FAQ
ContentsBRTableOfContents |
LaptopTestingTeam FAQ
Please add quick Gotchas/FAQs that would be useful to other Laptop Testers under the correct heading.
Screen & Monitors
Power Management
Sound
Networking
Touchpad & Mice
Docking Station/Port Replicator
Additional Hardware
Function and other keys
Hibernate
Hibernate (System->Logout->Hibernate, aka 'Suspend to Disk') will only work if have a valid and working swap partition. There kernel will complain with an error message such as:
Aug 30 23:02:35 localhost kernel: [4325496.559000] Stopping tasks: ==============| Aug 30 23:02:36 localhost kernel: [4325496.572000] Freeing memory... ^H-^H\^H|^H/^Hdone (68051 pages freed) Aug 30 23:02:36 localhost kernel: [4325497.815000] swsusp: FATAL: cannot find swap device, try swapon -a! Aug 30 23:02:36 localhost kernel: [4325497.815000] swsusp: Restoring Highmem
You can see if you have one by doing:
$ cat /proc/swaps Filename Type Size Used Priority /dev/sda5 partition 979924 211768 -1
Suspend/Sleep
If sleep button does not work, try testing Sleep from the System->Log Out->Suspend menu. If that does not work either, or the option to Suspend does even not show up, check if Sleep is enabled in /etc/default/acpi-support (uncomment the "ACPI_SLEEP=true" line to enable), and try again. ~~["Nanotube"]
X failing to start
If X is totally busted and gives you the (blue) dialogue screen stating that X is failing start, but you are unable to send any keypresses. The following may get you out of the situation enough to debug it.
- Pressing Ctrl-d (end-of-file) may send the keystrokes that you have typed but which have been buffered and haven't appeared.
Pressing Alt-SysRq-e should kill most programs and allow you to switch to another virtual terminal using Alt-F2, where you should (hopefully) find a login-prompt.
ACPI DSDT replacement
If you have a buggy DSDT on your machine and the ACPI isn't working, it's possible to extract and fix it. A new one can be loaded at boot-time to override the one in the BIOS by placing it in:
sudo cp my-fixed-dsdt.aml /etc/mkinitramfs/DSDT.aml sudo mkinitramfs -o /boot/initrd.img-`uname -r` `uname -r`
Testing 3D
$ which glxgears | xargs strings | grep benchmark | xargs glxgears 4913 frames in 5.0 seconds = 982.508 FPS
LunaTick: From LaptopTesting - the best way to test this is to start a terminal and type the following:
glxinfo | grep rendering
This will print either "direct rendering: Yes" or "direct rendering: No"
Dropping to a lower color depth or resolution may enable direct rendering on laptops with little video memory.
Hotkeys Bugs
Please file bug reports at:
following the instructions: