[CentOS] Nearly Instant Karma

Wed Feb 17 12:26:42 UTC 2016
Chris Olson <chris_e_olson at yahoo.com>

Our smallest network has just three systems permanently attached
to a 100/1000 router.  There is one additional port available to
temporarily plug in a laptop.  The largest systems are both Dells,
one running Windows 7 and one running CentOS 6.7.  The Windows 7
system supports three flavors of Linux as virtual machines.  The
CentOS system is often used for data file import from USB-attached
devices such as cell phones, charging batteries in the USB-attached
devices, and for access to external email accounts.

The CentOS system was in power save mode when I plugged in a Samsung
cell phone for charging and extraction of several photo files. I then
moved to the Windows 7 system to do some "paper work" on a web site
that is known to require the use of IE for browser access.  While on
the Windows 7 system I did a quick email check and responded to one
of our contacts at a remote site.  He was having "difficulty" with
file from an external site downloaded on his Windows 7 system. I took
the opportunity in my email reply to comment on the great safety and
stability of Linux systems.

After about two hours I returned to the CentOS 6.7 system to check
on the charging status and move the photo files.  Yellow lights were
showing on both computer and monitor. The system display, and the
optical mouse would not return to normal operation as they usually
do with a quick push on the front power button.  The power button
light did turn green and I was able to log in via ssh from a Cygwin
shell on the Windows 7 system.  It took two reboots executed remotely
to bring back full display and mouse functionality.

I believe that this was the first time anyone has plugged in a USB
device into the CentOS 6.7 system while it is in power save mode.We now have a warning tag hanging over the USB ports on the system.
Is there some characteristic of CentOS systems that we should have
known about that could have caused this problem?  Does Yahoo web
mail have an easy way to retract my gloating email?