Thinkpads Forum

I'm running CentOS4 (a RHEL4 clone) on a TP 600E. Using the current kernel, 2.6.9-5.0.5.EL, my Thinkpad 600E locks up hard when transitioning from battery to AC power.

When this happens my only recourse is to power-cycle the machine. There is no indication in the system log of this event when the machine comes back up.

Today I caught the event in the act. While the machine was booting, the AC power failed (bad storm here). The machine continued the boot process on battery power for several seconds. Then the AC power was restored and the machine locked up in mid-action. The apmd driver had not yet loaded yet so it can't be blamed for the lock-up.

Previous to installing CentOS4 I had RHL v9 on this machine. In that environment the cycling of power from AC to battery to AC caused only a few notes in the system log.

Can anyone shed some light on how I can avoid the machine locking up on AC power restoration?

Thanks.

I have a 600E too. I couldn't stand how slow redhat was on the machine, so I started using Slackware.

My 600E does not have this problem.

Maybe try using ACPI. The module will whine that the bios on the 600e is too old, but that can be circumvented by appending acpi=force into the kernel line in your /etc/grub.conf file. Be sure to also append pci=noacpi or it'll lock up when detecting PCMCIA modules.

Turn off apm before you do this, not sure if its good if both power utilities are running at the same time.
#chkconfig apmd off
#service apmd stop

Let us know if this fixes your problem.