Sometimes, but not every time, when I turn on a particular halogen lamp using the same outlet as a particular computer, it triggers USB detection and I get kernel messages on /dev/console as if I was plugging in a USB device.
This was happening to me, there was some problem with the electricity in my apartment. I can't recall what the electrician said, there were some switches that only 1/4 were working, and if 2/4 had been it would have fried everything. They fixed it in about an hour.
I really wanted this to be about a smart refrigerator stealing a wireless mouse's signal from the desktop trackpad, or something of the sort. Though the plausible explanation[1] is just as pathological (albeit not as nefarious).
Known bug #1568604: "Mouse cursor lost when unlocking with Intel graphics"[1]. There are many suspend/resume/power management events which can cause the cursor to disappear. The refrigerator cycling is probably causing a brief power dip or surge which the computer interprets as a power cycling event. There's a fix, and it's gradually going into the various Linux distros.
When this happens, try CTRL-ALT-F1 followed by CTRL-ALT-F7. That switches the display to text mode and back. If that restores the cursor, this is the problem.
Arch has been distributing git builds of xf86-video-intel for a while, since there haven't been any releases in almost 2 years. The bug was fixed over a month ago and the latest Arch build is only a few days old. Its even noted as being fixed on Arch in the bug comments [0].
I think thinkpads of that generation had RF shielding issues.
I had a W520 that would crash whenever it was moved across a table or removed from a backpack. Turns out the shielding on the RAM door was faulty and the static charge generated by friction on the bottom of the case was enough to corrupt the ram contents and crash the laptop. Talk about a bizarre failure.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 34.1 ms ] threadI'd bet it's a grounding issue.
Sometimes, but not every time, when I turn on a particular halogen lamp using the same outlet as a particular computer, it triggers USB detection and I get kernel messages on /dev/console as if I was plugging in a USB device.
This is a BSD kernel.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/55pbqp/mouse_cur...
When this happens, try CTRL-ALT-F1 followed by CTRL-ALT-F7. That switches the display to text mode and back. If that restores the cursor, this is the problem.
[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video...
So, probably not that.
[0] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94677
I had a W520 that would crash whenever it was moved across a table or removed from a backpack. Turns out the shielding on the RAM door was faulty and the static charge generated by friction on the bottom of the case was enough to corrupt the ram contents and crash the laptop. Talk about a bizarre failure.