[PLUG] Computer hell

[Robert Citek]

If this system turns into a brick, do you have a fall-back solution?
That is, do you have a spare system from which you can restore your
backups?  Have you tested the restore recently?

Regards,
- Robert


On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:54 AM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net> wrote:
> Yesterday, just before shutting down my System76 Bonobo Extreme laptop
> (Sager NP9380) to go to the Clinic I applied a number of updates to my
> Xubuntu 13.10 x86_64. When I restarted it at the Clinic I noticed that
> it was taking a very long time to boot Eventually I shut it down and
> restarted it, after which it booted normally. Grub is set to "quiet" so
> I can't say what it was hanging on.
>
> Several hours later the screen suddenly became distorted. It appeared
> as if there was some RF interference that was causing "static." After
> puzzling about it I rebooted, which went fast as it usually does, and
> the video problem disappeared. The video is a GeForce GTX 750M, and I
> am using only the Intel video in the chip.
>
> When I got home I restarted the computer and it proceeded normally.
> However, my computer life was about to enter hell. I spent an hour
> updating the PLUG flyer, intending to print new ones for OSCON, only to
> discover that my network had lost the conection to the printer. It took
> an hour to solve the problem (I *hate* network issues!), and then I
> discovered that there is something wrong with the cyan in the printer.
> An hour later I gave up trying to fix it. We'll have to make do with the
> old flyers.
>
> I continued with other things at he computer, and as I was doing so I
> knocked a liter of soda directly into the keyboard. I dried it up as
> much as I could, and it seemed to be functioning normally, although
> occasionally a key would give me an unexpected result, like a shift-W
> would suddenly switch to another workspace. It continued to work until
> I went to bed.
>
> This morning the keyboard was mostly dead. Occasionally a key would do
> something, but always some bizarre result. I decided to reboot, and as
> it was shutting down the screen started flashing continually and the
> shutdown process was hung. Eventually I just hit the power button. When
> I rebooted I got the Grub menu instead of booting directly as it
> normally does (probably because of he abnormal shutdown). I could not
> progress because the keyboard was not working (Grub menu doesn't
> recognize the mouse). It occurred to me to borrow the USB keyboard from
> my desktop in order to continue booting, but it did not work.
> Eventually I decided to reboot again, and when I did so the keyboard
> from the desktop worked to get me into the BIOS; in other words, if the
> USB keyboard works as early as the BIOS, the failure to recognize the
> keyboard must be a problem somewhere in Grub or Ubuntu.
>
> I decided to boot to an Xubuntu 14.04 live DVD that I had lying here.
> While it booted the screen flashed continually, but eventually it
> finished booting. I have booted to this live DVD before and I never
> experienced the screen flashing. The keyboard from the desktop works
> fine in it, but the laptop keyboard is still dead.
>
> I called System76 just now and a replacement keyboard will cost
> probably $100. I have never replaced a laptop keyboard, but I suppose
> it is doable. What bothers me is that apparently there is some video
> issue as well as a keyboard issue, and the video issue started long
> before the keyboard went swimming.
>
> I'm going for a walk to clear my head. Meantime, any suggestions are
> welcome.
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