acpi is causing huge problems on laptop
 

Hi, This is is going to be a long post.

I slightly posted about this before, but have tried lots to set it right.

I have a toshiba qosmio f10 canadian model and have recently updated the bios. It is the right bios.

Since, and I think before, I updated the acpi in suse 10 are messed right up, but I think it has got worse since I updated. The notebook will boot, mount, play audio ok-well some issues, but decent, umount, 3d the whole 9. Also has few problems under windows.

The acpi seems to mess up bad in x-windows, leaving the notebook alone for too long causes the problem. The usual screen saver will start and the lcd will power down.

All is good if you get to it while the ss is still on, after that you are sol. No matter how much tapping you do the screen will not unsuspend.

I have not editing any particular files as I don't know that much about acpi besides that since 2000 it has replaced apm.

I have tried going in to yast and power settings and tried to unselect suspend to ram or disk or with one or the other off/on. I have tried setting the power button, stand-by button and the close lid option to ignore.

I have tried unchecking enable power managment in the desktop (kde newest with suse 10)configuration. I have tried enabling it and setting all the slide bars to disable, -suspend -power down etc... I have tried many combinations.

I have even uninstalled powersave from yast in hopes it would work, but the screen saver still comes up and then the screen goes dark and cannot reload. So I thought maybe wouldn't take hold till xserver kill or reboot, but that just made kde not start so I booted into windowmaker and reinstalled powersave.

Also when I originally boot the it sometimes says the powersaving dameon is not running, but sometimes not. I also SOMETIMES sets cpu throttling to 600Mhz instead of performance 1800 and the box is plugged in and fully charged.

This all really sucks when you are trying to encode or something because it is all lost everytime and then I have to manually delete it from the tmp directory.

Is powersave different from acpi, cause I tried to edit some acpi files and it said they were dummy files and that powersave files should be edited.

I know most people have problems with trying to get the screen to come back after closing the lid, but this is just silly.

Furthermore, wasn't Toshiba like a founding father of acpi?

ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) is an open industry specification co-developed by Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, Phoenix, and Toshiba. Copied from http://www.acpi.info/

Could it be the bios? I think it was a problem before that.

What files in what diectories could edit to try to make this right?

I have even tried to delete the other settings for powersave, the ones that when selected, try to make the box quieter, more energy effiecent, etc...

Anyway, thanks and sorry for the long post. I will continue to read at tldp.

Oh, should also probably mention that the box has a nvidia GeForce (5700 edited mar 30)(and this is some freaky rare card, just thought that when I bought he notebook, hey this has nvidia gpu it will work great in linux) gpu in it as well. And sometimes, but only sometimes in windows I get a windows has succeeded as serious crash or whatever it says, so I push the send error report that says it was cause by the nvidia card. Could this be a problem.

Also maybe worth mentitioning that when I try to upgrade the driver in windows that the driver says it cannot find a proper device for this driver, so I leave the one currently installed. WTF Sorry but I am starting to get upset. Not that it is your fault.

A quick check at linux-laptop.net finds;

http://www.drechsler-soft.de/de/linux/qosmio_en.php

pwersave problems
 

Powersave runs as a backend to acpid i.e. acpid must be running for
powersave to work.
You can configure all power modes through YaST. Unfortunately it
still isn't as good as powersaving in windows. Some experimenting
may be necessary to find out what works with your machine. It seems
that you have problems with the automatic standby mode so disable
this to start with.
I have a Sony Vaio notebook and under windows XP standby mode has
never worked correctly. Under Suse 10 I have not managed to get
suspend to RAM or suspend to disk working so far.

Have you tried using the boot option "pci=noacpi" (in the append line of your boot manager)

Thank you for answering J.W I have set at the grub bootloader the command acpi=off and still login I wait and everything functions as it would had I not set that boot option.

I is confused.

Kernel complilation? with toshiba support?

Do you know how happy it makes me to see that you have suse listed in your distros, not that suse is king or anything, but I fell it is a lot different than other more unix like distro's.

Anyway, I started to compile a new kernel on a desktop machine I have and I chickened out. I need to know a few more things about it before I go about it mainly the things to do before the actual .config, like where and how I backup my current config and how to restore it in the event something sucks.

Also, how do I see my current config (qconf) to see what is enabled already?

I also read that you are supposed to compile in your home directory not in /usr/src. So that you still have all your orignal permissions. But following the newbie guide here at lq it does not include this step.

I feel very confident that I could compile and install it with a bit of help.
And Great links?

My biggest problem is that I don't know where and how to start properly. I was using

http://wiki.suselinuxsupport.de/wikk...gacustomKernel and the newbie guide to compling provided on this site.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=73436

They're certainly are not the same.

I accutually just went ahead to see inside the compilier and is there a lot of options

Will unselecting things that you know you will never use benifit you? I know that making them part of the active kernel will increase it size and slow it down, but if say you have support for ipv6 enabled as module will it help or hinder?

Or does it do something with it after even when you select m or dot or whatever it may be.

Thanks again for answering

I posted enough of a kernel guide here for someone else. It's not too Slackware specific, I don't think.

The main thing you need is knowledge of your present hardware. You can get most of that from the output of "/sbin/lspci" and you'll need to know networking options, etc. A safe bet is to make the choices that the kernel help options advise. And DO NOT use a 2.4 .config and issue "make oldconfig" against 2.6 kernel sources.

If you do it according to that guide, you'll have your old kernel to boot into in case you mess up. I had a few bad kernel compiles before my first good one. Now I do them quite frequently, on my boxen (6 within my LAN) and on every box I build.

There is another kernel guide on the net by Kwan Lowe that is excellent. I still build my kernels in /home/bruce/kernel because that's what I've been doing for a couple years now.

Download the kernel source from Kernel.org like I mention in that simple guide, and after you untar it, read Linus Torvald's README in ./linux-x.x.x.x/README --- he has been saying for over 6 years that we should NOT build in /usr/src, but some people are still doing it there. I think if you're careful it can be okay. I know many very smart Slackers who build there. Just for me, I prefer under /home so I also have my kernel every night when I backup all my computers via cron job.