[plug] Suse 9.1 post install issue...

[Bernd Felsche]

"Senectus ." <senectus at gmail.com> writes:
>On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:01:25 +0800, Bernd Felsche
><bernie at innovative.iinet.net.au> wrote:
>> "Senectus ." <senectus at gmail.com> writes:
>> 
>> Can you do a CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to a text console?

>No it's a complete hardware lockup.

>> Boot into "Failsafe" mode from the initial boot menu. If you can
>> select stuff on the boot menu using the cursor keys and type stuff
>> into the prompt space, then the keyboard is basically OK.

>I did this and it loaded then locked up with the harddrive spinning,
>caps lock light would go on and off at request but ctrl alt f2 etc and
>ctrl alt del doesn't work at all.

Looks like some basic hardware detection has broken.

>> If the keyboard is "dead" in Failsafe, then reboot and add a "1"
>> (digit one) to the prompt field after selecting Failsafe from the
>> menu. Then press enter. The system will boot into single-user mode
>> and prompt for the root password. If you can type that and have it
>> accepted, then there's some sort of driver issue with the laptop.

>Did this and it loads up and sits at the cli (with frame buffer looks
>very pretty) but no key output at all.
> At this stage I'm beginning to feel that its a kernel thing, and that
>the update I has made a change somewhere.

One of the packages issued recently is hwinfo. (3 successive ones in
the space of about a month.) hwinfo's run at initial boot time to
determine connected hardware and it may have been broken or failed
to install properly for one reason or another.

>> Fill us in on the details of the hardware and we'll see if there's
>> something gone wonky.
>It's a thinkpad A31p

Luxury! It should work ferpectly with Linux; it's certified by SuSE.

>> Some laptops support external PS/2 keyboards. Most support USB
>> keyboards. *Never* plug a PS/2 keyboard into a "live" system. If the
>> problem persists, you may well be able to use an external keyboard
>> to diagnose the system when the laptop's internal keyboard is
>> unresponsive.

>I never use external keyboards with this laptop ( I like the inbuilt
>keyboard a lot ), and besides It doesn't have a PS/2  port.. only USB.
>Its a dual boot Laptop and I don't have any issue's at all with the
>winxp install so I'm 99.999% sure its not broken hardware.

>Kind of odd actually because the "free" version I've installed in the
>past on this machine never had this issue :-?

I suspect a faulty installation of a patch.

Beg/Borrow a USB keyboard and plug it in; then see if you can run 
	hwinfo --keyboard

Or ssh into the machine and run it as root.

If the command bombs or produces obviously-bogus results, then it's
a dud install of that patch.  hwinfo-8.62-0.2.i586.rpm looks like
the latest patch available. 

	rpm -q hwinfo
will confirm that that's installed. If not, fetch it from somewhere
like
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/suse/i386/update/9.1/rpm/i586/hwinfo-8.62-0.2.i586.rpm
and install it as an update
	rpm --freshen hwinfo-8.62-0.2.i586.rpm

-- 
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