f16 - locked out again

Stephen Gallagher sgallagh at redhat.com
Fri Jan 6 17:55:19 UTC 2012


On Fri, 2012-01-06 at 11:44 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
> This happens once in a while, but this is the 2nd time this week, though 
> the symtoms were different.
> 
> The latest occurance, I locked the screen <ctl-alt-l> and came back 
> later to use the system.  I hit an arrow key which normally brings up 
> the password dialog box and even before the box showed up I started 
> typing in my password.  This normailly works fine and opens up to the 
> workspace I was last on.
> 
> This time nothing happened.  There was a flash across the screen like 
> the dialog box coming up, but the screen stayed black other than the 
> portion of the top panel that normally shows when the screen is locked.  
> I was able to <ctl-alt-F2> to another console and back.  I tried 
> <alt-F1> then 'r' and saw the spindizzy but nothing after that.  In the 
> end, I rebooted by logging into the F2 console.  Perhaps I should have 
> done a tail on messages first?
> 
> Various things have happened over the past month on f16 with gnome 3.  
> Not coming out of suspend and having to ppull all power for a hard boot 
> recovery (AC and battery).  Gnome locking on me with no keyboard or 
> mouse clicks, though the mouse will mouse around.
> 
> So it is still unstable for me.
> 
> Advise on trouble shooting?

Are you using local accounts or are you using LDAP? If you're using SSSD
for user accounts, it's not impossible that it could have crashed, which
occasionally results in behavior like what you're describing.

> 
> Oh, and to the point of pulling the battery to get to a hard boot 
> state.....   My brother-in-law was talking about his recent purchase of 
> a notebook with a sealed battery; ie he cannot remove it.  His question 
> was on which kind of warranty to get.  But now my question is:  does 
> anyone have a notebook with a sealed battery and if so, how do they 
> recover when nothing works?  When you cannot switch to another console 
> and the power button does nothing?  How do you force a boot if you can't 
> pull all power?

Pretty much every laptop made in the last ten years will shut down hard
if you just hold the power button long enough (5-10s).
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