I just finished installing gentoo on my old toshiba satelite laptop. Everything is good except when I leave the computer alone for more than five minutes, the keyboard freezes. I'm sure this is a powermanagement thing but I'm not sure how to fix it. I don't have x installed so I know it isn't that. This also happened with slackware 9. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

when you say old... how old? like apm or acpi? and wich one if either do you have running?

I enabled apm in my kernel, but not acpi. WHen I installed suse 7.3 on this laptop last year, it freaked out when suse tried to use acpi. It's about 4 years old...a toshiba satelite 1625cdt.

not that this is the solution, but just to eliminate certain things: have you tried updating your bios?

Yup. I've already updated it. I just had debian on it (but I don't really like debian) and this wasn't a problem. I haven't changed any settings in the bios since switching distros, so does that mean it's a kernel thing?

im sure i dont know. is it just the keyboard? what do you have to do to fix it? sometimes when i try to track down a problem i start shutting off non essential processes(like apm) untill i find the problem wich would also isolate the kernel eventually. this may not be the right way to do things but when it comes to me and computers theres the right way, the wrong way, and then theres my way( mostly trial and error falling more on the error side)

The screen turns off (goes blank, not totally off) after maybe 5minutes of inactivity. It doesn't happen in x, only in console mode. I can't turn off process because it's a laptop on cli with the monitor not showing anything. The only way to fix it is to cut the power and reboot.

having acpi only i dont know much about apm but sure sounds suspect to me.

Well x locks up to. I will try to recompile the kernel with acpi instead of apm. I'll post the results.

i wouldnt think acpi would work, im thinking more about apm settings.


i found this:
Unfortunately I've run into a big problem with apm. It seems I've been able to get around it though!

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APM / APMD
Using apm(d) with this machine doesn't work for some reason.
o

APM (apm version 3.0final): When I tried apm -s the first time it seemed to work perfectly. The machine suspended. After I turned it back on it took about two seconds and the system froze.
o

APMD (apm version 3.0final): If the apmd is started at bootup (look in /etc/rc.config to see if START_APMD is set to "yes") and the system runs in battery mode, the machine will lock up after a while. There are a bunch of "state change" log entries in /var/log/messages (after setting APMD_DEBUG="yes" in /etc/rc.config.d/apmd.rc.config). If - on the other hand - the machine runs on AC power this doesn't happen...

Solution: Disable the CPU sleep mode in the bios settings. It should look something like this:

maybe relates. this was on a toshiba 4300 series

I got it to work!
I enabled both advanced apm and acpi. Along with that I enabled toshiba utilities (under acpi) and then recompiled my kernel. It works. The screen shuts off after awhile but it doesn't lock up. ALso, it shuts down correctly (by turning itself off).
Woohoo!