into a CLI instead of GUI.
>
> SO if I boot onto bare CLI, either runlevel 1 or runlevel 2 but with gdm
> unchecked in sysv-rc-conf, I can work away, run applications, switch ttys,
> use the network, etc, and then
>
> shutdown -h now
>
> or
>
> shutdown -r now
>
> and the machine shuts down gracefully.
>
> BUT If I type gdm and enter the gui, then I cannot shut the machine off
> gracefully, even from an xterm. And if I try to Ctrl-Alt-F1 to go to a
> text tty, it does a hard reset and reboots.
>
> Everything else works fine, but this is crippling. It seems to be
> software because the machine behaves find in CLI mode. It is not a
> problem with keyboard, or not solely, because I have the hard reset
> prpblem whether I logout vie menu option in the System Menu or whether I
> try to do it from CLI. The tty switcher could be a keyboard issue, I
> support, with the wrong codes being sent, but I have no idea how to fix
> that, and I've treid reading around the web but I can't find anything I
> can use. I have an IBM Model M 101 keyboard. X seems to think I have a
> 105 key board, but I can't see how that can be the problem. But it does
> seem like it might be something to do with the Xorg config I guess, but I
> don't know how to fix that. Tried a simple-minded Xorg -configure, but it
> did not help.
It sounds like your problem could be related to a one of the following,
or more than one, together: gnome-power manager, some other gnome
component, hardware miscommunication (but not necessarily keyboard).
(Actually, to rule out an Xorg problem, before you spend time
investigating gnome, you should probably try booting up with gdm off and
manually starting a non-gnome session after you log in at the terminal.)
I suggest that you fiddle around with power-related settings for gnome.
Even if you can't get to the very bottom of the issue (i.e. if it's
hardware related) you may be able to work around what's bothering you.
You'll probably have gconf-editor installed with gnome. If not, there's
a package with the same name. In that gui, look under
apps/gnome-power-manager.
When I tried gconf-editor, the settings were quite few and sometimes
seemed to have no effect. Then I discovered dconf-editor, which comes
in the dconf-tools package (not installed by default). That has many
settings you can tweak, and they solved the problem I was having at the
time. (My laptop was suspending when unplugged, due to hardware
miscommunicating lid state, I think. By disabling the setting to
suspend when the lid was closed on battery, I was able to at least
worked around the problem.) In dconf-editor, you'll see
org/gnome/power-manager, but I found most settings were actually in
org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/power.
Also, something happened to me after an update last week that your
description reminded me of. (However, I'm using sid, with gnome 3.)
The laptop would reboot if I left it unattended for a while. When I
disabled suspension on inactivity, this got solved. What made me
look there was that this machine currently reboots when trying to
resume from suspend. What was strange, though, was that it rebooted
straight, without first suspending.
Reply to: