PC locks up after 5 or 10 minutes setting idle

[Snipor]

I'm running Red Hat Linux 7.1. Before that I had an older version of OpenLinux running, and even before that I had Wind2k Pro running. Neither the Wind2k or OpenLinux gave me any problems. Now I installed Red Hat 7.1 and after 5 or 10 minutes of sitting idle (nobody using it) it locks up. The screen goes blank (or if the screensave is on, it just locks up) and I have manually hard boot the computer.

The pc is a Pentium 200 w/MMX, 92 mg memory, 3 gig harddrive, 4mg video card using default SVGA drivers, and a D-link network card.

I've turned off all power handling features in Bios. But is still does it. I disabled power handling features in linux.

Any ideas? I know my hardware is solid sense I was running two other operating sytems on it before.

 

[ifincham]

Hi,



Maybe its someting to do with the way redhat sees you hard-drive. You could try to turn-off spin-down with '/sbin/hdparm -S 0 /dev/hda' so that the drive doesn't go into standby mode when not used and see if that makes a difference.



Also try to set the screensaver interval under the Gnome Control Center, (i.e. 'Settings..' (toolbox icon) under the System menu ) to something short like one minute and see if the hangs still happen.



Rgds

 

[Snipor]

I apologize, but I am new to Linux (2 weeks to be exact). Do I just type that line in that you gave me? Or do I need to go to that directory and edit a file to put that string in? Thank you in advance.

 

[ifincham]

Hi,



You would open a console/terminal window (xterm) and type in there. [Programs.. Utilities.. terminal ] or press the icon that looks like a Screen with the Gnome foot symbol.

Once you're in the terminal window, first you have to become superuser by type su and entering the root password when prompted.
Then enter hdparm command - e.g.

[you@localhost you]$ su
Password:
[root@localhost you]#/sbin/hdparm -S 0 /dev/hda
[root@localhost you]#exit
[you@localhost you]$exit


Rgds

 

[Snipor]

Thanks for the help. I'll try that

 

[Guest_imported]

because I have EXACTLY the same problem I am wondering if that advice (switching off the standby function on the harddrive) helped.

 

[Snipor]

What I found best to work is to stop apmd first after booting by typing in:

service apmd stop

this kills apmd service. Now leave your computer alone for awhile and see if it locks up, if not, then that's the problem.

you can then prevent apmd from loading during boot by typing

/usr/sbin/ntsysv

this will bring up a small config program. All you need to do is deselect apmd from the list.

Next time you boot, apmd will not be loaded