If this system turns into a brick, do you have a fall-back solution? That is, do you have a spare system from which you can restore your backups? Have you tested the restore recently?
Regards, - Robert On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:54 AM, John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> wrote: > Yesterday, just before shutting down my System76 Bonobo Extreme laptop > (Sager NP9380) to go to the Clinic I applied a number of updates to my > Xubuntu 13.10 x86_64. When I restarted it at the Clinic I noticed that > it was taking a very long time to boot Eventually I shut it down and > restarted it, after which it booted normally. Grub is set to "quiet" so > I can't say what it was hanging on. > > Several hours later the screen suddenly became distorted. It appeared > as if there was some RF interference that was causing "static." After > puzzling about it I rebooted, which went fast as it usually does, and > the video problem disappeared. The video is a GeForce GTX 750M, and I > am using only the Intel video in the chip. > > When I got home I restarted the computer and it proceeded normally. > However, my computer life was about to enter hell. I spent an hour > updating the PLUG flyer, intending to print new ones for OSCON, only to > discover that my network had lost the conection to the printer. It took > an hour to solve the problem (I *hate* network issues!), and then I > discovered that there is something wrong with the cyan in the printer. > An hour later I gave up trying to fix it. We'll have to make do with the > old flyers. > > I continued with other things at he computer, and as I was doing so I > knocked a liter of soda directly into the keyboard. I dried it up as > much as I could, and it seemed to be functioning normally, although > occasionally a key would give me an unexpected result, like a shift-W > would suddenly switch to another workspace. It continued to work until > I went to bed. > > This morning the keyboard was mostly dead. Occasionally a key would do > something, but always some bizarre result. I decided to reboot, and as > it was shutting down the screen started flashing continually and the > shutdown process was hung. Eventually I just hit the power button. When > I rebooted I got the Grub menu instead of booting directly as it > normally does (probably because of he abnormal shutdown). I could not > progress because the keyboard was not working (Grub menu doesn't > recognize the mouse). It occurred to me to borrow the USB keyboard from > my desktop in order to continue booting, but it did not work. > Eventually I decided to reboot again, and when I did so the keyboard > from the desktop worked to get me into the BIOS; in other words, if the > USB keyboard works as early as the BIOS, the failure to recognize the > keyboard must be a problem somewhere in Grub or Ubuntu. > > I decided to boot to an Xubuntu 14.04 live DVD that I had lying here. > While it booted the screen flashed continually, but eventually it > finished booting. I have booted to this live DVD before and I never > experienced the screen flashing. The keyboard from the desktop works > fine in it, but the laptop keyboard is still dead. > > I called System76 just now and a replacement keyboard will cost > probably $100. I have never replaced a laptop keyboard, but I suppose > it is doable. What bothers me is that apparently there is some video > issue as well as a keyboard issue, and the video issue started long > before the keyboard went swimming. > > I'm going for a walk to clear my head. Meantime, any suggestions are > welcome. > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
