[CentOS] netbook screen suddenly goes black

Mon Jun 20 14:53:13 UTC 2016
Valeri Galtsev <galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu>

On Mon, June 20, 2016 9:28 am, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Dr. Mikeal Hughes wrote:
>> Motherboard time. Netbook is probably a throw away issue. Cost more t to
>> repair than buy new.
>>
>>> On Jun 20, 2016, at 7:58 AM, Fred Smith <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 01:34:30PM +0300, Александр
>>> Кириллов wrote:
>>>>> Can anyone of you provide further hints on what I should be looking
>>>>> for or at?
>>>>
>>>> Is it trying to hibernate?
>>>
>>> gosh, I hope not! I was in the middle of using it, playing solitaire
>>> and moving the mouse around a lot.
>>>
> Have you checked the PSU? Maybe vacuum it out (or open up the back of the
> laptop, and vacuum the whole thing)?
>

I might have missed the beginning of this thread: when the screen goes
black can you still ssh to the machine (you may need to enable ssh, and
switch from DHCP to static IP for this test). If you can ssh, this will
mean kernel is still happily running, if not, then kernel might have
panicked. I would do what Mark suggests: clean it to avoid overheating
(but don't do it yet, until you pinpoint the place where it fails). BIOS
turns the machine off completely when temperature threshold is tripped, so
tripping temperature sensor threshold is not your case as your screen
backlight is still on. However, overheating video chip may do what you
see. And it also may open some micro crack. I also would do the following:
attach external screen, make them both ON, and see if only internal panel
goes black or both of them do.

Tell us what your experiments reveal.

Valeri

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Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
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