mouse and keyboard lockup w/ RedHat 8.0

[Patrick J. O'Rourke]

> I could use some pointers on diagnosing an intermittent lockup problem I am 
> having with RedHat 8.0.  I originally thought it was caused by the umax-pp 
> backend I am using with XSane, but the last two times my scanner was never 
> powered on.  The last time it happened it finally occurred to me that I should 
> try to telnet in to see if the whole system was hung.  The telnet was 
> successful so I did "shutdown now".  My telnet session got dropped but the 
> system never fully shutdown.  So now I'm wondering if it's an XFree86 problem, 

I had a very similar problem on a Dell Laptop when I bumped up the resolution
for the time I have it a docking station.  I could ssh / telnet into the
machine.  I ran top to see what was going on and saw that one of the
screensavers were running (the system would randomly rotate among screen
savers).  I found that certain screen savers would lock the display / keyboard.

I got around it by choosing a screen saver that did not lock up.

Pat

p.s. I've also had problems in the past w/ power management and at times
     disabled it (this may have been w/ an older RH release).

-- 
Patrick O'Rourke
porourke at world.std.com