Arch Linux

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Rather interesting sequence of events

PS: happy (although confusing) ending

It starts out pretty nicely. I'm using my webcam and discover its cable is *just* too short to let the webcam sit on a particular PC's case. So I grab a nearby USB extension cable, yank the webcam out right while VLC is streaming it over HTTP (to nobody, at the time), and plug it back in in-line with the extension cable.

It doesn't work.

Confused, I try various things in VLC as well as taking the extension cable out of the connection in case it was at fault. Nope.

O.o. Eh, whatever. So I give up for a while. In the end, curiosity wins out.

dmesg keeps spouting something along the lines of "CPU temperature/speed normal." At some point I randomly decide to open htop to see what might be going on, since it mentions my CPU. And I discover... khubd is using 100% CPU. O.o?!

killall -9 and killing from inside htop don't work, pretty obviously. So I reboot.

Then it gets fun on top of interesting.

I decide that if I'm gonna reboot I'll make GRUB stop counting down so I have time to plug the extension lead back in before Linux sees any of it. Fairly alright plan except, well, the PC happens to POST and... doesn't do anything else. So I have to use the hold-the-power-button trick to get my box to do anything.

So by now I'm a little confused and worried. I plug the webcam back in via the extension lead, and this time, GRUB crashes at "GRUB loading, please wait...". Now I'm *really* concerned, although I have a theory: GRUB and/or my PC don't like booting after having been subjected to about half an hour of having kernel services going haywire, so a bit of a cool-down might help.

At any rate I unplug the whole webcam, and what do you know, GRUB works this time. Determined not to be beaten by conspiracy-grade pure oddness/craziness, I plug the webcam back in, and... GRUB boots fine. Weird.

So I boot everything up, and the webcam works as it did before.

O.o?

O.o.

*hopes that khubd doesn't randomly go OHAI *splat* in future*

-dav7

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Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
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Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.

kludge

Member

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 294

Re: Rather interesting sequence of events

gremlins.  it's gotta be gremlins.

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[23:00:16]    dr_kludge | i want to invent an olfactory human-computer interface, integrate it into the web standards, then produce my own forked browser.
[23:00:32]    dr_kludge | can you guess what i'd call it?
[23:01:16]    dr_kludge | nosilla.
[23:01:32]    dr_kludge | i really should be going to bed.  i'm giggling madly about that.

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: Rather interesting sequence of events

I'm leaning more towards gnomes myself...

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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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But if they tell you that I've lost my mind, maybe it's not gone just a little hard to find...

Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,965

Website

Re: Rather interesting sequence of events

Is this your webcam?

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My Arch Linux Stuff • Forum Etiquette • Community Ethos - Arch is not for everyone

rok3

Member

From: NJ, USA

Registered: 2008-03-09

Posts: 44

Re: Rather interesting sequence of events

My bet would be on this.

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: Rather interesting sequence of events

Unfortunately not.

It's a

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 046d:08ad Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Communicate STX

-dav7

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Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
--
Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.

R00KIE

Forum Fellow

From: Between a computer and a chair

Registered: 2008-09-14

Posts: 4,734

Re: Rather interesting sequence of events

My new notebook seems to go a little haywire if I boot from the usb and then reboot to usb again .... if I turn it off and do a cold boot and boot from usb all is well .... gremlins or goblins I have no clue, probably just a flaky bios.

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R00KIE
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