My laptop just did something very odd. Was on just one webpage and listening to music on my Maxtor HD when all of a sudden the screen went black and loads of white numbers and letters came up! I pressed the button to switch it off for a reboot but it wouldn’t go off, so I took the cable out and rebooted. It is fine now, but what was that?!
Sounds lilke a kernel panic - probably too late now, but if you haven’t rebooted it yet, can you post the output of:
sudo tail /var/log/messages.0.log
elissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ sudo tail /var/log/messages.0.log
[sudo] password for melissa:
tail: cannot open `/var/log/messages.0.log’ for reading: No such file or directory
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
tail: cannot open `/var/log/messages.0.log' for reading: No such file or directory
You do not appears to have /var/log/messages.0.log file.
To get what chemicalfan asked for, try to list the messages log files:
ls /var/log/ | grep messages
then try to substitute the log file name messages.1 with the one with the smallest number (or post the output from the above).
sudo tail /var/log/messages.1
Thanks- haven’t a clue what var means but put those in the terminal:
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ ls /var/log/ | grep messages
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ sudo tail /var/log/messages.1
[sudo] password for melissa:
tail: cannot open `/var/log/messages.1’ for reading: No such file or directory
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
Weird…
What’s listed under:
ls /var/log
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $ ls /var/log
alternatives.log dpkg.log.2.gz pm-powersave.log
alternatives.log.1 dpkg.log.3.gz pm-powersave.log.1
alternatives.log.2.gz dpkg.log.4.gz pm-powersave.log.2.gz
alternatives.log.3.gz dpkg.log.5.gz pm-powersave.log.3.gz
alternatives.log.4.gz dpkg.log.6.gz pm-powersave.log.4.gz
alternatives.log.5.gz dpkg.log.7.gz pm-suspend.log
alternatives.log.6.gz dpkg.log.8.gz pm-suspend.log.1
apt dpkg.log.9.gz pm-suspend.log.2.gz
auth.log faillog syslog
auth.log.1 fontconfig.log syslog.1
auth.log.2.gz fsck syslog.2.gz
auth.log.3.gz installer syslog.3.gz
auth.log.4.gz jockey.log syslog.4.gz
boot jockey.log.1 syslog.5.gz
boot.log jockey.log.2.gz syslog.6.gz
bootstrap.log kern.log syslog.7.gz
btmp kern.log.1 udev
btmp.1 kern.log.2.gz ufw.log
ConsoleKit kern.log.3.gz unattended-upgrades
cups kern.log.4.gz upstart
dmesg lastlog wtmp
dmesg.0 lightdm wtmp.1
dmesg.1.gz mail.err wvdialconf.log
dmesg.2.gz mail.log Xorg.0.log
dmesg.3.gz mintsystem.log Xorg.0.log.old
dmesg.4.gz mintUpdate.history Xorg.1.log
dpkg.log news Xorg.1.log.old
dpkg.log.1 ntpstats
melissa@melissa-HP-Compaq-nx6325-RH628ES-ABU ~ $
Yes it can be weird this laptop! But then again it is an old XP one. And sometimes it gives off a strange smell. I have a summer teaching job in July (unemployed right now) so I will take it to a nice PC repair guy I know and get it some more RAM and memory.