The upgrade went smoothly. I was happy to see that my install and setup of wicd and all my Firefox add-ons carried over. The problem with the laptop going to sleep mode 5 seconds are starting up returned, but I expected that since I allowed the upgrade to overwrite the changes I had made to my /etc/default/acpi-support file described in my previous post.
1. The First Step Towards Resolving the Sleep Problem
I have suspected that the problem stems from running the laptop without a battery installed (mine is in such bad shape, the computer complains if I put it in). I decided to test this theory indirectly, so I booted with the kernel options "noapm noacpi acpi=off apm=off". Once booted I went to Applications->Settings->Power Management. I think there was a tab there called "On Battery Power" where I chose "Do Nothing" when battery power is low. I intended to post a screen shot, but that tab has diasppeared (why??).
The results:
- The laptop tries to go to sleep once during boot, but once awoken, it usually finishes booting with no further problems. I've noticed that it does a battery check during startup, so I'll try to disable that and see if it fixes the problem.
- The whole system has a bit of flakiness. Sometimes my WiFi card doesn't get power during boot-up, sometimes it does. Sliding it out of the pc card slot and back in usually does the trick. Sometimes it doesn't finish shutdown, and sometimes the hard disk doesn't come alive at all on boot (I think when I do a restart rather than a full shutdown). I'll keep looking into these issues.
I went to Applications->System->Services and disabled acpid and apmd (and bluetooth too since this machine doesn't have it).
The results:
- Smooth boot from cold start - hooray!
- Standby mode works. Maybe it did before too, never tested it.
- The "restart" option doesn't work. The computer restarts, but the hard disk appears to never come alive. Not a significant problem really, just a little annoying.
1. Try disabling acpid and apmd independently
2. Install in "desktop" mode rather than "laptop" mode so there is no expectation of a battery?
3. Search on why my hard disk might not comeback after a "restart".
Thanks for posting this info. I have an l400 that i installed xubuntu 7.1 on a few months ago, never got a chance to use it other than make sure it boot ok, now, months later, i decided to up to 8.1, similar results as you, strange, flakey behavior, sometimes (rarely) it boots with no probs, usually it doesn't, ending in something about alsa shutting down, no errors, just shuts down alsa and turns off (possibly goes to sleep?). Tried a few things, nogo, so i'm downgrading to 7.1 again.. Strange thing, suddenly after booting the install cd for 7.1, only the upper half of the screen works right, the lower half is just vertical lines.. Anyways, just a few bits..
ReplyDeleteFYI turned out i had several cds burned, for xubuntu and ubuntu. The 8.1 i tried installing was xubuntu. When i mentioned i was downgrading to 7.1, i used the wrong cd, it was ubuntu not xubuntu, the install wouldn;t complete, just hung. I resinstalled xubuntu 7.1 and it went without a problem.
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