[ale] Power issue (?) on Ubuntu 9.10

[JK]

Hi folks,

Ubuntu Karmic box.  Since day one, this box has had an issue where
after a while (72 hours or so, haven't kept careful track), the
machine will lock up.  No mouse, no kbd, no network, nothin'. I
assumed that it was some obscure hardware issue, and had been
hard-booting the machine to recover.

Last night, however, after one of these "lock-up" events, I
accidentally *tapped* the power button instead of holding it down
for a hard reset, and  lo and behold, a shutdown dialog appeared!
And mouse kbd and network sprang back to life.

So now I am thinking that the machine is entering some sleep mode.
However, in the power settings I have everything set to "never
ever turn anything off for any reason", so I'm baffled as to what
might be going on here.  I tried booting with "acpi=off", but
that was not good -- USB mouse quit working, and also the boot took
much much longer :-(

Any ideas?

Thx,

-- JK


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Now *only* corporations have the rights of citizens. -- Unknown