FAQ
ContentsBRTableOfContents |
Please add quick Gotchas/FAQs that would be useful to other Laptop Testers under the correct heading. Feel free to add questions too.
Screen & Monitors
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.
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.
Power Management
Battery detected
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"]
Dim/Blank monitor
Bug reports should be filed against the linux-source-x.x.xx package according to your kernel version number.
Sound
Networking
Wired NIC
Wireless NIC
Gathering information about the problem Try running each of the following commands in a terminal, and add the results to your bug report.
ifconfig -a
tcpdump -i ethx
netstat -in
netstat -rn
PCMCIA NIC
Firewire
Bluetooth
Related packages
- bluez-utils
- linux-source-x.x.xx
Related info After each tip try again with your Bluetooth device.
- Are there any settings in your BIOS for Bluetooth?
- Is the device listed in /proc/bus/usb/devices?
- Restart your computer to clear away various logs and clutter, in a root terminal type
dmesg
... and post the output in your bug report.
- Test for detected hardware:
$ lspci -vv
Force start bluez-utils:
$ /etc/init.d/bluez-utils start
Test again for detected hardware:
$ lspci -vv
... add all that to your bug report, it shows whether after forcing bluez-utils to start the hardware was then detected'
- Maybe it's in hid mode and should be in hci mode, try switching with
hid2hci
... add the output to tour report
Modem
Touchpad & Mice
Docking Station/Port Replicator
Additional Hardware
Function and other keys
Hotkeys Bugs
Please file bug reports at:
following the instructions:
Needs categorising
If you know what category this/these should be in please move it/them and delete this section.
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`