This is a detailed post so every guru here will have an idea of what's been happening.

In the last three days, Slackware's acpi is taking a really long time on boot before continuing, followed by a longer than usual pause at hald. Xorg doesn't enable and all I have is a tiny blinking cursor. A ctl-alt-del reboot clears everything up the second time around.

I haven't had this happen since I installed 13.0 at the end of August, so it's been a little over three months of flawless booting. The error began coming up in about 1 out of every 3 or 4 boots.

I've been trying to figure this out but can't come to any conclusions on my own.

The specifics:

Normally during boot, acpi and hal pause for averages of 17 seconds (acpi) and 15 seconds (hal) or 12 and 5 seconds or sometimes as long as 28 and 12 seconds or 32 and 12 seconds respectively. Xorg works fine during at pauses of this length.

Since Friday, those boot lengths have been interspersed with acpi/hal pauses of: 43 and 28 seconds; 53 and 34 seconds; and today, 84 and 48 seconds respectively. Xorg doesn't initialize and I go through the Vulcan salute.

The hardware:

Acer Aspire 3620. Intel Celeron M 1.6GHz. Intel 915GM graphics, Realtek 8139 ethernet, Atheros AR2413. All of that works.

Everything "just works" with my Slackware 12.2 hard drive. It's my backup and has never failed me.

The same's true for my "test" drive with Arch and KDE 4.3.3. My only issues with it are cups not working well --yet-- and issues with cd-burning -- but no slow acpi/hal on boot.

Nor any problems on that drive with acpi/hal booting up recent releases of Salix or Sabayon. Neither for Vector or Mandriva six months ago, nor Debian, Fedora or openSUSE last spring.

The search:

Using dmesg | grep -i acpi I doubt that these lines shed any light for anybody. I know that from the
kernel mailing list (http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/6/7/147) that this shouldn't make the acpi/hal episodes an issue:

ACPI EC: non-query interrupt received, switching to interrupt mode
ACPI EC: GPE storm detected, transactions will use polling mode
ACPI EC: missing confirmations, switch off interrupt mode

Then later:

ACPI: I/O resource [hex # here] conflicts with ACPI region SMBI [hex 3 here]
ACPIevice needs an ACPI driver

And at the end of dmesg:

acer-wmi: Acer laptop ACPI-WMI extras
ACPI: EC: missing confirmations, switch off interrupt mode

These lines are in dmesg during times when acpi and hal is brief and everything works, so I'd discount that. /var/log/messages doesn't seem to shed any light either. What else can I check to help you help me?

My questions:

Has anybody else had a pefectly booting machine (esp. lappies) and then suddenly had this occur with the stock 2.6.29.6-smp kernel? Arch's 2.6.31 doesn't have this issue, nor does Slack 12.2 with its stock kernel.

I doubt it's a regression issue...otherwise why would it have taken three months to show up?

Would moving to a kernel in -current might solve this? I've never used -current anything...not in 7 years of using Slack, since I like it's usual stability.

If so, I'd need detailed step-by-step what-you-do-next-is info. I consider myself a slightly more than
middle-of-the-road user. My old cheat-sheets on installing patches and doing SlackBuilds look funny now, but I was afraid I'd mess up completely the first time I did either one.

I'd also like to know *exactly* how to install Slackware -current just to play with. If anybody emails me with a depth of detail I can use, please do so at: mollylynne(dot)harris((at))gmail(dot)com to keep from boring
everybody else here. I'm too unsure on my own. For your trouble, I'll *give* you an autographed copy of my next paperback when it comes out as a sign of gratitude.

Full Disclosure:

I don't install things I never use: ed, elvis, most, gcc-fortran, gcc-gnat, all the bluez stuff, xfce, xgames, etc. I also don't install syslinux, kernel-generic, kernel-generic-sm, kernel-huge or loadlin. I *do* install kernel source, though.

None of the kernel stuff should matter, since it never has interfered with anything before. Right?

Thanks in advance.

Have you checked your BOIS for OS specific configuration or for BIOS update from Acer. I can't say what your specific issue is but I had a similar problem with my thinkpad with 12.2. In addition to slow acpi load at boot, one of my USB ports refused to function. A BIOS update from lenovo fixed the problems.

I'll look into the bios and any bios update, but I don't think it's that. Here's why:

If it were a bios issue, then every other 2.6.29 kernel (and possibly the ones before it and possibly the ones after it) would act the same way.

They don't. The only issue is with 13.0 and even that began only on Friday, after over 14 weeks of operating perfectly. My instinct says that this isn't the solution.

By way of an update: when I turned the lappy on a few minutes ago, the failure on first boot was /usr/sbin/acpid holding for 76 seconds and /usr/sbin/hald holding for 32 seconds before a failed X session; then at reboot acpid @ 50 seconds and hald @ 28 seconds followed by another failed X; then acpid @ a 44 second wait followed by a hald 21 second wait -- X initialized and here I am.

All of these numbers are a lot longer than a typical login, which probably averaged no more than 12 seconds for acpid and half that or less for hald.

Hi,

What about posting the 'dmesg' to a pastebin so we can look at it as a whole to debug.

Okay, I booted up my Slack 13 drive just a few moments ago. Acpid waited for 81 seconds before continuing the boot process, and hald held on for 37 seconds. True to form lately, X failed to initialize.

But what I did this time was go to Alt-F7 and logged in as my regular user then startx'ed my way to the gui. Okay. That's a fine fix for now and I don't know why I didn't think to try that on Sat-Sun-Mon when I just let it reboot until it automatically brought up the gui.

I wasn't thinking...I was frustrated. So much for brains.

I went to the terminal and to root, redirecting the dmesg from this failed X startup to my home directory. Here's the dmesg in full, even though I know 99% of it's a waste of the space here. I apologize for that.

And until I/we/you can figure out why this acpid hanging began only after 14 weeks of perfect performance...that's the mystery, as far as I'm concerned. Why now? (I never knew that the acpid daemon hanging up would affect hal. But as I say, I'm just a middle-of-the-road user, not versed in the deepest corners of How It All Works like you guys.)

And for one dumb question: if I have to get to the gui through the Alt-F7 console about 1 or 2 times out of every 4 boots, it doesn't matter, right? I'm not screwing anything up? And can log out okay, since the primary console screen doesn't even come up after boot with a login or anything else. Right?

(I just want reassurance. I'm not good with cars, either. I know to check my tires for wear & air, have my oil changed, belts & other fluids checked and that's about it. I didn't even know what a cracked head was until it happened to me. And my then-husband just acted like i Should Have Kown.)

Oh, and would a dmesg from the Slack 12.2 disk help for any comparison, to see how this machine acts with it on boot, or has acpi changed a lot from one kernel to another?

Here's most of the 607 dmesg lines from this 13.0 disk. I'll remove the dmesg lines from this post once you guys solve this thing, just for sanity's sake. I have to snip 1,442 unimportant characters now for it to fit.

Linux version 2.6.29.6-smp (root@midas) (gcc version 4.3.3 (GCC) ) #2 SMP Mon Aug 17 00:52:54 CDT 2009
KERNEL supported cpus:
Intel GenuineIntel
<snip>
BIOS-e820: 000000003f6e0000 - 000000003f6ea000 (ACPI data)
BIOS-e820: 000000003f6ea000 - 000000003f700000 (ACPI NVS)
BIOS-e820: 000000003f700000 - 0000000040000000 (reserved)
<snip>
DMI present.
Phoenix BIOS detected: BIOS may corrupt low RAM, working around it.
last_pfn = 0x3f6e0 max_arch_pfn = 0x100000
kernel direct mapping tables up to 377fe000 @ 10000-15000
ACPI: RSDP 000F7A10, 0014 (r0 PTLTD )
ACPI: RSDT 3F6E4CA7, 003C (r1 PTLTD RSDT 6040000 LTP 0)
ACPI: FACP 3F6E9E78, 0084 (r2 INTEL ALVISO 6040000 LOHR 5F)
FADT: X_PM1a_EVT_BLK.bit_width (16) does not match PM1_EVT_LEN (4)
ACPI: DSDT 3F6E50C0, 4DB8 (r1 INTEL ALVISO 6040000 MSFT 100000E)
ACPI: FACS 3F6FAFC0, 0040
ACPI: APIC 3F6E9EFC, 0068 (r1 INTEL ALVISO 6040000 LOHR 5F)
ACPI: BOOT 3F6E9FD8, 0028 (r1 PTLTD $SBFTBL$ 6040000 LTP 1)
ACPI: MCFG 3F6E9F9C, 003C (r1 INTEL ALVISO 6040000 LOHR 5F)
ACPI: SSDT 3F6E4EDE, 01DE (r1 PmRef Cpu0Cst 3001 INTL 20030224)
ACPI: SSDT 3F6E4CE3, 01FB (r1 PmRef CpuPm 3000 INTL 20030224)
ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
126MB HIGHMEM available.
887MB LOWMEM available.
mapped low ram: 0 - 377fe000
low ram: 00000000 - 377fe000
bootmap 00011000 - 00017f00
(8 early reservations) ==> bootmem [0000000000 - 00377fe000]
<snip>
ACPI: PM-Timer IO Port: 0x1008
ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000
ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x00] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)
ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x01] lapic_id[0x01] disabled)
ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x00] high edge lint[0x1])
ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x01] high edge lint[0x1])
ACPI: IOAPIC (id[0x01] address[0xfec00000] gsi_base[0])
IOAPIC[0]: apic_id 1, version 32, address 0xfec00000, GSI 0-23
ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 0 global_irq 2 dfl dfl)
ACPI: INT_SRC_OVR (bus 0 bus_irq 9 global_irq 9 high level)
ACPI: IRQ0 used by override.
ACPI: IRQ2 used by override.
ACPI: IRQ9 used by override.
Enabling APIC mode: Flat. Using 1 I/O APICs
Using ACPI (MADT) for SMP configuration information
SMP: Allowing 2 CPUs, 1 hotplug CPUs
<snip>
ACPI: Core revision 20081204
..TIMER: vector=0x30 apic1=0 pin1=2 apic2=-1 pin2=-1
CPU0: Intel(R) Celeron(R) M processor 1.60GHz stepping 08
Brought up 1 CPUs
<snip>
ACPI: EC: Look up EC in DSDT
ACPI: EC: non-query interrupt received, switching to interrupt mode
ACPI: Interpreter enabled
ACPI: (supports S0 S3 S4 S5)
ACPI: Using IOAPIC for interrupt routing
ACPI: EC: GPE storm detected, transactions will use polling mode
ACPI: EC: GPE = 0x17, I/O: command/status = 0x66, data = 0x62
ACPI: EC: driver started in poll mode
ACPI: No dock devices found.
ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)
<snip>
pci 0000:00:1e.0: bridge 32bit mmio: [0xb0100000-0xb01fffff]
pci_bus 0000:00: on NUMA node 0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0.PCIB._PRT]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs *10 11)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 10 *11)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 10 *11)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 10 *11)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKE] (IRQs *10 11)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKF] (IRQs *10 11)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKG] (IRQs 10 11) *0, disabled.
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKH] (IRQs 10 *11)
SCSI subsystem initialized
libata version 3.00 loaded.
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
usbcore: registered new device driver usb
PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing
hpet clockevent registered
HPET: 3 timers in total, 0 timers will be used for per-cpu timer
pnp: PnP ACPI init
ACPI: bus type pnp registered
pnp: PnP ACPI: found 8 devices
ACPI: ACPI bus type pnp unregistered
system 00:04: ioport range 0x800-0x80f has been reserved
<snip>
NET: Registered protocol family 2
IP route cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
TCP established hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
TCP bind hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 131072 bind 65536)
TCP reno registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
Simple Boot Flag at 0x37 set to 0x1
highmem bounce pool size: 64 pages
VFS: Disk quotas dquot_6.5.2
Dquot-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order 0, 4096 bytes)
NTFS driver 2.1.29 [Flags: R/W].
JFS: nTxBlock = 7963, nTxLock = 63705
SGI XFS with ACLs, security attributes, large block/inode numbers, no debug enabled
SGI XFS Quota Management subsystem
GFS2 (built Aug 17 2009 00:51:32) installed
msgmni has been set to 1737
alg: No test for cipher_null (cipher_null-generic)
<snip>
async_tx: api initialized (async)
Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 254)
io scheduler noop registered
io scheduler anticipatory registered
io scheduler deadline registered
io scheduler cfq registered (default)
pci 0000:00:02.0: Boot video device
pci_hotplug: PCI Hot Plug PCI Core version: 0.5
vesafb: framebuffer at 0xc0000000, mapped to 0xf8580000, using 1536k, total 7872k
<snip>
Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
serial 0000:00:1e.3: PCI INT B -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
serial 0000:00:1e.3: PCI INT B disabled
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
brd: module loaded
loop: module loaded
Compaq SMART2 Driver (v 2.6.0)
HP CISS Driver (v 3.6.20)
input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /devices/virtual/input/input0
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver
piix 0000:00:1f.1: IDE controller (0x8086:0x266f rev 0x03)
pci 0000:00:1f.1: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
piix 0000:00:1f.1: IDE port disabled
piix 0000:00:1f.1: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1810-0x1817
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: HITACHI_DK23EA-30, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Slimtype COMBO SSC-2485K, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hda: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
hda: UDMA/100 mode selected
hdb: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
hdb: UDMA/33 mode selected
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide-gd driver 1.18
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 58605120 sectors (30005 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=58140/16/63
hda: cache flushes supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 >
ide-cd driver 5.00
ide-cd: hdb: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 1536kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
Loading iSCSI transport class v2.0-870.
rdac: device handler registered
hp_sw: device handler registered
emc: device handler registered
alua: device handler registered
fcoe_transport_register:fcoesw
Adaptec aacraid driver 1.1-5[2456]-ms
scsi: <fdomain> Detection failed (no card)
sym53c416.c: Version 1.0.0-ac
qlogicfas: no cards were found, please specify I/O address and IRQ using iobase= and irq= options<6>QLogic Fibre Channel HBA Driver: 8.03.00-k4
iscsi: registered transport (qla4xxx)
QLogic iSCSI HBA Driver
Emulex LightPulse Fibre Channel SCSI driver 8.3.0
Copyright(c) 2004-2008 Emulex. All rights reserved.
Failed initialization of WD-7000 SCSI card!
DC390: clustering now enabled by default. If you get problems load
with "disable_clustering=1" and report to maintainers
megaraid cmm: 2.20.2.7 (Release Date: Sun Jul 16 00:01:03 EST 2006)
megaraid: 2.20.5.1 (Release Date: Thu Nov 16 15:32:35 EST 2006)
megasas: 00.00.04.01 Thu July 24 11:41:51 PST 2008
GDT-HA: Storage RAID Controller Driver. Version: 3.05
3ware Storage Controller device driver for Linux v1.26.02.002.
3ware 9000 Storage Controller device driver for Linux v2.26.02.011.
nsp32: loading...
ipr: IBM Power RAID SCSI Device Driver version: 2.4.1 (April 24, 2007)
RocketRAID 3xxx/4xxx Controller driver v1.3 (071203)
stex: Promise SuperTrak EX Driver version: 3.6.0000.1
st: Version 20081215, fixed bufsize 32768, s/g segs 256
Driver 'st' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
Driver 'sd' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
Driver 'sr' needs updating - please use bus_type methods
I2O subsystem v1.325
i2o: max drivers = 8
I2O Configuration OSM v1.323
I2O Bus Adapter OSM v1.317
I2O Block Device OSM v1.325
I2O SCSI Peripheral OSM v1.316
I2O ProcFS OSM v1.316
Fusion MPT base driver 3.04.07
Copyright (c) 1999-2008 LSI Corporation
Fusion MPT SPI Host driver 3.04.07
Fusion MPT FC Host driver 3.04.07
Fusion MPT SAS Host driver 3.04.07
ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: setting latency timer to 64
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: debug port 1
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: cache line size of 32 is not supported
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: irq 23, io mem 0xb0040000
ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
usb usb1: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0002
usb usb1: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
usb usb1: Product: EHCI Host Controller
usb usb1: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.29.6-smp ehci_hcd
usb usb1: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.7
usb usb1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 1-0:1.0: 8 ports detected
116x: driver isp116x-hcd, 03 Nov 2005
ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: setting latency timer to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.0: irq 23, io base 0x00001820
usb usb2: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001
usb usb2: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
usb usb2: Product: UHCI Host Controller
usb usb2: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.29.6-smp uhci_hcd
usb usb2: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.0
usb usb2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: setting latency timer to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.1: irq 17, io base 0x00001840
usb usb3: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001
usb usb3: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
usb usb3: Product: UHCI Host Controller
usb usb3: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.29.6-smp uhci_hcd
usb usb3: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.1
usb usb3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: PCI INT C -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: setting latency timer to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.2: irq 18, io base 0x00001860
usb usb4: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001
usb usb4: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
usb usb4: Product: UHCI Host Controller
usb usb4: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.29.6-smp uhci_hcd
usb usb4: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.2
usb usb4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 4-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: PCI INT D -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: setting latency timer to 64
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: UHCI Host Controller
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
uhci_hcd 0000:00:1d.3: irq 19, io base 0x00001880
usb usb5: New USB device found, idVendor=1d6b, idProduct=0001
usb usb5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=1
usb usb5: Product: UHCI Host Controller
usb usb5: Manufacturer: Linux 2.6.29.6-smp uhci_hcd
usb usb5: SerialNumber: 0000:00:1d.3
usb usb5: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
hub 5-0:1.0: USB hub found
hub 5-0:1.0: 2 ports detected
sl811: driver sl811-hcd, 19 May 2005
r8a66597_hcd: driver r8a66597_hcd, 10 Apr 2008
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.
PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:KBD0,PNP0f13:PS2M] at 0x60,0x64 irq 1,12
i8042.c: Detected active multiplexing controller, rev 1.1.
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
serio: i8042 AUX0 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 AUX1 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 AUX2 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
serio: i8042 AUX3 port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
i2c /dev entries driver
md: linear personality registered for level -1
md: raid0 personality registered for level 0
md: raid1 personality registered for level 1
md: raid10 personality registered for level 10
raid6: int32x1 566 MB/s
raid6: int32x2 636 MB/s
raid6: int32x4 574 MB/s
raid6: int32x8 433 MB/s
raid6: mmxx1 1664 MB/s
raid6: mmxx2 1886 MB/s
raid6: sse1x1 1179 MB/s
raid6: sse1x2 1945 MB/s
raid6: sse2x1 2113 MB/s
raid6: sse2x2 2402 MB/s
raid6: using algorithm sse2x2 (2402 MB/s)
md: raid6 personality registered for level 6
md: raid5 personality registered for level 5
md: raid4 personality registered for level 4
md: multipath personality registered for level -4
device-mapper: ioctl: 4.14.0-ioctl (2008-04-23) initialised: dm-devel@redhat.com
cpuidle: using governor ladder
usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid
usbhid: v2.6:USB HID core driver
TCP cubic registered
Initializing XFRM netlink socket
NET: Registered protocol family 17
input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input1
RPC: Registered udp transport module.
RPC: Registered tcp transport module.
Using IPI No-Shortcut mode
md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect
md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly on device 3:2.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 456k freed
usb 2-1: new low speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 2
usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=1241, idProduct=1177
usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
usb 2-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
input: HID 1241:1177 as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-1/2-1:1.0/input/input2
generic-usb 0003:1241:1177.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.00 Mouse [HID 1241:1177] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-1/input0
ACPI: AC Adapter [ADP1] (on-line)
input: Power Button (FF) as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input3
ACPI: Power Button (FF) [PWRF]
input: Lid Switch as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0D:00/input/input4
ACPI: Lid Switch [LID0]
input: Sleep Button (CM) as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0E:00/input/input5
ACPI: Sleep Button (CM) [SLPB]
ACPI: WMI: Mapper loaded
ACPI: CPU0 (power states: C1[C1] C2[C2] C3[C3])
processor ACPI_CPU:00: registered as cooling_device0
ACPI: Processor [CPU0] (supports 8 throttling states)
Marking TSC unstable due to TSC halts in idle
intel_rng: FWH not detected
ACPI: EC: missing confirmations, switch off interrupt mode.
Synaptics Touchpad, model: 1, fw: 6.2, id: 0x1a0b1, caps: 0xa04713/0x204000
input: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad as /devices/platform/i8042/serio4/input/input6
rtc_cmos 00:05: RTC can wake from S4
rtc_cmos 00:05: rtc core: registered rtc_cmos as rtc0
rtc0: alarms up to one month, y3k, 242 bytes nvram, hpet irqs
ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT0] (battery present)
thermal LNXTHERM:01: registered as thermal_zone0
input: Video Bus as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0A08:00/device:02/input/input7
ACPI: Video Device [GFX0] (multi-head: yes rom: no post: no)
Linux agpgart interface v0.103
ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZS0] (56 C)
8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.28
8139too 0000:06:07.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0x3000, 00:0a:e4:fb:56:de, IRQ 20
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'
thermal LNXTHERM:02: registered as thermal_zone1
ACPI: Thermal Zone [TZS1] (30 C)
acer-wmi: Acer Laptop ACPI-WMI Extras
Registered led device: acer-wmi::mail
i2c_core: exports duplicate symbol i2c_smbus_xfer (owned by kernel)
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: Intel 915GM Chipset
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: detected 7932K stolen memory
agpgart-intel 0000:00:00.0: AGP aperture is 256M @ 0xc0000000
cfg80211: Using static regulatory domain info
cfg80211: Regulatory domain: US
(start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
(2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2700 mBm)
(5170000 KHz - 5190000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
(5190000 KHz - 5210000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
(5210000 KHz - 5230000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
(5230000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm)
(5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 3000 mBm)
cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US
i801_smbus 0000:00:1f.3: PCI INT B -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
ACPI: I/O resource 0000:00:1f.3 [0x20a0-0x20bf] conflicts with ACPI region SMBI [0x20a0-0x20af]
ACPI: Device needs an ACPI driver
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: CardBus bridge found [1025:006a]
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: Using CSCINT to route CSC interrupts to PCI
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: Routing CardBus interrupts to PCI
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: TI: mfunc 0x00001022, devctl 0x44
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: ISA IRQ mask 0x0cf8, PCI irq 22
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: Socket status: 30000006
pci_bus 0000:06: Raising subordinate bus# of parent bus (#06) from #06 to #0a
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge I/O window: 0x3000 - 0x3fff
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x3000-0x3fff: clean.
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge Memory window: 0xb0100000 - 0xb01fffff
yenta_cardbus 0000:06:09.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge Memory window: 0x50000000 - 0x53ffffff
ath5k 0000:06:05.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
ath5k 0000:06:05.0: registered as 'phy0'
wmaster0 (ath5k): not using net_device_ops yet
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
wlan0 (ath5k): not using net_device_ops yet
ath5k phy0: Atheros AR2413 chip found (MAC: 0x78, PHY: 0x45)
Intel ICH 0000:00:1e.2: PCI INT A -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
Intel ICH 0000:00:1e.2: setting latency timer to 64
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcff: clean.
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: excluding 0x4d0-0x4d7
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: clean.
pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean.
intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 50325 usecs
intel8x0: clocking to 48000
Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -322582559 ns)
Adding 999928k swap on /dev/hda3. Priority:-1 extents:1 across:999928k
fuse init (API version 7.11)
EXT3 FS on hda2, internal journal
lp: driver loaded but no devices found
ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
powernow: This module only works with AMD K7 CPUs
cpufreq: No nForce2 chipset.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda1, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda5, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda6, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda7, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS on hda8, internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1
i2c_core: exports duplicate symbol i2c_smbus_xfer (owned by kernel)
i2c_algo_bit: exports duplicate symbol i2c_bit_add_numbered_bus (owned by kernel)
[drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810
pci 0000:00:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
pci 0000:00:02.0: setting latency timer to 64
[drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080730 on minor 0
[drm:i915_get_vblank_counter] *ERROR* trying to get vblank count for disabled pipe 0
i2c_core: exports duplicate symbol i2c_smbus_xfer (owned by kernel)
i2c_algo_bit: exports duplicate symbol i2c_bit_add_numbered_bus (owned by kernel)

Something was niggling in the back of my mind a few minutes ago. I don't know why, but I've looked into a couple of things and I think -- I don't know for sure yet -- but I think I might have a solution, although it seems really unlikely.

I've tried it, and wham! everything went smoothly at login. It may have been a freak occurrence, but I'm going to shutdown and boot back three or four times through tonight and then a couple of times tomorrow morning.

If I don't get an acpid hang at boot, I'll let you know what I've done. And no, I don't know why I thought of this while I was loading the dishwasher because on the face of it, it doesn't seem to make any sense to me why it should work -- or why everything got so flummoxed in the first place.

And don't forget -- I could be completely wrong.

Check this space.

I went through four reboots in six hours last night to see if my fix worked. It worked perfectly.

But this morning I was back to acpid hanging @ 59 seconds and hald hanging @ 26 seconds. Aaarrggh.

Meanwhile, I'm popping in my 12.2 hd in order to get work done until the weekend. The mystery for me is why this issue popped up after fourteen weeks of working properly. If it had been a fresh install, I'd have chalked it up to new release weirdness.

I'll check here during the weekend and see if anybody comes up with any clues.

You didn't say what you did to get it working temporarily. Also, try booting to runlevel 3 and use startx to load your desktop. Since you can start X from another terminal, this may help as well.

The line "ACPI: I/O resource 0000:00:1f.3 [0x20a0-0x20bf] conflicts with ACPI region SMBI [0x20a0-0x20af]" looked weird to me. I did some googling and this issue seem to be cause by "unusual BIOS" messages.

This one is interesting too "[drm:i915_get_vblank_counter] *ERROR* trying to get vblank count for disabled pipe 0".

Anyway, which kernel are you using, huge or generic or custom ?

So using the same HDD, other distros work fine, right ? Just want to make sure.

A BIOS update might fix it.

I seem to be experiencing similar symptoms. My laptop has worked fine since I put 13(64 bit) on it, until about 2 or 3 weeks ago. Now when I resume from suspend, it takes a really long time for the enter password to come up. But here's the twist, it works fine when ac is plugged in and resume with ac plugged in. If ac is plugged in, suspend, remove ac, put ac back, resume takes about 20-30 secs for the password dialog to come up.

I have a solution for my problem, although it's a "workaround," and I really wanted to get at the heart of why all the flakiness began. But barring that, here's what I decided to do instead of chasing rabbits... I opened /etc/lilo.conf and simply added to the kernel parameter line that is:
append=" vt.default_utf8=0"
to read:
append=" vt.default_utf8=0 acpi=off"
Then ran /sbin/lilo and all of my problems went away. The only thing (naturally) is that when I go to Shutdown and everything drops back down to console,I have to shut off the power button with my finger. Big deal.

Also, since this machine is 3 1/2 years old and I hate the Akonadi server message report with it's associated junk, I decided to shut it down once and for all by going to a terminal as root and issuing the following:
akonadictl stop
About 9 messages popped up in the terminal, but I didn't have the foresight to take a scren capture of them. Whatever they all were, they were harmless. (Although I would have liked to mention them so that some other hapless mid-range user wouldn't be petrified by them.)

Who came up with the idea of not having some little gui box to uncheck to stop Akonadi just like the Nepomuk/strigi disable boxes? Either both have gui boxes, or neither does. At least that's the way I think...not: one does, the other doesn't.

So I'm back up and booting in a reasonable amount of time again. Let's hope the lappy stays stable which, after all, is the reason I use Slackware in the first place. I admit that KDE 4.3.3 and the Akonadi/Nepomuk/strigi stuff works flawlessly on this same laptop with the hard drive I "test" other distros with -- that hd has had Arch installed for just under a month. I haven't tried any pacman upgrades yet, though, and I have an instinctive "feel" that like rpm/deb upgrades & installs, it'd be easy for config files to get written over.

As far as what I thought I fixed last night, the thought came to me in a flash that I once remembered reading (don't know where) that sometimes using the line "compact" in /etc/lilo.conf would lead to odd behavior. So I pulled up man lilo.conf and re-read the description for "compact." Could something in the heart of the "compact" option gotten messed up where it's held in the mbr? (I'm guessing that the lilo.conf commands are written somewhere in the mbr since lilo.conf itself isn't itself read on boot -- hence /sbin/lilo -- right?) So I removed compact and ran /sbin/lilo. I expected acpid to hang and it did. Then I went back and put compact back in again, ran /sbin/lilo again, and /usr/sbin/acpid never hung once all night long. Four boots in six hours, sometimes leaving the machine off for up to 45 minutes at a time.

Thought I'd solved my issue. Until this morning, when acpid stalled again.

And then just before I went to get my screwdriver to swap out the 12.2 drive, I thought: Why not disable acpi altogether? I did, and that's that.

Still doesn't solve the mystery, though. And one day I'll figure out why.

Oh, the kernel is the stock huge-smp one. Forgot to mention that, H_TexMex_H. Thought I had in some other post. And I have used this same hd before without any issues and do a full dd if=/dev/zero wipe in between installs. Unless someone can tell me that it's pointless (and why it's pointless -- I'm old(er) and require proof -- faith isn't enough in hardware, software, or men).

Even if you've used the HDD before, that doesn't mean it's still ok.

Well, if you're convinced the HDD is not failing, then I would use the generic kernel. You should not use the huge kernel after installing, it could have all sorts of issues that are difficult to diagnose. Try the generic kernel + initrd, and see if that helps.

I've solved the acpi problem at last. I feel like like a numbskull, but it turned out to be a hard drive going bad. In my "emergency" pc tool drawer I had the original 40G hd in a static-free bag. I'd wiped it long ago and kept it stashed away if I or anyone else I knew needed a drive on-the-spot.

To make a long story short, everything works. The acpid daemon startup time is a pleasant 12 seconds; hald is 5 seconds -- just as it was a week ago.

This time on installing my software sets, I paid particular attention and did not install akonadi (along with the other packages I don't use and need). There wasn't a nepomuk package, so I thought, Well, I'll just disable it the first time 'round. It wasn't necessary -- Nepomuk is completely well-behaved as long as Akonadi server isn't running. And no annoying messages about suspending strigi because of resources!

It may have taken the week off-and-on searching for the right solution (instead of "a" solution), but I've added a significant nugget of knowledge to my arsenal. And across four computers (and only five hard drives excluding "salvage") in 26 years, it's the first time I've had hard drive issues come up before some other component went bad first.

Slack 13 is up and running again. And maybe it's time to erase the 12.2 drive after a year's time, install 13 on it and use that one (120G) as my primary hd and keep this 40G as a backup.

Thanks, everybody, for putting up with me. (First time I've asked for help with computer anything -- ever. I've always solved my own problems before. But this one just seemed weird.)