Re: [gentoo-user] Black Screen of Death

[Rick Harris]

On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 07:32:31 am John wrote:
 Nothing in Xorg logs, system logs
 Lockup is complete - machine is totally unresposive even to ssh/ping
 x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-177.82
 Kernel version 2.6.27-gentoo-r7
 Card is Geforce GO 6100.
 PC is laptop and logout has been working, maybe a update has done this
 and i have missed it.
 Is this common?
 Using syslog-ng, if you could advise on a config that may pick
 something up in logs

I had a similar problem on my HP Compaq laptop, but not limited to just 
logging out of an Xorg session, the hard freeze could occur at any time.

The solution for me was to add 'noapic nolapic noirqdebug' to my kernel's boot 
parameters in grub.conf (see /usr/src/linux/Documentation/kernel-
parameters.txt).

How does this relate to the nvidia driver not working and Xorg's 'nv' driver 
working you might ask. The nvidia propietary driver claims/shares an IRQ, the 
'nv' driver does not (AFAICT).

Either the APIC on my laptop or Linux's implementation of using it is buggy, 
but the best result for me was to disable it using the above kernel 
parameters.

Something to try anyway, hope it helps :)


Cheers,
Rick

Re: [gentoo-user] What is portage trying to tell me?

[Rick Harris]

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 07:43:57 am Albert Hopkins wrote:
 On Sun, 2007-07-22 at 13:38 -0700, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
  I seem to see this from time to time when I look at the emerge logs
  that are emailed to me by portage, and I never know what to make of
  it.
  This one is from kde-base/kcontrol-3.5.5:
 
  LOG: preinst
  /usr/kde/3.5/share/applications/kde/panel_appearance.desktop: required
  key Name not found --
 
   required key Type not found
  Why is this allowed to occur?  What am I expected to do about it, and
  how would I know that, given that I'm a user, not a developer?

 FDO .desktop files should have Type and Name keys, e.g:

 [Desktop Entry]
 Encoding=UTF-8
 Version=1.0
 Type=Application
 
 Terminal=false
 Exec=Xephyr -screen 1024x768 -query flea -once :2
 Name[en_US]=flea
 Icon[en_US]=/usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-xterm.png
 Name=flea
 
 Icon=/usr/share/pixmaps/gnome-xterm.png

 So looks like whatever is installing/manipulating the .desktop file is
 not seeing those keys.  Why is it allowed to occur?  I suppose it's not
 allowed and that's why the program is complaining.  What are you
 expected to do?  Likely you'd search/create a bug at bugs.gentoo.org.
 Could either be a problem with the .ebuild or ustream. I'm guessing the
 latter.  How would you know that?  Not sure what that is.  Users
 aren't expected to know everything (neither are developers in fact).
 When in doubt, do as you did and ask.


As a quick fix, here is what a healthy panel_appearance.desktop file looks 
like:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Hidden=true
Name=panel_appearance
Type=Application

Run 'desktop-file-validate 
/usr/kde/3.5/share/applications/kde/panel_appearance.desktop', 
after editing and saving to check that it is now valid.


Cheers,
Rick


PS Have only just yesterday subscribed to this mailing list (only taken me 4 
years), so HI! to all you Gentoo-ites :D
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