[SLE] SuSE 8.2 & Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000 keyboard & mouse not responding

From: Rajesh Saxena (rs_404_at_yahoo.ca)
Date: 11/26/03

  • Next message: Michael James: "Re: [SLE] USB Mouse in SuSE 9 (SOLVED)" 
    Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 20:41:43 -0500 (EST)
To: suse-linux-e@suse.com

    Hi. I have reason to believe that I made a very big
    and costly mistake. If I sound vague in my description
    of the problem then the reason for that is I really
    don't understand what the problem is. I've never
    experienced something like this on a laptop before.
    I'm going by memory here so the commands and file
    contents I list might not be completely accurate so I
    apologize for any confusion beforehand. I can't access
    the laptop anymore to verify =(

    I was using SuSE 8.2 on a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000
    with great success. The only problem was that the lcd
    brightness was really overbearing and straining my
    eyes. I asked for help on undernet in a linux support
    IRC channel and was told to do the following:
    % modprobe toshiba_acpi

    That command worked. Then I edited the following file
    /proc/acpi/toshiba/lcd

    The file had two lines. I don't remember the exact
    name of the second variable.
    Brightness: 7
    Maximumbrightness: 8

    I changed the first line "Brightness: 7" to 4. That
    worked too and I used that for a couple days. In fact
    for several days without any problems whatsoever. Then
    one day after changing the value to 4, I changed it to
    2. That dimmed the lcd a bit more and I proceeded to
    do some work when after a few seconds or minutes the
    laptop locked up. Windowmaker, X, the keyboard or
    mouse were not responding. I powered down the laptop
    using the on/off button. When I powered it back up the
    grub bootloader screen was displayed but the keyboard
    was not responding. It selected the default boot
    selection after the timeout period and booted Windows
    2000 where the keyboard and mouse were not working. I
    plugged in a USB mouse and then I could use the mouse
    that way. Still no keyboard. I'm going to buy a USB
    keyboard to test if that works.

    When this laptop boots up it is possible to type F12
    before the grub boot menu loads. Doing that gives the
    option to boot from cdrom, floppy, hard drive, network.
    I can type F12 but after that it won't let me choose
    anything else. Same thing if I try to go to the BIOS.
    If I type ESC before grub loads it says:
    "Check system and then press F1 to enter BIOS". Usually
    typing F1 after that message would let me configure the
    bios but it won't respond if I type F1 after ESC.

    This is where it gets even more weird. Once in a blue
    moon the keyboard and onboard mouse work and I am able
    to boot into either Windows or Linux and issue commands.
    But only for a few minutes after which the keyboard &
    mouse stop responding again. When this happened I was
    able to boot from CD and flashed the bios[1] hoping that
    would solve the problem but it didn't. It seems like
    after the first incident the fan doesn't seem to be
    working like it used to. The laptop starts to get really
    hot and then everything freezes. How could this affect
    the machine this way even when I'm not using linux?

    Can someone who is familiar with this laptop or has
    general knowledge about linux on laptop please give me
    some insight as to what is taking place? If I have made
    a big mistake then I would like to know what so I can
    learn from it. Thank you for reading this long post.

    [1]This is the bios utility I used:
    http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_dtlViewDL.jsp?soid=495595&moid=135844&BV_SessionID=@@@@0639729444.1069796000@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccccadcjmjiheelcgfkceghdgngdgll.0&ct=DL

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  • Next message: Michael James: "Re: [SLE] USB Mouse in SuSE 9 (SOLVED)"

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