Hi,

Today I got hold of old IBM Thinkpad T43. So I though that I will put that into use. The surprise however was that the only allowed boot option was from HDD and the BIOS was password protected in a way that I can not add CD-drive to the boot list. And of course the HDD was also protected with safeguard, so I could not get the laptop to boot.

So what I did was the following: I took the HDD out and mounted it into another machine (T41) which I recently got running. I booted this up with xubuntu CD and installed xubuntu to the HDD. Then I took the HDD out and remounted on the T43 and booted that up. And everything seemed just fine: I got wireless working, installed all updates etc. and installed Adobe flask also to allow kids to wath youtube. No issues whatsoever. then I left the machine just standind and to load batteries (youtube window still open). After about 2 hours, I thought that I will just shut down the laptop, but it had totally halted (=frozen). No key whatsoever did anything. So in the end I just had to switch off the power. Then I switch the power back, but it booted only half way and stopped with black screen. I waited a while, but has to shut down the power. Next time I got GRUB meny, with options for normal or protectec mode boot and memory test. I ran memory test w/o problems. then tried to boot but no luck. After another reboot back to grub menu and selected "protected mode" boot. It asked something, but proceeded to normal boot finally. Then I tried to reboot from xubuntu desktop and it worked OK.

Now the questions:
As I installed the xubuntu on a different machine and just swapped the HDD, did I cause some funny settings and thus generated the problems by myself. And if this is the case, how can I modify my installation ?

The halting could have been cause by heat as the laptop was quite hot from battery loading. Or I might have just some HW problem as this is old 2nd hand machine. Is there any logfile or something, which could tell why the laptop halted and/or why it did not first reboot after the first shutdown ? I would be curious to know if there is a HW problem.

Br,
hjpl

There used to be/may still be issues with flash causing %100 cpu usage... maybe it was heat related. You could always drop in a different OS and see if it does the same thing, depends on how much time you want to spend on it.

I think that I will just continue testing the laptop as such to see if the problem will re-occur.
And if yes, then I could try some other OS.

HOwever, I am bit curious if xubuntu/linux writes somewhere, what happened before it froze. Or if it at least writes, why it did not start normally after the "brutal" shutdown. It might give some hint if this is SW or HW related issue.

I found syslog file and wonder if someone can tell what happened here. This is telling events from the time it worked until I switched off the power

ov 30 23:05:34 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:05:42 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:07:24 linux-ThinkPad-T43 NetworkManager[523]: <info> (eth3): supplicant interface state: completed -> 4-way handshake
Nov 30 23:07:26 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:07:26 linux-ThinkPad-T43 NetworkManager[523]: <info> (eth3): supplicant interface state: 4-way handshake -> completed
Nov 30 23:07:28 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:17:01 linux-ThinkPad-T43 CRON[21898]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Nov 30 23:24:39 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:35:44 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:37:24 linux-ThinkPad-T43 NetworkManager[523]: <info> (eth3): supplicant interface state: completed -> 4-way handshake
Nov 30 23:37:26 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:37:26 linux-ThinkPad-T43 NetworkManager[523]: <info> (eth3): supplicant interface state: 4-way handshake -> completed
Nov 30 23:37:28 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Nov 30 23:54:38 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Dec 1 00:05:42 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Dec 1 00:07:24 linux-ThinkPad-T43 NetworkManager[523]: <info> (eth3): supplicant interface state: completed -> 4-way handshake
Dec 1 00:07:26 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Key negotiation completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
Dec 1 00:07:26 linux-ThinkPad-T43 NetworkManager[523]: <info> (eth3): supplicant interface state: 4-way handshake -> completed
Dec 1 00:07:28 linux-ThinkPad-T43 wpa_supplicant[834]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with 00:23:f8:82:46:32 [GTK=CCMP]
Dec 1 00:15:59 linux-ThinkPad-T43 kernel: [12328.162442] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600

and in kern.log the following:

Nov 30 22:03:41 linux-ThinkPad-T43 kernel: [ 4390.506415] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=0
Dec 1 00:15:59 linux-ThinkPad-T43 kernel: [12328.162442] EXT4-fs (sda1): re-mounted. Opts: errors=remount-ro,commit=600



Any other file that could tell even more?

No .. looks like a filesystem issue, try fsck first but if problem persists replace the drive