KDE gets blocked dead

[Duncan]

Martín Marqués posted on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:32:44 -0300 as excerpted:

> I have a dell Inspiron Notebook with Linux (Fedora 15 with all the
> updates), and since I installed it I have this problem:

Keep in mind when posting that this isn't a fedora list, but rather, a kde 
list.  Many/most readers will have little clue what kde fedora 15 shipped 
with or whether it updates kde versions with its updates and how close to 
upstream kde they are, so won't have any idea what version of kde you're 
referencing unless you mention it.  Without that, it's often hard to 
help...  Not that I can probably help much anyway in this case (tho I 
try, see below), but somebody might be able to, and having a better idea 
what you're running would likely help.

> When I close the top, and the power cord is not plugged, system gets
> totally locked. Nothing works and I can't get it to start again. Only
> thing I can do is restart it, or wait some minutes until it goes into
> hibernation, and then I can open the top and the notebook comes back to
> life, asking for the user password.
> 
> I tried changing powerdevil parameters, but nothing made this behaviour
> go away.
> 
> Any ideas on how to solve this?

Not really.  FWIW I'm running gentoo, and stay away from kde's powerdevil 
entirely, using a customized laptop-mode-tools configuration for most of 
the power management on my netbook.   The lid-close action, however, is 
controlled by the acpid scripts and its config.  I have it set to shutoff 
the display power only, not suspend or anything, tho the default these 
days seems to be suspend to RAM.  (I have a hotkey I can use to trigger 
suspend or hibernate, but use the netbook as an mp3 player, often with 
the lid closed, and having it suspend on lid close would rather defeat 
the purpose.)

Based on the evidence you reported, tho, you're likely seeing it shut the 
display off, but then failing to turn it back on when you reopen the 
lid.  It's not suspending to RAM as that would normally kill the 
hibernate as well, but without a display, it's kind of useless for 
ordinary use.  Eventually, due to lack of activity, it hibernates, and 
you can restart it from there, but for whatever reason, the normal 
reactivation that would occur if you started typing or moving the mouse, 
even if it didn't occur when you simply reopened the lid, isn't occurring.

You might try setting up an xset command to force the display on:

xset -dpms force on

Assign that to a hotkey (kde settings, common appearance and behavior, 
shortcuts and gestures, custom shortcuts). and see if the triggering the 
hotkey then turns the display back on.

Meanwhile, you say the system goes locked and won't respond, but don't 
mention what you tried, and as I have no idea how well you know Linux and 
whether you use the command line much or not, I don't know if you've 
tried this or not:

Try switching to a different VT (virtual terminal) using the normal ctrl-
alt-Fn shortcuts, say ctrl-alt-F1, to switch to the first VT, or ctrl-alt-
F12, to switch to the 12th (often used to display the system event log).  
KDE and X will normally be on VT7, ctrl-alt-F7, and switching to a 
different one then back to it may be a workaround, assuming you've not 
already tried it, of course.

There's also the magic-sysrequest keys, if they're enabled in your/
fedora's kernel.  I have them enabled here, and use them as a gauge of 
how badly the system's locked up -- but it can't be too badly locked up 
if the system goes into hibernation if left alone, and you can recover 
from there.  Again, it reads as if the only problem is that the display 
get turned off by the lid action, and for whatever reason, doesn't turn 
back on.

But at this point, we're well out of kde territory and into territory 
where your best bet is likely to be a post to the fedora lists/forums/
whatever, unless someone else here happens to be able to help you more 
than I could.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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