Screen goes black when I run "sudo lshw"

Support & Help Requests
#1

If I run the lshw command as user, I see what you’d expect to see.

(I won’t reproduce the output here, unless someone thinks it might be useful.)

But if I run sudo lshw, and then count to five, both my monitors go black, with a blinking white line-cursor at the upper left of the main monitor.

My only escape from this black screen (as far as I know, though maybe there’s a better way) is to press the reset button on the front of my computer.

This is on Ubuntu-MATE Trusty 14.04.5 LTS.

Would anyone know why this be happening, & how I can fix it?

Thanks.

#2

This may be a bug, as its very similar to this:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...w/+bug/1414476

(Except I don’t get the “smashed stack” error message.)

#3

Hi
You should try shutting down the machine using the magic SysReq key instead of reset button, so that log files are flushed to disk and you can retrieve the /var/log/kern.log for analysis.

Do Alt+SysReq, then the sequence (reisub).

1 Like
#4

I’ve heard of this, but it doesn’t work for me. I’ve also heard that you have to type r-e-i-s-u-b really slowly, but that doesn’t work for me, either.

Is there another command that will get me out of the black screen more gracefully than hitting reset?

#5

Hi
You gotta hold Alt+PrintScr down while you’re tying REISUB, have you?

#6

No, didn’t know that. I’ll do it that way next time, thanks for the tip.
I wonder why that key combo. . . .