The same thing happens with the IBM Thinkcentre A50, MT-M 8089-74G. With 2.6.8-2-686 it seizes: the clock starts jumping forward and backwards (between 16:01 and 17:12, the time I discovered that), the screen blanks out (since, suddenly, the system has spent 1 hour and 11 minutes idle ;-)), and even simple commands take ages to execute. Finally, it hangs completely.
Fun observation: if I launch a program from KDE's panel, the cursor gets the bouncing icon, but it doesn't bounce; when I press any key it advances a frame in its bouncing. These are the last messages in /var/log/syslog before starting with the poltergeist thing: [standard bootup messages] Mar 16 16:11:06 pitagoras kernel: lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven). Mar 16 16:11:06 pitagoras lpd[3107]: restarted Mar 16 16:11:08 pitagoras postfix/postfix-script: starting the Postfix mail system Mar 16 16:11:08 pitagoras postfix/master[3200]: daemon started -- version 2.1.5 Mar 16 16:11:08 pitagoras kernel: NET: Registered protocol family 10 Mar 16 16:11:08 pitagoras kernel: Disabled Privacy Extensions on device c02ff020(lo) Mar 16 16:11:08 pitagoras kernel: IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling driver Mar 16 16:11:09 pitagoras xfs: ignoring font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic/ (unreadable) Mar 16 16:11:09 pitagoras /usr/sbin/cron[3347]: (CRON) INFO (pidfile fd = 3) Mar 16 16:11:09 pitagoras /usr/sbin/cron[3348]: (CRON) STARTUP (fork ok) Mar 16 16:11:09 pitagoras /usr/sbin/cron[3348]: (CRON) INFO (Running @reboot jobs) Mar 16 16:11:09 pitagoras xfs: ignoring font path element /usr/lib/X11/fonts/CID (unreadable) Mar 16 16:11:10 pitagoras Xprt_64: No matching visual for __GLcontextMode with visual class = 0 (32775), nplanes = 8 Mar 16 16:11:11 pitagoras kernel: [drm] Initialized i830 1.3.2 20021108 on minor 0: Intel Corp. 82865G Integrated Graphics Device Mar 16 16:11:11 pitagoras kernel: mtrr: base(0xf0020000) is not aligned on a size(0x800000) boundary Mar 16 16:11:16 pitagoras kdm_greet[3512]: Can't open default user face Mar 16 16:11:19 pitagoras kernel: eth0: no IPv6 routers present Mar 16 16:12:02 pitagoras gconfd (jtarrio-3672): comenzando (versión 2.8.1), pid 3672 usuario "jtarrio" Mar 16 16:12:02 pitagoras gconfd (jtarrio-3672): Se resolvio la direccion "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" a una fuente de configuracion de solo lectura en la posicion 0 Mar 16 16:12:02 pitagoras gconfd (jtarrio-3672): Se resolvio la direccion "xml:readwrite:/home/jtarrio/.gconf" a una fuente de configuracion escribible en la posicion 1 Mar 16 16:12:02 pitagoras gconfd (jtarrio-3672): Se resolvio la direccion "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" a una fuente de configuracion de solo lectura en la posicion 2 Mar 16 16:17:01 pitagoras /USR/SBIN/CRON[3682]: (root) CMD ( run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Mar 16 16:31:05 pitagoras -- MARK -- Mar 16 16:51:05 pitagoras -- MARK -- I'd like to call your attention upon the messages at 16:11:10 and 16:11:11. I believe they appear when X is loaded (for kdm). However, another Thinkcentre we're temporarily using as a firewall, with no X, suffers from the same ailment (in fact, it is the first one we noticed it on). I haven't seen 2.4.27-1-386 exhibit this behaviour yet. The equivalent 686 version is to be tested today (will report). A BIOS update is useless since the version on IBM's support pages is the same one the computers came loaded with. -- Jacobo Tarrío | http://jacobo.tarrio.org/
