[Solved] Computer pauses every 30 seconds

If you think acpi may be the culprit, try typing acpi=off when booting (just type acpi=off when booting from the DVD and it will append it to the cheat codes, then press enter).

Jim C.

Turning off ACPI did the trick. But now I can't monitor the battery, processor, temperature, etc., while in Linux.

Maybe someone else will have some suggestions. I'm pretty much a Linux novice. The only reason I knew about acpi=off is because my wife's laptop has a quirk with some distros unless you use it (cooling fan stays either stuck on or stuck off, depending on it's state at bootup).

You may want to fish around in your Laptop's BIOS to see if some of the settings there may be causing the conflicts when you leave acpi enabled in SimplyMEPIS.

Jim C.

Hi rank_amateur.

If you are happy to run with the boot command of no acpi but need to monitor all your laptops battery, temps etc, then take a look at GKRELLM monitor. It will monitor everything that has a monitorable value, even your mail accounts.

http://members.dslextreme.com/users/billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html

It's also available through synaptic with every conceivable plugin for battery and harddrive and cpu temp etc.

Hope this helps

Jacko

Hi guys;

This thread is what I needed, my laptop was freezing every now and than too... I added the lin acpi=off to the menu.lst and voila, no more freezing, very good thank you so much!
I installed gkrellm but I seem not to be able to add battery-time in the configuration (F1-menu)?! Any clues?

Ruud

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Compaq N1050v, Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 1024Mb Ram, Mepis 6.0.
Shuttle SN41G2, AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb RAM Mepis 6.0.
Linuxcounter user reg # 417292
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Hi Ruud

Unfortunately I don't have a laptop but on searching the gkrellm info on the web it says that the pluggin ibam is needed which comes up with a synaptic search of gkrellm.
It lists as gkrellm-ibam, this also in the description says ibam needs /proc/apm. I did a search on /proc/apm and it gives the package apmd and funnily enough the package gkrellm-ibam in the same search. The package apmd says it is the advanced power management support for access to battery status information and also that it prints to /proc/apm in a readable format for which then ibam I assume can read the info. Unfortunately I can't test it without a laptop, but reading this it seems logical to me. Other than that gkrellm has always picked up everything for me so the only other suggestion is as the guy that wrote it says,
GKrellM is free software released under the GNU General Public License.
Feel free to email me with questions or suggestions.
Bill Wilson
his email is billw--at--gkrellm.net

hope this helps Ruud

Jacko

Hi Jacko;

Thanks for your smalll expedition in gkrellm. I'll give it a try tomorrow. I'll give you some feedback after that, so you can help others again in the future. You're good at it in this case.

Thanks again, Ruud

=====
Compaq N1050v, Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 1024Mb Ram, Mepis 6.0.
Shuttle SN41G2, AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb RAM Mepis 6.0.
Linuxcounter user reg # 417292
=====

Hi Ruud.

Thanks for the feedback, we aim to try to help everyone here with their problems. I for one know that having only been using Mepis for 2 weeks now, ROFL, that even the smallest problems can seem insurmountable to new users, like myself. That also is where I come in, having searched the forums here to get myself up and running I like to try and help with some of the easier problems that I have already looked at. If you help others in my opinion you are still learning as you go.

All the best

Jacko

Hi Jacko;

Thank you for helping me out (and hopefully many others)!

Well, I've tried to install apmd, but during install it asks for a DECnet name and number, any idea where I can find such name and number?

Only thing I know is that there is a eth0 with an address like 10.0.0.1 or so, but thats not what the Synaptic-installer seems to need.

It gives an error saying:

Failures found during install:
dnet-common
libdnet
dnet-progs
gkrelldnet

So there has to be something with DECnet I guess...
Any idea?

Ruud

P.S. Where can I find the terminal output of Synaptic, or any other program, so I can copy that for further questions?

=====
Compaq N1050v, Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 1024Mb Ram, Mepis 6.0.
Shuttle SN41G2, AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb RAM Mepis 6.0.
Linuxcounter user reg # 417292
=====

Hi Ruud

Now we are getting towards where I will have to post in a forum, I dont think you need to have decnet on your p.c ( perhaps someone more fluent with Mepis or Linux can help us out here ). I think that is to do with distributed networking and allowing you to monitor other battery info and the like on other computers on your decnet network with gkrellm. It may be we need to try another approach to monitoring your laptop health either with a different pluggin for gkrellm or another bit of software. If anyone out there has any experience with laptop monitoring feel free to comment.

I will have a look into gkrellm and also try to find something else for you Ruud.

Bear with us

Jacko

Hi Ruud
Sorry for the delay but I'm now at my limit of what I can find out about gkrellm. Also I've had to work some long hours. One other to possibly try instead of that is klaptopdaemon which is a laptop battery and powersave gui that runs within the KDE desktop, it's in synaptic under the above name. It also has a Mepis version it picks as default if you check versions. This is sort of more guaranteed to work as its a Mepis one and also KDE which is the default desktop for Mepis.

Give it a whirl and let us know. It's possible to use the KDE one aswell as the gkrellm one for different features.

Hope this helps
Jacko

Hi Jacko;

I guess the klaptopdeamon was installed standard with MEPIS 6.0,
this one was also the cause of my problem I presume, which was a freeze every 30 secs.

After I added acpi=off to the menu.lst,
this was one of the programs not starting after boot.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not intend of getting these freeze moments back.

Thank you so much for puting any time in this matter!

Ruud

=====
Compaq N1050v, Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 1024Mb Ram, Mepis 6.0.
Shuttle SN41G2, AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb RAM Mepis 6.0.
Linuxcounter user reg # 417292
=====

Hi Ruud

In that case I'm sorry but I havent got a reply off Bill from gkrellm and at the moment I can't find anything else to help at the moment. Terribly sorry mate.
I will keep looking for you and will post back or catch you in another thread if I can find something. Klaptopdaemon was one of the last attempts.
I'm positive we will be able to find something somewhere in all of the Linux cyberspace.

Cheers

Jacko

I believe I've stumbled upon the solution to this problem. My laptop uses the Smart Battery System, and complete support wasn't available in Linux kernels until 2.6.18. After installing a 2.6.18 kernel, and loading the battery & sbs modules, kpowersave now displays the little battery or ac_power icon in the panel, and doesn't interfere with keyboard or mouse input.

I've tested this with Debian, but assume it will also be true for Mepis.

you ought to consider getting another sig.... rank_amateur is not what comes to mind considering how you solved this

Only issue with Mepis is that we don't know if / when a new kernel will be available. So you'd have to roll your own....

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Hi Ruud
Excellent news mate as I'd just started to run out of ideas. As long as your still on Linux and not windows thats cool. Glad you got there in the end mate.

Cheers

Jacko

p.s I've learned a bit along the way also so thanks.

Hey Slapshot;

As you can see at my signature I've not changed my OS!

Bye, Ruud.
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Compaq N1050v, Pentium 4 1.8 GHz, 1024Mb Ram, Mepis 6.0.
Shuttle SN41G2, AMD Athlon XP 3000+, 512Mb RAM Mepis 6.0.
Linuxcounter user reg # 417292
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