HP 900 Omnibook Laptop, PII and PIII (mine and my son's)
SuSE 8.1

APM or ACPI (didn't catch which) worked fine right after the installation and
indicated whether the system was on battery or power but then stopped working
as soon as the system was rebooted after that.

That is, do the install, let it finish, login as yourself into KDE and see that it
works. Reboot and it's all dead.

I have tried turning off ACPI but then the kernel panics at the point where APM
is being enabled.

I have made no changes to the system or kernel since the installation, so it's not
something I introduced.

Any ideas?
Larry

su
lsmod
Post here

Here it is...
lsmod
Module Size Used by Not tainted
snd-pcm-oss 44928 0 (autoclean)
snd-mixer-oss 12728 1 (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
videodev 5600 0 (autoclean)
nfsd 70736 4 (autoclean)
sr_mod 13432 0 (autoclean) (unused)
cdrom 26400 0 (autoclean) [sr_mod]
isa-pnp 29664 0 (unused)
ipv6 138964 -1 (autoclean)
snd-seq-midi 4480 0 (unused)
snd-seq-midi-event 2920 0 [snd-seq-midi]
snd-seq 37776 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event]
snd-es1968 15756 2
snd-pcm 63328 0 [snd-pcm-oss snd-es1968]
snd-timer 11524 0 [snd-seq snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec 26628 0 [snd-es1968]
snd-mpu401-uart 3296 0 [snd-es1968]
snd-rawmidi 13920 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-mpu401-uart]
snd-seq-device 4140 0 [snd-seq-midi snd-seq snd-rawmidi]
snd 31300 4 [snd-pcm-oss snd-mixer-oss snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq snd-es1968 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-device]
soundcore 3396 0 [snd]
af_packet 12904 0 (autoclean)
3c575_cb 21572 2
cb_enabler 2832 2 [3c575_cb]
ds 6948 2 [cb_enabler]
i82365 26208 2
pcmcia_core 42432 0 [cb_enabler ds i82365]
joydev 5600 0 (unused)
evdev 4352 0 (unused)
input 3168 0 [joydev evdev]
usb-uhci 21612 0 (unused)
usbcore 56768 1 [snd usb-uhci]
nls_iso8859-1 2812 1 (autoclean)
nls_cp437 4316 1 (autoclean)
vfat 9620 1 (autoclean)
fat 30584 0 (autoclean) [vfat]
lvm-mod 62976 0 (autoclean)
reiserfs 179536 1

It looks like apm and/or acpi are both not present. The
default kernel is built with acpi as a module and I don't
see it here... Did I miss it?

I was suspecting that the issue is/was that the install system
boots with a more complete kernel which doesn't get loaded
next time.

So, does this help?
Larry

Don't tell me it's Redhat 8.0 It'd be difficult to do, if not impossible. You should consult your distro's website for help/directions.

Hello,
Yor bios probably doesn't work to well with acpi, probably best to disable acpi with kernel-parameter acpi=off at boot. This should allow apm to load instead and things might work again after that.

Cheers,
Sniff

This is SuSE 8.1, not redhat...

As to "acpi=off", the last time I tried that (I can do it
again) it panicked the kernel on boot and would not net
me get past until I either turned both apm AND acpi off,
or turned acpi back on. (Safe mode works and turns them
both off.)

I'll try again later when I get a chance.

On my son's system, it all worked fine after the install
until his next reboot. It stopped then and hasn't worked
since. That matches my experience; it works fine once
and then goes away on the next reboot.

Very frustrating. Also, I can't get the kernel to build right
now due to errors. I'm going to have to find out why it
won't rebuild right out of the box. (No changes made at
all since installation.) In one case it was due to a kdb
call (that certainly looked legal in traps.c when I looked at
it) and the latest one was in a new place.

Thanks for any help,
Larry

Hello,
I use SuSE8.1 as well, and had similar problems to what you discribe with my Acer laptop. I first thought that it was due to acpi not being anabled in the kernel properly. So I reconfigured and then complied a new kernel. (I turned KDB off becuase the kernel wouldn't complie with it on.)

This didn't help so I switched off acpi at boot, to allow apm to load instead. I think which ever is loaded first is used. I guess I was lucky. I also need the kernel-parameter apm=acertm5 for my laptop. Is there a similar command for your laptop?

have you tried (might do something interesting:-):
pci=acpi

Cheers,
Sniff

My first compile problem was also the KDB error. I think
I explicitly turned it on to try to resolve the error; maybe
I'll try turning it off and rebuilding. (Where did you turn it
on or off? I tried doing it as an option to make...)

I haven't tried anything like the pci command, just acpi=off
which gets me a kernel panic. I'm not sure where I can
get any parameters to apm; I'm on an HP900B. I may
try yours just for the heck of it.

Thanks,
Larry

hi,
to turn KDB off it the last option in xconfig before the save etc.
I think it is something like kernel debugging or something like that.

Sniff

Thanks.

I did try the various options and they all ended up in a
kernel panic again... :-(

I also checked out the same SuSE 8.1 release on my Dell
and it is using APM and it works great! So whatever it is
must somehow be specific to the HP Omnibook 900.

I have another lead or two to follow (check to see that the
BIOS message reports that APM is 1.2...). I don't hold a
lot of hope for this without somehow getting into all of the
code and looking at it... Yuck...

If you have any other ideas, great!
Thanks,
Larry

Latest update...

I rebuilt my kernel (and may have made some errors in overlaying my newly
built kernel over the lib/modules used by the previous one, etc... ) and rebooted
using it and found that APM worked great! Wow, nice... BUT...

I rebooted for some reason (probably a hung system again) and found that I'm
back to square one. It no longer works, panics the kernel when trying to start
PCMCIA, and is generally dead. If I put APM and ACPI back on (ACPI will then
disable APM) then I can get past the kernel panic, BUT ACPI doesn't work for
me either. (I can't find anything that tells me how to set up events, deal with
the messages from KDE, etc... I guess everyone just forgot that some of us
didn't actually write all of the code. I get references to old documents, and
circular references to out of date stuff that doesn't help at all. If you know of
anything that tells me how to enable ACPI and get it to work, I can use that
as well.)

So, I'm back to square one now. I have since cleaned up my kernel build to
ensure that everything is clean, rebuilt and consistent. I can still boot nicely in
safe mode as well, though APM and ACPI are both disabled.

My sequence has been:

make xconfig
make clean
make bzImage
make modules
su
make modules_install
cp kernel and system.map into /boot, etc.
reboot...

Do you know if there is anything that APM writes into a file someplace
that I can clear and start over? I haven't found any such files so far that
would explain why it only ever works once. (Haven't checked my home
directory yet though...)

Still completely lost,
Larry

HP Omnibook XE2 PIII running RedHat 8.0 kernel 2.4.18-19.8.0

I am having the same problems getting APM to work. In my case,it generates
a segmentation fault error.

Did an lsmod and this is what i get:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
ide-cd 33608 0 (autoclean)
cdrom 33696 0 (autoclean) [ide-cd]
maestro3 30864 2 (autoclean)
ac97_codec 13416 0 (autoclean) [maestro3]
soundcore 6532 2 (autoclean) [maestro3]
prism2_cs 74320 1
autofs 13348 0 (autoclean) (unused)
p80211 22184 1 [prism2_cs]
ds 8712 2 [prism2_cs]
yenta_socket 12960 2
pcmcia_core 54784 0 [prism2_cs ds yenta_socket]
ipt_REJECT 3736 2 (autoclean)
iptable_filter 2412 1 (autoclean)
ip_tables 14936 2 [ipt_REJECT iptable_filter]
mousedev 5524 1
keybdev 2976 0 (unused)
hid 22244 0 (unused)
input 5920 0 [mousedev keybdev hid]
usb-uhci 26188 0 (unused)
usbcore 77024 1 [hid usb-uhci]
ext3 70336 2
jbd 52212 2 [ext3]

I believe the older HP laptops use APM rather than ACPI, thus I did not
use the ACPI patch nor autospeedstep (found in http://gpsdrive.kraftvoll.at/speedstep.shtml)

Help. This is irritating because my laptop would normally last around 3 hrs
on batteries, but now it will only give me 1 hr max.

Mark

Hi Mark,

I found that there was a message that I didn't ever understand
until... I updated to the 2.4.20 kernel. The message indicated that
my power management configuration was "incomplete" and that I
should enable "Control Method Battery" and rebuild my kernel. That
method is NOT in 2.4.19 but is in 2.4.20.

I now have a 2.4.20 kernel which does APM correctly. That's the
good news. The bad news is that my sound (Maestro 2E) has now
stopped working (the kernel complains about not finding the
file/module) and when I try to run "mkinitrd" I get a "failed mount"
error. Apparently there's something funky about my file system
support in the kernel.

With 2.4.20 I can boot with "acpi=off" without getting a kernel
panic at the PCMCIA startup. (That's where the other problem was;
it was trying to start my ethernet card and I'm assuming dying in
the network/cardbus/dhcp initialization.)

You might try 2.4.20 to see if it helps.

Larry

I think this is closed now for me. Yea!!

I have built a 2.4.20 kernel, have it running right now as I type this, and APM is
working fine. (There was a note in 2.4.20 that APM had been reworked/fixed.)

I now have everything working and I can see my power status on the lower bar in
KDE.

If in doubt, get 2.4.20 and build it.

Works nicely,
Larry

Wow... that's great! I shall try that over the weekend. Wish me luck!