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From: Theo Markettos on 4 Jul 2010 18:52

I was merrily typing away into an SSH session on my netbook running Ubuntu
Netbook Remix, when all of a sudden the screen went black, but with the
backlight still on.

So I tried the usual procedure: Ctrl-Alt-F1 to see if I could get a terminal
up. That worked. So I tried Ctrl-Alt-F7 to see if I could force the video
driver to refresh the X screen. Back to black backlit screen.

Let's try Ctrl-Alt-F1 again, where at least I can get at a terminal. No
joy... everything still black. Try various (Ctrl-)Alt-F1/F2 etc
combinations to see if any virtual terminals are working, and held them down
for a bit in case something was loading the machine and the keypresses were
slow in getting through. Nothing.

Ctrl-Alt-Del... nothing. OK, power button time. I pushed the power button
with a single press to see what would happen, before the nuclear option of
holding it down.

To my surprise, the machine suspended. Right, let's see what happens if we
resume. Ah, the desktop comes back up again with all my applications still
there. Great.

Hang on a minute... a row of 'Help' icons started to fill the taskbar, and
the machine was very slow.

Turns out that all my F1 pressing had launched several hundred GNOME Help
applications, which proceeded to exhaust all available memory. At this
point the system really did crash.


Anyone else like to relate similar ways in which things have gone
spectacularly wrong?

Theo
(on a freshly rebooted netbook)
From: Tom Anderson on 4 Jul 2010 19:28
On Sun, 4 Jul 2010, Theo Markettos wrote:

> Turns out that all my F1 pressing had launched several hundred GNOME
> Help applications, which proceeded to exhaust all available memory. At
> this point the system really did crash.

This is a brilliant story.

> Anyone else like to relate similar ways in which things have gone
> spectacularly wrong?

Mine is a bit more vague, so imagine this being told by Rowley Birkin QC.

Plugged my netbook, running Eeebuntu 3.0, into an external monitor for the
first time. Not a lot happened. Poking about, found i had a 'toggle
external monitor' option in the EeeTray applet menu. External monitor came
on, but at the wrong resolution. Hit it again to switch it off so i could
try some things - but the *internal* monitor went off. Hit it again. This
time, it worked, and the external monitor went off.

Leaving me with a running machine, and no working monitors.

I did eventually get things back to normal, but it took a reboot and then
further fiddling (my screen had switched to some 4:3 aspect ratio rather
than widescreen). And for some reason, all my panel icons are in a
different order.

tom

--
sh(1) was the first MOO
From: Chris Davies on 5 Jul 2010 04:54
Tom Anderson <twic(a)urchin.earth.li> wrote:
> And for some reason, all my panel icons are in a different order.

I get /so/ frustrated with my panel icons swapping order. It doesn't
appear to be strongly related to adding/removing second screens, so any
clues would be greatfully appreciated.

Chris
From: Theo Markettos on 5 Jul 2010 15:26
Chris Davies <chris-usenet(a)roaima.co.uk> wrote:
> I get /so/ frustrated with my panel icons swapping order. It doesn't
> appear to be strongly related to adding/removing second screens, so any
> clues would be greatfully appreciated.

I added an extra section to the System Monitor panel icon (normally have 3
sections for CPU, network, disk - then added RAM) and that caused everything
to swap around. I did wonder if it was something to do with sorting the
icons by size so that the longest was on the left - but on the other machine
the (long) date is in the middle of a row, so that can't be it. I think
changing one of them was the cause for my swapping, but not sure why.

Theo
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