(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hello
I have a strange problem with a dell latitude d620, 2.1 ghz,1.5 gb ram.
I have installed puppy tahr 605, 602 and puppy 431 frugal and live cd, and all work perfectly when on mains power but almost as soon as I remove the mains power they black out the screen and hang, not recoverable. I have xp installed and it works both on mains and battery with no problems. I bought a new battery as I thought it was the problem, it's not.
Any ideas please.

You might try pfix=nox, then try it again. See if the screen blanks from a console login.

If it does, then it has something to do with a window manager setting ..

Will the computer boot a live CD with just the battery?

Also, were all the installs frugal? (except the live CD of course) and how did you configure Puppy before you attempted to run with the battery?

First only talk about using one specific version of Puppy to figure this out.
I suggest Tahrpup 6.0.5

Have computer only powered by battery.
Boot Tahrpup 6.0.5
What happens?

When you remove main power.
Are you just pulling the power plug, from the computer, while running Puppy?

Flash wrote:Will the computer boot a live CD with just the battery?

Also, were all the installs frugal? (except the live CD of course) and how did you configure Puppy before you attempted to run with the battery?

Using tahr 605.
The computer wont boot to live cd on battery power, it gets as far as updating network drivers, pix buffer....., loading kernal modules. Than goes blank and is hung.
I always install frugal but the live cd gives me the choice of personal file to load: 0 none, 1 sda2 /tahrsave, or 2 sda2 /tahr605 frugal/tahrsave.

I have tahr 605 on two partitions, sda2 and sda3.
Should I delete them both and start again. ie format sda2 and 3 and remove menu first, and any others from sda1.
Puppy tahr 605 was configured puppy ide=nodma,acpi=off

bigpup wrote:First only talk about using one specific version of Puppy to figure this out.
I suggest Tahrpup 6.0.5

Have computer only powered by battery.
Boot Tahrpup 6.0.5
What happens?

When you remove main power.
Are you just pulling the power plug, from the computer, while running Puppy?

Yes I pull out the power plug from the psu.

I formatted both partitions with tahr 605 and deleted all menu 1st mentions on sda1. I reinstalled 605, frugal puppy pfix=ram,ide=nodma,acpi=off. It installs perfectly but as soon as I switch off psu or 30 secs later the screen goes off.

Remove the "pfix=ram". That tells Puppy to boot and not use the save.

In Tahrpup 6.0.5
menu->System->Puppy Event Manager->Power
Have this set to "0"

Maybe some kind of bios setting in the computer is causing this.
Something to do with acpi=off

ide=nodma,acpi=off
Tried to boot with not having this in the boot process?

Two thoughts.. 1 and 2.

If Puppy won't boot from a live CD on just battery power then you got a problem somewhere that needs to be solved. I don't know what it could be. If you can afford it, I suggest burning a few different Puppy isos to CD to see if any of them will boot on battery power. CD-RW works fine for that, by the way. So does DVD-RW. Use burniso2cd in Puppy to burn isos to either CD or DVD.

Hi
When weird things happen such as this it is necessary to rule out as many possibilities as you can. It sounds like a hard ware issue and I would recommend that you take the laptop apart, clean fans, re-seat CPU with a little grease, and re-seat ram and reconnect the hard drive. And then see how it goes from there. This action will cover some of the thoughts above. Whist it seems a drastic action once you have done this once or twice with various laptops it takes less than 45 minutes.

Thanks mates, I will have a go at suggestions tonight. A slight thought xp doesnt give any problems mains adapter or not.

number77 wrote:Thanks mates, I will have a go at suggestions tonight. A slight thought xp doesnt give any problems mains adapter or not.

Well, that doesn't take a lot of figuring out, when you think about it....especially when you consider that all the major manufacturers were initially approached by M$ (not the other way round), and essentially bribed into 'making sure' that their products worked properly with Redmond's piss-poor excuse for an operating system.....

Money talks; especially in the quantities M$ have thrown around over the years.

The flip-side of the coin (which is not Linux's fault), is that because most MyCrudSoft suppliers and hardware vendors have taken a leaf out of M$'s book and kept all their code 'proprietary', and closed-source, every single driver and essential piece of system code has had to be reverse-engineered.....and this, by volunteers. Not members of a well-paid professional team of software engineers. By people who do this out of the goodness of their hearts.....without any recompense of any sort. To them, it's a labour of love. To the others, it's just another 9-5 job.....for which they'll still get a nice fat wage cheque, regardless of what the end result turns out like.


Mike.

Mike Walsh wrote:

number77 wrote:Thanks mates, I will have a go at suggestions tonight. A slight thought xp doesnt give any problems mains adapter or not.

Well, that doesn't take a lot of figuring out, when you think about it....especially when you consider that all the major manufacturers were initially approached by M$ (not the other way round), and essentially bribed into 'making sure' that their products worked properly with Redmond's piss-poor excuse for an operating system.....

Money talks; especially in the quantities M$ have thrown around over the years.

The flip-side of the coin (which is not Linux's fault), is that because most MyCrudSoft suppliers and hardware vendors have taken a leaf out of M$'s book and kept all their code 'proprietary', and closed-source, every single driver and essential piece of system code has had to be reverse-engineered.....and this, by volunteers. Not members of a well-paid professional team of software engineers. By people who do this out of the goodness of their hearts.....without any recompense of any sort. To them, it's a labour of love. To the others, it's just another 9-5 job.....for which they'll still get a nice fat wage cheque, regardless of what the end result turns out like.


Mike.

Im very happy with tahr605 on my dell vostro 1320 which I use all the time, thanks everyone who helped with it along the way.
Probably what I didnt mention about the dell d620 or thought was significant was that I was given it free of charge and obviously they have hardware problems. I will pull it to bits and check obvious connections.
May be some time as captain oates said or was reported to have said at the south pole. Could have been fake news.

Hi, number77.

By & large, the Latitudes are good, solid workhorses, as reliable as the day is long. But they've mostly been used by travelling reps over the years, which inevitably means they don't get treated sympathetically.

('It's not mine; why should I bother to look after it? It goes tits-up, the firm'll chuck me a new one....')

A strip-down, cleanout and reseat of most of the major components will work wonders, trust me..! That first tip of Semme's has got quite a lot of merit to it, especially in light of their traditional user-group.

Let us know how you get on, please.


Mike.

number77 wrote:...all work perfectly when on mains power but almost as soon as I remove the mains power they black out the screen and hang, not recoverable.

...but as soon as I switch off psu or 30 secs later the screen goes off.

Just curious: can you expand on the exact conditions a bit more?
Between power pull and system hang, does it look like the computer is trying to shutdown or suspend? Are you able to suspend and resume successfully on mains? Is the hard drive churning/writing, any other screen activity? When hung, is the fan on, which LEDs are on, etc.

jd7654 wrote:

number77 wrote:...all work perfectly when on mains power but almost as soon as I remove the mains power they black out the screen and hang, not recoverable.

...but as soon as I switch off psu or 30 secs later the screen goes off.

Just curious: can you expand on the exact conditions a bit more?
Between power pull and system hang, does it look like the computer is trying to shutdown or suspend? Are you able to suspend and resume successfully on mains? Is the hard drive churning/writing, any other screen activity? When hung, is the fan on, which LEDs are on, etc.

I didnt know tahr 605 could suspend. If it can that may have some bearing.
There is no hard drive activity or screen at all. It does just stop all screen output. I have to press power button but it did bark at me like puppy does once or twice but always there is nothing I can do to regain control except hard reset.

Yeah, it's not in the menu. You press power button and then Suspend option appears. It will also bark at you. If you also hear a bark when you pull mains, that's a big clue.

Never did answer any of this.

Remove the "pfix=ram". That tells Puppy to boot and not use the save.

In Tahrpup 6.0.5
menu->System->Puppy Event Manager->Power
Have this set to "0"

Maybe some kind of bios setting in the computer is causing this.
Something to do with acpi=off

ide=nodma,acpi=off
Tried to boot with not having this in the boot process?

Oh yeah, missed that:
Your acpi=off setting disables your power button event for Suspend. Was that remnants of previous troubleshooting power management issues with someone? (it does seem like power management issue) It's not normal setting.

Listen to bigpup and try taking out those extra options.