[sane-devel] Problems faxing from a scanner

[Richard M. Teitel]

Henning Meier-Geinitz wrote:

>Hi,
>
>>The crash consists of a total lockout of any input devices, 
>>especially the keyboard and mouse.  The cursor stops blinking, the mouse 
>>pointer disappears, and the "Caps Lock" and "Scroll Lock" lights flash. 
>>    
>>
>
>This is a kernel oops. It's caused by a kernel bug (or a hardware
>issue but that's rather unlikely in this case). It's not a problem of
>any userspace program.
>
>>No keystrokes have any affect.  The only way I have found to recover is 
>>to press the reset button on the tower, and reboot the system.  When it 
>>has finished booting, my home page is completely fouled up.  The screen 
>>is black, the font is about size 1 (unreadable), the X-windows Gnome 
>>panel is at the top of the screen instead of the bottom.  I have not 
>>been able to recover the preferred setup from this condition.
>>    
>>
>
>Check the settings for Gnome and GTK in your home directory. I guess
>because of the crash one of your config files is corrupted. That
>shouldn't ahppen if you use ext3 or another journaled filesystem.
>
The pertinent filesystems (particularly the boot and root partitions) 
are ext3. I also have a second hard drive with a single large ext3 
partition, but that isn't involved.

>>I am hoping that someone can suggest a way to isolate the problem.  Keep 
>>in mind, the only way I have been able to recover from these crashes is 
>>to reboot the OS.
>>    
>>
>
>Try to reproduce the bug by sending faxes like xsane does. I.e. check
>whi ch options xsane uses for hylafax and use the same. If you do that
>from the console (ctrl-alt-F1) you will even see the oops message
>printed.
>
I can try that, but I'm a little concerned about rebooting too often. I 
use DHCP and my mail server needs to know my IP address to let me send 
messages. If I reboot and get a new address, I have to let my mail 
server admin know so he can change the tables on his machine. I don't 
want to do that very much.

>You can also use a serial console to see what happens (e.g. another
>computer).
>
That's a non-starter.

>Try the same with scanning only. However, as the crash happens when
>the scan is already over I think tha fax is the problem.
>
I agree. This is likely not a scanning problem.

>So you should probably contact the author of the driver for your fax
>modem.
>
They were included on my "to" list.

Thanks,
Rich