ibook won't sleep in KDE?

[yellowdog-newbie@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com]

Samuel:

A few days ago, you had this problem:

On Friday, September 19, 2003, at 12:29  PM, Samuel Clough wrote:
> [...] when I first loaded YDL 3.0 and was using the default window 
> manager, it would sleep just fine when you closed the lid. I'm now 
> using KDE and have it set up with my preferred styles and when you 
> close the lid, the ibook does not sleep. Any ideas?

Well, as luck would have it, I encountered this same problem the very 
next day (after a restart). Here's how I fixed it, though I still don't 
know the fundamental cause.

My first hint was that the command, "snooze" stopped working, with a 
nonsensical error. The PowerBook also would not sleep if I closed the 
lid. In fact, there was nothing I could do to make the PowerBook sleep, 
other than to shut it down. Also, the hardware buttons to control sound 
volume and screen brightness did not work.

The problems seem to involve two services on my PowerBook, pmud and 
pbbuttonsd. pmud is the Macintosh PowerBook power management software, 
analogous to acpi or apm on x86 laptops. I found some of the hints in 
the _Yellow Dog Linux, 2nd edition_ book that came with my YDL disks 
(pp. 157-159).

Here's how to determine whether pmud is running:

[clint]$ su -
Password:
[root]# service pmud status
pmud is stopped

Aha -- pmud was not working. Note the hyphen ("-") after the su command 
to enter root privileges. This is essential, though I have no idea how 
it changes "su." Without the "-," the bash shell complains that the 
"service" command is not found. Can anyone on the list explain what a 
"-" with no arguments means?

The service command can come to the rescue if pmud is not running. 
Here's how:

[root]# service pmud start
Starting pmud daemon:      [OK]
[root]# service pmud status
pmud (pid 1084) is running. . .

That's very promising! Use the same service command to check on the 
status of pbbuttonsd:

[root]# service pbbuttonsd status
pbbuttonsd (pid 567) is running. . .

Excellent!

 From this point on, the PowerBook would sleep normally when I closed 
the lid or entered the "/sbin/snooze" command. I could even use the 
hardware buttons to control sound volume and screen brightness, again. 
All is right with the world.

I still don't know what killed pmud or pbbuttonsd before or after my 
restarts. I don't know if that will be a consistent problem, but if it 
is, I know how to fix it until the next reboot. I also don't know what 
the "su -" command does that is different than regular "su." Any ideas?

Best wishes,
Clint

-- 
Dr. Clinton C. MacDonald | <mailto:clint DOT macdonald AT sbcglobal DOT 
net>