A further ctrl-alt-backspace mystery.

[gilboa davara]

You *sure* the both machines have the exact RPM and BIOS configuration?
Sounds like a different configuration to me.

As for X zap, I've yet to see it fails.*
* Unless the machine has OOpsed.

Gilboa

----- Original Message -----
From: akonstam at trinity.edu
Date: Monday, September 12, 2005 5:57 pm
Subject: Re: A further ctrl-alt-backspace mystery.

> On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 04:27:06PM +0300, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> > What problems are you having?
> > What is that crazy state?
> > On what machine configuration does this crazy state happen?
> > 
> > Gilboa
> > 
> > On Sat, 2005-09-10 at 07:54 -0500, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> > > On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 10:37:10AM +0300, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> > > > In general, a simple change in the BIOS AGP/PCI settings can 
> cause a
> > > > stable machine to go wild.
> > > > Can you post the machine hardware configuration?
> > > > BTW, "DontZap" "False" is the default. You can delete it 
> altogether.> > > 
> I don't know where to start. Let us take two machines with the same
> hardware as an example:
> Dell Precision 380
> Intel P4 multi-threaded 3.0 Ghz.
> ATI Technologies video cars V380 with 16 Mb of memory.
> usb keyboard and mouse. (by the way it is not clear how one specifies
> that you have a usb keyboard rather then a pci keyboard. Can anyone
> tell me that?)
> 
> As side issue we have machines where ctrl-alt-backspace does not work
> unless "DontZap" "False" is explicitly in the xorg.conf)
> 
> Obviously I should not have said the machine goes into crazy state
> when ctrl-alt-backspace is hit, But I did not know how to indicate
> that machines with different architectures do different things when
> this key sequence is struck.
> 
> Right now the two Precision 380-s with the same system software do
> different things when the key sequence is struck. One blackens the
> screen and after a few seconds redisplays the gdm login screen. The
> other displays lines similar to those when changing to init level 3
> ending in a prompt. However, today I waited the machines out and let
> it do its thing. After 20 seconds or so the prompt disappears and the
> login screen reappears. So in the end both end up doing the job but
> one seems to think about it longer.
> 
> This time difference to reboot the login screen shows up in comparing
> other pairs of machines of the same architecture but in a second case
> one of the machines reboots the login screen in 3 seconds the other
> has the machine go black for much longer before the login screen
> appears.
> 
> All this is so amorphous that I don't expect anyone to have a specific
> solution. But what I am understanding from the group is that
> ctrl-alt-backspace works for other people without a problem.
> Is that correct?
> -- 
> 
> =======================================================================
> Bilbo's First Law:
> 	You cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.
> -------------------------------------------
> Aaron Konstam
> Computer Science
> Trinity University
> telephone: (210)-999-7484
>