[gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[CJoeB]

Happy Holidays, Everyone,

To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop). 
Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.

Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
the mouse work.

Any ideas?

Regards,

Colleen

-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Dan Cowsill]

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On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 11:08 AM, CJoeB <colleen.beamer@gmail.com> wrote:

> Happy Holidays, Everyone,
>
> To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
> issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop).
> Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
> monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
> screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
> the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
> button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.
>
> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
> the mouse work.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Regards,
>
> Colleen
>
> --
>
> Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter,
> http://counter.li.org
>
>
>
>
When the screen locks, is it the whole computer?  Can you do a CTRL+F7 and
get to a console?

As to your current predicament, I would give a livecd a try and see if the
keyboard and mouse work in that.

What I'm driving at here is that your problem may be hardware-related.

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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Michael Hampicke]

> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
> the mouse work.

Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers

# emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 11:08 AM, CJoeB <colleen.beamer@gmail.com> wrote:
> Happy Holidays, Everyone,
>
> To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
> issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop).
> Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
> monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
> screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
> the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
> button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.
>
> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
> the mouse work.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Regards,
>
> Colleen
>
> --
>
> Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org
>
>
>

I got burned by this one also. re-emerge all the xf86 module stuff for
your keyboard, etc. I've got it all in my module-rebuild -C rebuild
list. Once you do that you'll likely be OK.

You''ll either want to ssh in to do this or you might want to reboot,
modifying your boot kernel line adding gentoo=nox to not start X at
all, re-emerge and then start X to test.

Good luck,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[CJoeB]

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On 12/25/11 14:08, Dan Cowsill wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 11:08 AM, CJoeB <colleen.beamer@gmail.com
> <mailto:colleen.beamer@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Happy Holidays, Everyone,
>
>     To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know
>     about an
>     issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop).
>     Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
>     monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the
>     monitor), the
>     screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I
>     can get
>     the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
>     button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.
>
>     Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still
>     had my
>     KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
>     anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The
>     computer
>     booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
>     the mouse work.
>
>     Any ideas?
>
>     Regards,
>
>     Colleen
>
>     --
>
>     Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter,
>     http://counter.li.org
>
>
>
>
> When the screen locks, is it the whole computer?  Can you do a CTRL+F7
> and get to a console?
When this happens, the screen is either black (cause the monitor has
gone to sleep), black, but I can see my mouse cursor and it will move
around if I move my mouse around, or I will have my KDE desktop, but
neither the mouse nor the keyboard will work.
>
> As to your current predicament, I would give a livecd a try and see if
> the keyboard and mouse work in that.

I can do this, but the computer isn't that old and up until today when I
rebooted the computer by holding the power button, on reboot, the mouse
and the keyboard worked fine.

And although the computer is new, I've screwed the warranty because I
removed Windows and there is only Linux on my computer.

-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org


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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[pk]

On 2011-12-25 20:08, CJoeB wrote:

> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
> the mouse work.
> 
> Any ideas?

Maybe this:
http://chithanh.blogspot.com/2011/12/xorg-server-111-going-stable.html

?

Best regards

Peter K

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Mick]

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On Sunday 25 Dec 2011 19:20:56 Michael Hampicke wrote:
> > Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
> > KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
> > anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
> > booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
> > the mouse work.
> 
> Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
> ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers
> 
> # emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)

+1

This is most likely related to the recent xorg updates, which as Michael 
suggests should be resolved by remerging all the xorg related drivers.

I'm not sure why your monitor will not wake up from sleep though.  That's not 
normal.  Have you tried going through the power settings of KDE in case it has 
been set up to sleep to RAM or hibernate and your set up has some acpi problem 
that causes it to crash?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[CJoeB]

On 12/25/11 14:20, Michael Hampicke wrote:
>> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
>> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
>> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
>> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
>> the mouse work.
> Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
> ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers
>
> # emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)

It's a little hard to do that since, I boot to a login screen and
neither my keyboard nor mouse work - despite the fact that the cursor
places itself in the password field on the login screen, I can't enter
my password since the keyboard doesn't work.  :-)

Regards,

Colleen
>


-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[CJoeB]

On 12/25/11 14:27, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 11:08 AM, CJoeB <colleen.beamer@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Happy Holidays, Everyone,
>>
>> To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
>> issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop).
>> Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
>> monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
>> screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
>> the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
>> button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.
>>
>> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
>> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
>> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
>> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
>> the mouse work.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Colleen
>>
>> --
>>
>> Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org
>>
>>
>>
> I got burned by this one also. re-emerge all the xf86 module stuff for
> your keyboard, etc. I've got it all in my module-rebuild -C rebuild
> list. Once you do that you'll likely be OK.
>
> You''ll either want to ssh in to do this or you might want to reboot,
> modifying your boot kernel line adding gentoo=nox to not start X at
> all, re-emerge and then start X to test.

I haven't completely done this, but I did enter the 'gentoo=nox' to my
kernel line and I got the command prompt.  Thank you SO much for this! 
You may not know it, but Santa just gave me another present!  :-)

Regards,

Colleen



-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 03:51:02PM -0500, CJoeB wrote:

> > Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
> > ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers
> >
> > # emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)
> 
> It's a little hard to do that since, I boot to a login screen and
> neither my keyboard nor mouse work - despite the fact that the cursor
> places itself in the password field on the login screen, I can't enter
> my password since the keyboard doesn't work.  :-)

Well then leave the graphical login out. Either boot to single user mode
(kernel command line parameter "single", IIRC) or exclude xdm from starting
during boot by pressing I after the relevant message appeared, and then saying
"skip" for the xdm service.
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

Poverty is not a disgrace, but a bloody nuisance.

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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 10:13:22PM +0100, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:

> > It's a little hard to do that since, I boot to a login screen and
> > neither my keyboard nor mouse work […]
> 
> Well then leave the graphical login out. […]

Whoops, that’s what you get if you send answers without reading all new mails
first. -_-
-- 
Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
I forbid any use of my email addresses with Facebook services.

“The Vatican is not a state.… a state must have people. There are no
Vaticanians.… No-one gets born in the Vatican except by an unfortunate
accident.” — Geoffrey Robertson

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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[CJoeB]

On 12/25/11 15:08, Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 25 Dec 2011 19:20:56 Michael Hampicke wrote:
>>> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
>>> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
>>> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
>>> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
>>> the mouse work.
>> Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
>> ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers
>>
>> # emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)
> +1
>
> This is most likely related to the recent xorg updates, which as Michael 
> suggests should be resolved by remerging all the xorg related drivers.

Solved!  Thank you all so much!! Re-emerging the x related drivers
solved the issue.  Thanks for this tip and how to prevent x from loading
on boot!  You guys are GREAT!  Thanks for being there when I can't
figure out something on my own!
> I'm not sure why your monitor will not wake up from sleep though.  That's not 
> normal.  Have you tried going through the power settings of KDE in case it has 
> been set up to sleep to RAM or hibernate and your set up has some acpi problem 
> that causes it to crash?

I'll look into this!   Thanks!

Happy Holidays!

Colleen


-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org

[gentoo-user] Re: I'm in a Pickle

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 12/25/2011 09:08 PM, CJoeB wrote:
> Happy Holidays, Everyone,
>
> To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
> issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop).
> Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
> monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
> screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
> the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
> button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.

You shouldn't do that.  There's the SysRq key combination to safely exit 
all programs, umount the filesystem and reboot.

You can Google for it.  Wikipedia also has an article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

(The "SysRq" key is usually the "PrintScrn" key.)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: I'm in a Pickle

[Colleen Beamer]

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On 12/25/11 16:54, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 12/25/2011 09:08 PM, CJoeB wrote:
>> Happy Holidays, Everyone,
>>
>> To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
>> issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop).
>> Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
>> monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
>> screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
>> the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
>> button. This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.
>
> You shouldn't do that. There's the SysRq key combination to safely exit
all programs, umount the filesystem and reboot.
Yeah,  *know* I shouldn't do that!  :-)  However, you just "taught" me
something I didn't know.
>
> You can Google for it. Wikipedia also has an article:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
>
> (The "SysRq" key is usually the "PrintScrn" key.)

Thanks for this!

Regards,

Colleen

-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: I'm in a Pickle

[Dale]

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Colleen Beamer wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for this!
>
> Regards,
>
> Colleen
>
>

This may help too.  This is from a post Neil made a long time ago:

[QUOTE]

Hold down Atl, hold down SysRq, press each of the keys in turn. The usual
full sequence is R-E-I-S-U-B

Reboot
Even
If
System
Utterly
Broken

[END QUOTE]

Don't forget to build support in the kernel too.  I think this is the only one needed:

root@fireball / # zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i sysrq
CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=y
root@fireball / #

Usually I only get to about the E or I then I get a console.  Getting the processes sorted out is the hard part tho.  At least you can do a clean shutdown and reboot tho.

Hope that helps.

Dale

:-)  :-)


-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: I'm in a Pickle

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> Colleen Beamer wrote:
>
>
>
> Thanks for this!
>
> Regards,
>
> Colleen
>
>
>
> This may help too.  This is from a post Neil made a long time ago:
>
> [QUOTE]
>
> Hold down Atl, hold down SysRq, press each of the keys in turn. The usual
> full sequence is R-E-I-S-U-B
>
> Reboot
> Even
> If
> System
> Utterly
> Broken
>
> [END QUOTE]
>
> Don't forget to build support in the kernel too.  I think this is the only
> one needed:
>
> root@fireball / # zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i sysrq
> CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=y
> root@fireball / #
>
> Usually I only get to about the E or I then I get a console.  Getting the
> processes sorted out is the hard part tho.  At least you can do a clean
> shutdown and reboot tho.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-)
>
>
> --
> I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how
> you interpreted my words!
>
> Miss the compile output?  Hint:
> EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Being that this is the third time the xorg drivers issue has cropped
up in the last week, I put together another blog post for it.

http://funnybutnot.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/xorg-updating-from-1-10-to-1-11-and-fixing-your-system/

-- 
:wq

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: I'm in a Pickle

[Dale]

Michael Mol wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 25, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Dale<rdalek1967@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Colleen Beamer wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks for this!
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Colleen
>>
>>
>>
>> This may help too.  This is from a post Neil made a long time ago:
>>
>> [QUOTE]
>>
>> Hold down Atl, hold down SysRq, press each of the keys in turn. The usual
>> full sequence is R-E-I-S-U-B
>>
>> Reboot
>> Even
>> If
>> System
>> Utterly
>> Broken
>>
>> [END QUOTE]
>>
>> Don't forget to build support in the kernel too.  I think this is the only
>> one needed:
>>
>> root@fireball / # zcat /proc/config.gz | grep -i sysrq
>> CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=y
>> root@fireball / #
>>
>> Usually I only get to about the E or I then I get a console.  Getting the
>> processes sorted out is the hard part tho.  At least you can do a clean
>> shutdown and reboot tho.
>>
>> Hope that helps.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
>>
>>
>> --
>> I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how
>> you interpreted my words!
>>
>> Miss the compile output?  Hint:
>> EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"
> Being that this is the third time the xorg drivers issue has cropped
> up in the last week, I put together another blog post for it.
>
> http://funnybutnot.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/xorg-updating-from-1-10-to-1-11-and-fixing-your-system/
>

This happens every time another version of xorg goes stable.  I have to 
admit, I forgot to recompile mine too.  I noticed the upgrade but forgot 
to re-emerge the drivers.  I doubt this will change anytime soon 
either.  We are human and emerge doesn't do it automagically, yet.

Maybe I need to add that to my sig.  lol

Dale

:-)  :-)

-- 
I am only responsible for what I said ... Not for what you understood or how you interpreted my words!

Miss the compile output?  Hint:
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--quiet-build=n"

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Mick]

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On Sunday 25 Dec 2011 19:28:35 CJoeB wrote:
> On 12/25/11 14:08, Dan Cowsill wrote:

> I can do this, but the computer isn't that old and up until today when I
> rebooted the computer by holding the power button, on reboot, the mouse
> and the keyboard worked fine.
> 
> And although the computer is new, I've screwed the warranty because I
> removed Windows and there is only Linux on my computer.

It is worth noting for future cases like this that the warranty may not be 
screwed up at all - unless the small print explicitly says so and even then 
you may be still able to claim that they fix any hardware fault under the 
warranty.

There was a woman who had removed the MSWindows OS from her new laptop and 
when the keyboard failed the company that sold it to her refused to deal with 
it without the original OS installed.

Eventually the company reneged and replaced the broken component.

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/07/03/27/1753218/hp-dishonors-warranty-if-you-
load-linux

I believe that there's more than one cases that this has happened, so removing 
MSWindows may not nullify your legal consumer rights.

I do however as a matter of course retain the original installation just-in-
case and install Gentoo as a dual boot, if only to save myself the argument 
with some poor idiot reading from a script on some service department in the 
future.  These days with massive hard drives there's enough space to keep both 
OS.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Paul Hartman]

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On 12/25/2011 01:08 PM, CJoeB wrote:
> Happy Holidays, Everyone,
> 
> To lead into the problem I am experiencing, I will let you know about an
> issue I've been having with my desktop (writing this from my laptop). 
> Every once in a while, when the screensaver kicks in and then, the
> monitor goes on power save mode (something inherent to the monitor), the
> screen locks (I have not set it to do this) and the only way, I can get
> the computer going again is to reboot it by holding down the power
> button.  This is annoying, but has not caused an issue until today.

I had similar and similarly-weird problems caused by a faulty video
card. After removing it, I could see that the capacitors were
domed/cracked and the card obviously got fried somehow... it still
worked most of the time, but was unstable (especially coming out of
power-saving it would exhibit problems or freeze the system). I could
usually still SSH in from another machine and do a proper shutdown, but
not always.


> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
> the mouse work.

Maybe part of the world update was x11 stuff and the @x11-module-rebuild
set didn't get emerged yet.


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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Paul Hartman]

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On 12/25/2011 02:51 PM, CJoeB wrote:
> On 12/25/11 14:20, Michael Hampicke wrote:
>>> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
>>> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
>>> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
>>> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
>>> the mouse work.
>> Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
>> ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers
>>
>> # emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)
> 
> It's a little hard to do that since, I boot to a login screen and
> neither my keyboard nor mouse work - despite the fact that the cursor
> places itself in the password field on the login screen, I can't enter
> my password since the keyboard doesn't work.  :-)

If it happens again, in GRUB edit the kernel commandline and append
"gentoo=nox" to it and that will prevent Gentoo from starting your
graphical login manager. Or, better yet, create a second menu entry in
grub for "no X" right now, so it'll be there if you need it in the future.


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Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Colleen Beamer]

On 12/26/11 14:54, Paul Hartman wrote:
> On 12/25/2011 02:51 PM, CJoeB wrote:
>> On 12/25/11 14:20, Michael Hampicke wrote:
>>>> Today, I was doing a world update and the screen locked - I still had my
>>>> KDE desktop up, but couldn't open a window to kill any processes or
>>>> anything.  So, I held the power button to cause a reboot.  The computer
>>>> booted okay and gave me my login screen, but neither the keyboard nor
>>>> the mouse work.
>>> Wild guess: xorg-server was upgraded to a newer version with changed
>>> ABI, so you have to remerge everthing installed under x11-drivers
>>>
>>> # emerge -1a $(qlist -I -C x11-drivers/)
>> It's a little hard to do that since, I boot to a login screen and
>> neither my keyboard nor mouse work - despite the fact that the cursor
>> places itself in the password field on the login screen, I can't enter
>> my password since the keyboard doesn't work.  :-)
> If it happens again, in GRUB edit the kernel commandline and append
> "gentoo=nox" to it and that will prevent Gentoo from starting your
> graphical login manager. Or, better yet, create a second menu entry in
> grub for "no X" right now, so it'll be there if you need it in the future.
Thanks.  This info was already provided to me.  I made a note of it in
the place where I keep my "Gentoo tips" so, I'll have this available to
me if I need it again!  :-)

Regards,

Colleen

-- 

Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org

Re: [gentoo-user] I'm in a Pickle

[Stroller]

On 26 December 2011, at 09:44, Mick wrote:
> On Sunday 25 Dec 2011 19:28:35 CJoeB wrote:
>> …
>> And although the computer is new, I've screwed the warranty because I
>> removed Windows and there is only Linux on my computer.
> 
> It is worth noting for future cases like this that the warranty may not be 
> screwed up at all

In Europe the warranty is absolutely certainly definitely unaffected by the use of Linux.

I would very much doubt the situation is different in the USA.

An installation of Windows is necessary, however, in order to reasonably and amicably prove the fault to the supplier. It's quite fair for the supplier to limit support only to operating systems with which they have experience.

I know we're all very excited when we get our new toys, but this just underscores the need to make the very first boot of the new system one from a LiveCD, using it to make an image of the factory o/s installation. If you pipe dd through bzip2 (documented a million places on the net) then the size of the full disk image will reflect only (approximately) the amount of data on there - i.e. only a few gig, even for a huge modern hard-drive.

If this advice is too late for the OP then it may be possible to arrange an official Microsoft version of the OEM Windows installation DVD - it should be possible to activate this with the license sticker attached to the laptop's underside. The Microsoft OEM disks will generally produce a cleaner installation of Windows than the factory install, as the latter tends to include a bunch of extra crapware, but they're often lacking drivers that you'll need, and it can sometimes take a while to find and download the right ones (although my experience with Windows 7 is limited).

Stroller.