Cures for 6.4.4 Video Crashes & Snags, Final Edition

Here is the toolkit of work-arounds I have found and use.
I invite your comments and additions to the same. The last
paragraph indicates a satisfactory 'final' state for me.

1...If the video problem still leaves you some modicum of control,
for example if your problem is missing frames on windows,
or if the only problem is that windows can't remember
to come up un-maximized, and BEFORE going to step two,
try the following:
a. unplug & replug mouse's nano; and/or
b. LXDE Menu item Preferences/(Re-) start ... Compiz; and/or
c. LXDE Menu item Preferences/Compiz...Mgr/Category Utility/,
for any fixes appropriate to your hardware.

2...If step one didn't solve your problem, or If your problem
is more serious as in an unresponsive keyboard, and/or
a cpu has gone into overload, then first try 2a, then 2b...
a. if lxpanel is set to hide-when-not-in-use, cancel GUI choice
immediately prior to hwniu, per LXDE bug report. If 2a fails,
b. ctrl-alt-backspace to reset X and re-gain control; likely not
100% successful, and work in progress may-be, and if using
Network Manager, wi-fi connection will-be lost.
If this doesn't work, then
c. reboot; likely 100% successful, but same hazards as in 2b.

3...For a more permanent fix, consider giving up on some complexity:
a. add no3d to /mnt-system/boot/syslog/syslog.cfg to disable Compiz.
b. uncheck the lxpanel hiding option.

After using Knoppix 6.4.4 for a while with no3d, I find about the
only video problem that occasionally turns up is with the lxpanel set
with the hide-when-not-in-use option. Now, usually solved with 2a.
I've not needed 2b since making the 2a modification in the GUI.
A big PLUS in the no3d case is an enormous improvement in apparent
responsiveness of the system to keyboard and/or GUI commands.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by utu

Here is the toolkit of work-arounds I have found and use.
I invite your comments and additions to the same. The last
paragraph indicates a satisfactory 'final' state for me.

1...If the video problem still leaves you some modicum of control,
for example if your problem is missing frames on windows,
or if the only problem is that windows can't remember
to come up un-maximized, and BEFORE going to step two,
try the following:
a. unplug & replug mouse's nano; and/or

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What is a "mouse's nano"? Are you talking about a wireless mouse USB transceiver, perhaps?

Quote:

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b. LXDE Menu item Preferences/(Re-) start ... Compiz; and/or
c. LXDE Menu item Preferences/Compiz...Mgr/Category Utility/,
for any fixes appropriate to your hardware.

2...If step one didn't solve your problem, or If your problem
is more serious as in an unresponsive keyboard, and/or
a cpu has gone into overload, then first try 2a, then 2b...
a. if lxpanel is set to hide-when-not-in-use, cancel GUI choice
immediately prior to hwniu, per LXDE bug report. If 2a fails,

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Huh? "hwinu"=???

Quote:

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b. ctrl-alt-backspace to reset X and re-gain control; likely not

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I've never gotten hotkey-combo this to work, nor the ctrl-Alt-Fx windows to go that way (need chvt x)

Quote:

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100% successful, and work in progress may-be, and if using
Network Manager, wi-fi connection will-be lost.
If this doesn't work, then
c. reboot; likely 100% successful, but same hazards as in 2b.

3...For a more permanent fix, consider giving up on some complexity:
a. add no3d to /mnt-system/boot/syslog/syslog.cfg to disable Compiz.

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I suspect you mean /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg - that's what it is in 6.2, anyway

Quote:

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b. uncheck the lxpanel hiding option.

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Where?

Quote:

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After using Knoppix 6.4.4 for a while with no3d, I find about the
only video problem that occasionally turns up is with the lxpanel set
with the hide-when-not-in-use option. Now, usually solved with 2a.
I've not needed 2b since making the 2a modification in the GUI.
A big PLUS in the no3d case is an enormous improvement in apparent
responsiveness of the system to keyboard and/or GUI commands.

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Thanks for pulling this together, and

Cheers!
Krishna :mrgreen:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by krishna.murphy

What is a "mouse's nano"?

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The mouse you use in the nano editor. :)

Just like Washington DC, nothing's ever 'final' here.

@ Krishna

Hi, Krishna.
Thanks for getting us un-polluted from the rainman.

I should have given a little more background, I suppose.
My video is i915. I use a 'nano' wireless mouse. 'nano' is the
transceiver that sits in USB slot 4 on my laptop.

'hwinu' look at the line just above it.
If you've found the lxpanel GUI to set hide-when-not-in-use,
under the Panel Settings/Advanced tab of the GUI,
after you check that box, uncheck the box just above it.
I call that box 'rsancbmw', but I thought that might be too
vague.

Touche. I mis-wrote syslog when I meant syslinux. in 3a.

I suspect ctl-alt-backspace may depend on hardware. For my
laptop it works on almost any distro. I know there is a
way to disable it, but I don't remember what that is.

@ Forester

FYI I believe that 'Occam's Razor' may be interpreted to mean:
"It's better not to know too much about some things".

For completeness, here's the LXDE bug report that suggests the obscure refinement 2a:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func...58&atid=894869

Note how unimportant it was assumed to be, and how it's 'fixed' already. As If.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by utu

3...For a more permanent fix, consider giving up on some complexity: a. add no3d to /mnt-system/boot/syslog/syslog.cfg to disable Compiz. b. uncheck the lxpanel hiding option.

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Thanks, perfect timing on posting that. I just now decided to search for how to disable Compiz, since I find it incredibly annoying. :) Is it possible to add this option somewhere in the boot defaults so that I don't have to enter it manually? I vaguely remember, back around Knoppix 3.7, that I could just edit the ISO (obviously before burning it) with a hex editor to change some of the boot defaults. One of the non-compressed boot files had the default options in it somewhere, with a huge block of "##############" (commented shell script) that could be overtyped or deleted to provide padding for people who wanted to change them, without having to go through the full remastering process.

@ FlameWeasel

Welcome to the forum, FlameWeasel.

I am embarassed to admit you have uncovered my typos in the above line.
It should read /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg. (syslinux not syslog)

This is how I disable Compiz in my liveUSB set-up. Just re-defines the DEFAULT declarations.
No re-mastering here. Just another advantage to the LiveUSB approach.

The equivalent in a LiveCD, without remastering, is just to use a
cheatcode at the start: just add 'knoppix no3d' at the start of the boot process,
without the quotes, of course.

I don't hate Compiz, I just don't have a use for it.
The improvement in responsiveness without it is something I can appreciate.

If you have some other arrangement than Knoppix 6.2 or 6.4 and LiveCD or LiveUSB,
we may have to call in our gurus. My scope is pretty small.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by utu

@ FlameWeasel Welcome to the forum, FlameWeasel.

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Welcome yourself! I've been around longer than you! :) :) (Actually, this is my second account here; the first was set up using a Yahoo email address, and I forgot the passwords to both so was locked out of it.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by utu

I am embarassed to admit you have uncovered my typos in the above line.
It should read /mnt-system/boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg. (syslinux not syslog)

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I think that was Krishna Murphy; my Linux configuration knowledge is almost nonexistent. Programming, no problem; configuring, no way. :( Many thanks, though. Just tried it, and it's blazingly fast compared to with Compiz running. (I think the flaming closing windows are cute, but I'd rather have a fast system without memory leaks and occasional crashes.)

Considering your number of posts,
I thought maybe you thought you weren't welcome.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by utu

Considering your number of posts,
I thought maybe you thought you weren't welcome.

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Well, I thought I'd try replying through a "notification", but the board says you cannot receive them, so I guess I'll write publicly.

I appreciate the thought. It's not exactly that, though, but close. I've used the Knoppix forum on and off for far longer than this account has existed; I don't remember what my previous accounts were here, but I started using Knoppix, and participating here, in early 2004. (Shortly thereafter, I built a new computer and had to switch to Morphix, because Klaus refused to put the "unfree" NVidia video drivers into Knoppix, but still visited here occasionally, and then I moved to a place without internet for a while, and then moved back to civilization, and so on and so forth. You get the idea. Anyway.)

There are two reasons I don't hang around here much. First, because I really have very little to contribute. My technical knowledge of Linux is not high, and the questions here are mostly about Knoppix or Linux configuration. If someone wanted to know about C++ programming or scripting, which were my areas, they probably wouldn't be asking here.

The second reason is, because I almost never get an answer here. Perhaps the forum is simply too dead. Usually, either no one responds, or I get some smart-ass nonsense about "you must prove to us that your computer is flawless, your optical disk was burned perfectly, and that you have recently brushed your teeth before we will condescend to think about the problem that you claim to have experienced but that we do not believe really exists." Why bother, no one is going to answer anyway.

Tonight I fixed a problem that I have asked about, and I believe seen asked, repeatedly. Knoppix has a tendency to blow up the X11 server due to memory leaks. This was why I hated Compiz -- it's so leaky that it causes crashes frequently. When that happens, Knoppix simply kills all the processes and shuts down, with no possibility of recovering data that is on the ramdisk.

It's a stupid design, and if I were dictator, Klaus would be shot for it. Well, ok, maybe thrown into the scorpion pit instead. "Dipl.Ing." my hairy ass, this would be unacceptable from a first-year programming student.

I had managed to track down where the X11 server was started from, and I changed the script so that it was in a forever loop. That usually works -- the X11 server dies horribly, then my loop restarts it. About 80% of the time, I could now save my data.

But sometimes the crash is because cached code pages got corrupted somehow, and when that happens, the X11 server crashes again as soon as it restarts -- an infinite loop of crashes. Other times, I'm not sure what happens, but the machine simply freezes up; it seems like the machine has gone down to a text console in the background, but graphics mode is still set, and nothing works to view the text console. Maybe the keyboard is still in raw mode, or something. I don't know. Nothing that I've tried has worked, not even the so-called "magic sysreq" -- at best, that will sometimes cause the machine to shut down the rest of the way, which is incredibly irritating. I don't want to shut it down, I want to save my unsaved data.

Well, you know what? My laptop still responds to the power button even when everything else has crashed -- it won't actually shut off, I have to rip the battery out of the back to accomplish that, but the disk access light goes on when I push the power button, so SOMETHING still happens.

So, by changing the "powerbtn.sh" script, I came up with a way to save the data. The laptop has a hard drive, and the script now forces all data from the Desktop directory over to a directory on that drive. X11 just crashed about 20 minutes ago on my machine, and so I was able to do a real-world test, and it worked. I have no idea if it will work every time, but at least it's SOMETHING. Tonight, it saved several hours of writing for a class paper due on Monday.

So, I'm back here to post it. Maybe it'll save someone else's data. Maybe Klaus will fix the startx script so that people can save their data manually. Maybe pigs will fly. Most likely, it'll disappear without a trace, but at least I'll have tried.

Thanks again for the Compiz fix. It's extremely useful to me -- I think it's the first time in a few years that I've gotten a useful answer off Knoppix.net. I appreciate it a LOT, and I appreciate your note above.