Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Does anyonw know how to "soft reset" the N900 without removing the battery? My N900 has sometimes does not turn on after being off and charging for a night. I must remove the battery and put it back in for the N900 to turn on (holding down power button does not do the trick).

Does anyone know if there is a any "reset" button to perform the equivalent of taking the battery out and putting it back in?

Assume the N900 is off and locked up, pressing power button does nothing, only battery removal helps.

Thanks

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

soft reset = holding down power-button
hard reset = removing battery

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

I understand a hard reset to be removing all data on the device, and a soft reset the equivalent to a "reboot".

I am looking for the equivalent of a reboot (no data loss).

Any thoughts?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

removing all data would be a format or something.
a reset (either hard or soft) has nothing to do with removing any data.

a soft reset is rebooting a device the way its supposed to (more or less)

a hard reset is rebooting a device by physically removing its power source (like on a computer by pulling the power-cord or turning off the psu. or pulling the battery on a cellphone)

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

im interested also!
i would really use a reboot button in the drop down menu, even a desktop button/widget..

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

you can use xterm to reboot. as root enter:
reboot
or
init 6
(there are more ways around)

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

i think "reset" is like as in "factory reset", if you're tlaking about just rebooting, then it's reboot, not reset

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

The word "reset" has two different meanings here.
Factory reset is when the flash file systems are reprogrammed to known state.
But reset is also the name when an IC is receiving a reset signal to place all logic gates in a known state.

Removing the battery is a power-on reset.
Actuating the "reset" pin on the chips is a hard reset.
Having the software issuing the reset represents a soft reset.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

thanks i also found it after a more serious search :D
i knew it was possible but when i posted this i hadnt found it yet
thanks anyhow

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

remember to not do it too many times in sequence without shutting down normally in between, there is a number that grows fast if you reboot, and somthing bad happens when it gets too big, shutting down normally resets that number to zero

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Huh? What are referring to here? What number that grows?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

That is a valid point, but can someone address my original question please?

How do you reboot a device that's frozen while off (without removing the battery)

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

it's somthing that counts how many times you rebooted, but it counts multiple times for each reboot instead of just +1

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

see if you can access it via SSH and run sudo reboot now remotely

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

If it's locking up while idle/charging you have something bad going on in the software. The solution isn't to find a way to reset the device, it's to figure out why it's doing that and correcting what's causing the lockup. Removing the battery is a quick fix, not a way to handle a regularly locking device. Power resets have the potential of losing data and/or causing file system corruption, which can make your device unstable. If you're in an inflatable raft with a hole, your solution shouldn't be connecting an air pump, it should be patching the leak in a permanent way.

If it's doing it regularly, I suggest loading up a monitoring program and seeing when/why it dies. Once you fix whatever is causing the lockup you won't need a way to power-kill the device to reset it. Providing one will just enable you to use the quick and easy method until it causes more side-effects that are harder to diagnose or correct, assuming they're correctable at all.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

this still doesn't make any sense to me. What 'thing'? A counter in a system file? hardware?!

I just can't see why this, if it really does exist, is in any way connected to the OP's problem...

/confused

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

If you install Desktop Command Widget, one of the options is 'Boot Count', this counts how many times your phone has been rebooted but is reset if you turn the phone off. When you do reboot though it seems to go up by like 3 or 4. A while ago I read that if it got to 50 your phone would completely stop booting up, not sure if thats been fixed or not though.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

You are absolutely correct in saying that there's possibly something more serious going on which is causing my N900 to lock up. Can you suggest any monitoring tool to diagnose this issue?

The one common factor I have found is that the device locks up often in the following scenario: I turn the device off (completely) in the evening and then plug it in to charge using native charger (I may sometimes plug it in during the shutdown process, in the middle of it). In the morning I disconnect the charger, and almost immediately press and hold the power button to turn the device on, at which point it does not turn on. I remove the battery and the device does turn on, but I notice that the battery is nowhere near being fully charged. This would probably indicate the charge never occurred overnight. From here we can speculate to the cause (whether it's a problem during shutdown or power up).

Any thoughts on this are welcome, thanks.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

There's no way. :(

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Note sure why you would want to turn it off. There are more effective ways of saving energy - like walking instead of taking the car :)

When device is charging the LED should flash orange, when fully charged LED should be constant green (this is for charging when device is ON - not sure whether there would be any difference if device is OFF - check manual).

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

I have the same problem , it happens once in a great while. what do you guys recomend i install and what should i be lookong for. . If the phone is off will it still tell me what o need tp know?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

I have the same problem too. The phone goes off and the only way to turn it on is removing battery and inserting it back.

Dankx, have found any solution? i guess I'll have to uninstall all software and see if that solves the problem - if not I'll have to reflash.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Use your stylus, press and hold the on/off button: the device will start.
At least that works for me. Sometimes, my N900 shut itself off; still don't know why!

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

nhanquy, it's worse. When the phone goes off like this the clock alarm doesn't work and sometimes the clock time resets - I have to set the time after I start the device. It began approximately a month ago - never had this issue before

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

The power kernel allows phone to go into unstable 125 MHz. Did any of you install power kernel?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

No, I didn't

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Well then, if I were you I'd install syslogd and wait for it to crash. Then, zip and upload the log (it's in /var/log/syslog). Wiki has all the instructions (the maemo wiki, not wikipedia).

We'll look through it.

Also, post result of

sp-oops-extract /dev/mtd2

instructions here http://wiki.maemo.org/Documentation/...5#Installation

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Thank you for your advice, here's the output of sp-oops-extract /dev/mtd2 (too much text to paste):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3396075/oops.log

I uninstalled most of the applications yesterday - to see if it helps.

I can't read the log but there's one thing that puzzled me - joikuspot module and process joikuspot_napt. I uninstalled Joikuspot long time ago (a year or so) it's not in the list of installed apps - is it just an old record?

I'll be grateful for any help.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

OK. First, I must say that while a good admin, I am not a Linux user and only common components of OSs apply here. You WILL get better advice from a Linux power user.

Thus far, what I can recognize is this: Kernel not syncing means what BSOD is for Windows. Meaning, something crashed either in hardware (bad RAM, failed controllers) or in a driver (in you case, modules that run elevated) and the OS halted all writes to disk to keep it from getting (more) corrupted.

Stack trace seems to be in IEEE80211 (which is the segment responsible for wifi). Since at least once I saw a null being dereferenced, it's likely that something in the wifi has unexpected input. Since you have Joiku module loaded but the stuff uninstalled, I think it's a good bet that the listed module finds itself in an unexpected position, a missing value, function, variable.

You could try to kill the module (if memory serves, lsmod lists, rmmod removes). However, other daemons could insmode it back.

Politely, I'd try to install, reboot and uninstall Joikuspot. A later uninstaller could remove the module. If not, try to rmmod and delete module from disk to make sure it stays dead.

It is, however, entirely possible you could have a hardware issue. You can either reflash or, if you want, install BackupMenu, create an image and then reflash so you can go back on the reflash.

Again I say, limited understanding of Linux inner workings. Other people could guide you better. Though I'm quite sure rmmod and renaming joiku module is safe and undoable.

Have fun.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

IMHO, I think the boot-to-charging mode's a little shakey - If I plug in power when it's off, It will semi-boot and charge. I'll have to unplug the power and wait a minute or so before I can actually boot into maemo.

I suggest simply leaving it on all the time - It uses almost no power in it's sleep mode, and is a lot happier that way.
Just leave it on, plug it in, and in the morning unplug it and off you go.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

It happened again today.
Here's the syslog
According to it Feb 14 05:33:53 is the last record before I restarted it at 9:07AM. I had to set the clock and there was no alarm in the morning.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

I see nothing bad in there save for the blasted reset. Any new entries in oops? Did last night's boot provide a new entry?

Also, it seems to core right after you stopped using it, is that a rule?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

No new entries in oops.

I'm not sure what "to core" means — is that connected with those entries:

csd[759]: ISI_SMS .555575> incoming_cell_broadcast(): Incoming cell broadcast

If so I have no idea...

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

To core is the Unix equivalent of a Windows application "fatal error" or whatnot. It's not an error, it's a way for whoever wrote the application to get feedback on the state of the app when it crashed, kind of like a picture of the car at the exact moment it died, so mechanics can figure out what it was missing.

In windows, this is done via log dumps, in Unix it's a core dump (saving the memory of the app to disk). An application core dump is the result of an error and, the term got shortened to "to core". As trivia, Windows also dumps core on some components that crash, when the logging mechanism is compromised. E.g., in a kernel crash or a general BSOD and the core is dumped completely (aka all the RAM).

Also, this is probably the most useless post on this thread, since I'm fresh out of ideas. I'm fairly sure it's not the broadcast messages. Mainly, because those flow through all the time and on all phones with no ill effects.

Right now, the only correlation I found is that it cores immediately after plugging it and leaving it alone. If this is repeatable, this might be it. For example, I think phone is locked at a frequency while charging (actually, while in mass storage but it is possible).

Try to get brightness display applet and leave the screen on at low setting (so it won't heat up) overnight when charging. This prevents device sleep - if that fixes it's it's likely sleeping is at fault.

If it still cores, it might be the charger itself - a problem with the SMPSU could fery well put bad, bad juice through the phone and while sane enough to charge battery, might prove too much for an undervolted CPU.

No warning reboots smell like hardware faults.

So:

* does it happen overnight but not in the day?
* does it happen if left on with no auto-TKlock?
* does it happen if left locked but not on charger?

Let's go from here.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Thank you for the explanation

* does it happen overnight but not in the day?

No, not necessarily. But it only happens when my phone is locked - never when the screen is on and as far as I can see it doesn't depend on the charger - it happens both while charging and while not connected via USB

* does it happen if left on with no auto-TKlock?
I think I should try this.
_______________
I used to have Shortcutd installed for some time could be related? I guess I'm out of ideas. Right now I'm going to unistall everything except FBreader and see if it happens again.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

When locked, CPU goes to 0. You may have a wakeup issue for the CPU. In which case, installing power kernel and overvolting the CPU might help. If not, Nokia Care?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

Will reflashing the device solve the issue?

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

If it doesn't, it' a hardware issue and you need to return it to Nokia. It's likely, though.

Intall BackupMenu and do a backup first. That way, if it's not solved at least you can recover. Also, the embedded backup app also does good work.

Re: Soft Reset WITHOUT Removing Battery?
 

You were right, reflashing did not solve the problem.
Thanks anyway.