Hi

here goes my problem:

i had installed slackware 10.2 kernel bare.i 2.4.33. but with this i wasn't able to shutdown properly (it would just stop with powerdown written at the bottom of the screen). i was able to deal with this by first doing modprobe apm'and then running 'shutdown -h now' would shut it down properly. i think apm shouldn't be used for my desktop but i wasnt able to load modules for acpi and this seemed the second best option.

but this solution started causing another problem:
sometimes when i start my system from cold i get absolutely no display (it doesn't even get to displaying bios messages)and hardly any hard disk activity. though the green lights on my motherboard get turned on and the fans on the cpu and psu start spinning. i have to turn it off and on several times to get it running.

and the strange thing is if i dont boot into slackware for 3-4 days this problem of system not starting just disappears.

i have tried the following all allowing me to shutdown properly but they all cause the second problem:

1. used bareacpi.i from cd1.
2. used test kernel 2.6.13 from cd1.
3. compiled my own kernel 2.6.18 for my hardware with acpi built in. everything works beautifully with this audio, video, lan, usb, acpi, hyper threading, heck it even goes down gracefully when i press the power button on the cabinet.


my config:
intel d865gbf motherboard, p4 3.0 GHz(prescott), 256MB DDR RAM, 80 GB seagate barracuda, retech 8139d(gets recognized as sundance st201 in linux) ethernet card, cooler master 380pmsr.

windows xp, fedora core 4, slackware 10.2. using lilo. with ntldr and grub chainloaded.

I had that for years - push button, drives spin for a while, nothing happens - in my case, the mobo was dying a long slow death.

With my setup, everything would shut down again after running for a bit.... then wouldn't start unless I physically unplugged/replugged the power cord first.

What makes you think linux is the cause here? After all, BIOS comes before the OS! No linux settings so much as getting a twinkle in beforehand.

its just that i've had this hardware for 2 years.

i've used fedora core 1, core 4, open suse, ubuntu. but this problem has occured for the first time. and it only occurs when i use slackware with acpi/apm. just to repeat if i don't use slackware for 2-3-4 days ( i'm not saying that in those days i'm not using my pc, i still keep using winxp, fedora4 ) the problem just disappears.

and i want to solve this problem 'cos i really want to stick with slackware.

Do you ever flip the power switch on the back of your computer (the real one, not the one that's controlled by software)? If you let your computer turn itself off using apm or acpi or whatever, the computer is still drawing a little bit of power if I recall correctly, so the computer isn't quite all the way off. Sometimes my computer gets itself confused enough that having it in this almost turned off state can't fix it. I have to flip the power switch in the back, let it sit for a couple seconds, then turn it on. Maybe Slackware somehow confuses your motherboard when it's shutting down, and its confusion doesn't go away until it's completely powered off. I don't know why its confusion would go away after a few days of Slackware-free operation, but the first thing I'd try is flipping the power switch (or unplugging it, etc.) and see if it boots up properly after that.

well when i'm doing that turning off and on thing to get my system up and running, i sometimes do use that switch instead of the one on the cabinet.

but its not that a single on-off-on of that psu switch gets it running i usually have to do that several times.

and anyway after i shutdown my system i also switch off the ups and then the switch on the wall.

I had a problem like this and it was down to the power supply unit dying. Could it be acpi/apm detect some power fault and manage it.

Intermittent problems are almost always hardware in my experience.

Samac

yes i also suspect that. is it all right for the body of an smps to be charged up a little? because i've been shocked a few times when i've managed to touch it while flipping that psu switch on&off.

but the only thing that makes me scratch my head is why does it only happen when i have run slackware a few times? why not with fedora or suse or ubuntu or even vectorlinux (its based on slackware)? all of those distributions are using almost the same kernel and acpi modules, aren't they?

So you run the machine with a different OS - the problem continues for a couple of days, then stops recurring... then you start up slackware and bingo: problem recurrs? (Or you gotta have had slack running a while before the problem recurrs? Or the problem goes away as soon as you stop using slack...?)

"Almost the same" is not "the same".
As has been mentioned, the only way software can mess with power-on/off is through power management leaving the cpu/psu in an odd state when it shuts stuff down. This will be a combination of the kernel, BIOS and hardware.

yes. without using slackware at all in those couple of days.

not just running. but like: start-use-shutdown.
and the occurence rate of the problem seems to depend on how frequently or how many times i do that.

infrequent use doesn't cause problem.
like for example yesterday i had started up slackware to look at a config file and then shut it down. except for that one use i haven't been using slackware at all for the last 7-8 days. haven't faced that problem today. not for the last 5-6 days.

Oh well, it's obvious then ... you have received the "weird edition" of slackware circulated by the Erisian Liberation Front to blow your mind "in 23 different ways". Enjoy

OR you could try running slack without power management for a bit and see if there is a difference.

I still bet it's in your hardware though. Probably overheating... (which would vary from distro to distro). Intel provide proprietary drivers for your board, for eg, but not for slackware...

If there is truly truly never ever a recurrence under another OS - then you could simply put it down to the universe just hating you and use a different distro (at least until after the next slackware release...) Is there something specifically you want from slackware that you cannot get anywhere else?

(OR, if you are really really keen: get the source etc for all the distros that work and look for the difference between those and the slackware compile. The fact you compiled this kernel yourself suggests the difference is there if not in the hardware.)

The trouble is, I suspect I'd have to sit in front of the machine and watch it happening to know exactly what is going wrong.

as i've already said using bare.i doesn't cause that problem.

here's some shooting in the dark from my side.

may be its the way i shutdown the system when using slackware???
shutdown -h now.
if i've kde running i first logout.

and in all other distros i would point and click at a turn off button in the initial graphical login screen.

is it possible that there is something else i should be using or may be i should be doing something more before i run that command??

i've changed the default runlevel in inittab from 3 to 4 to get a graphical login screen and a turn off button. lets see what happens.

hmmm - <checks>... i.e. using bare.i you didn't get a complete shutdown, while bareacpi.i let you shutdown completely, but wouldn't let you restart reliably.

This suggests the slackware acpi is messing up the cpu shutdown states. Running something else for a while would fix this - since the new OS would write it's own idea of acpi states.

This is the difference between the slackware installation and your other ones.

Is the gui mode not rl5?

well the problem turned out to be with the smps cable. the earlier one was just too loose(i had been using the cable from my previous smps). changing it with the one that came with the smps that i am presently using has solved my problems.

i've also added a fan. so may be it wasn't just the cable may be some overheating issues as well. i'm hoping that the fan wouldn't draw too much power and cause power issues.

what could possibly explain what i was facing, the word that comes to mind is- coincidence.

thanks all for your attention and replies.

Well... yeah, it can happen that way with intermittent faults. You can end up with an association which dosn't really count.

Well done.

it didn't actually solve my problem. the problem persisted for a while and then i sold my motherboard & proc. i got an athlon64 and sapphire board based on ati rs-482 from the money i got.

and guess what a new problem has cropped up. now using slackware causes this: when i shutdown the computer it restarts instead of powering off. and it happens with windows as well. and the thing is if i dont run slackware for a while. this problem disappears. disabling acpi in the BIOS and using apm causes the previous problem.