Mandrake 10.0 Community problems -- system freezing...

[foobot555]

AGHHH!!!

I've tried RH in the past (but as a casual user...noob) without any serious problems and am now trying out Mandrake 10. So far I'm frustrated and thinking of dumping it...please change my mind.

Partitioning is okay.
Using LILO on MBR and dual-booting W98 SE.
Booting is okay.
System is a bit older: 800MHz P3, 512 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 7500, SoundBlaster Live & onboard (not an issue in W98, but linux detects and configures both...I use config to disable sound once installed...), M.B. is a Biostar (MCVCI), 80 GB HD (will add the other 120GB once working), etc., missed anything?!

I've tried adding "noapic nolapic" at install and to /etc/lilo.conf, but the system still hangs on me. WTF!!!

I can usually login, but the system will just lock up after some time...sometimes it will hang before I can login. I've been using KDE 3.2 with the 2.6 kernel, though I've also tried the 2.4 kernel and Gnome with the same freezing occurring.

PLEASE HELP...tired of this...please approach me = noob.

[foobot555]

Oops...
motherboard is Biostar M6VCI

[jeremy1701]

Any chance it's your ati card? Can you boot into non-gui?

Jeremy

[sbogus]

Hi foobot555,
I think I have had some times ago such troubles and now I know what the case is.

From my experience, there's a kernel parameter apm (not apic) which should be set to no (i.e. "append apm=no"), furthermore you should disable the APM deamon (apmd) in your startup configuration. The freeze occurs when the APMD starts and powers off the mainboard without actually to signal the kernel for that action.
I my case I got rid of this issue by just removing the APMD and by setting the apm parameter to no in the kernel parameters line.

Hope to helped you.

Kind regards,
sbogus

[foobot555]

jeremy1701: I don't think it's the ATI vid-card (yes, I can use non-gui)...I had to comment out an xfree86 line back on an old RH distro, but newer RH distros worked fine....


sbogus: Thanks for the tip...when I get a chance I'll try it and then post.... And so there is no confusion, what file are you saying to edit when you state "disable the APM deamon (apmd) in your startup configuration"?? (~~I'm casual-noob~~)

[sbogus]

Hi foobot555,

first I want to excuse me for the wron value of the kerenel's apm parameter - it is not "no" but rather than is "off", so the append-statement should look like this one:

append "apm=off"

For your second question - I have never messed up with Mandrake, so I don't know how the start-up confuguration files there are named. In my distro SuSE they're as follows:
main configuration script, run from the initrd: rc.config
location: /etc
Furthermore, in the /etc/init.d/ there's the apmd.conf script if you have apmd installed on your system.

In both of these configuration scripts, the APMD must be disabled.

Hope to helped you.

Kind regards,
sbogus

[jeremy1701]

In Mandrake, you can disable the apm daemons using MCC. That would be the easiest way to do it.



Jeremy

[foobot555]

APM(D) was it...
Up & running solid...no freezing.

THANKS!!!