Mageia forum

EDIT: I figured out what happened, but how is left to your belief in the skill of cats. This cat has renamed desktop items often with 100+ character names, searched for nonsense, started non-existent apps (via alt+f2) and more than once started dozens upon dozens of screen shot windows. The machine is often locked.

This time, by whatever means I would love to know, she accessed systemsetting, desktop effects and enabled zoom. Then she zoomed. I know I had disabled desktop effects, this is an old 32 bit machine with a celeron and a max of 1 GB RAM. It's a weather and communications terminal.

Can anyone imagine a series of keystrokes that would do this? Could a line typed into an alt+f2 dialog accomplish this task? In any event, it seems I have experienced the equivalent of the thousand monkeys at typewriters coming up with "War and Peace."

some keywords for anyone searching this oddity: resolution, wrong, changed, systemsettings KDE, accessibility, desktop effects, all effects, zoom.



Oops, if this is a duplicate, apologies, but I don't see my message was posted.

I came home to find the cat had been sleeping on the laptop again, the wireless keyboard was knocked off. The resolution has changed to something that goes off the edges of the screen, that condition where you mouse over to the edge and the edges roll into view.

I changed everything 8+ times, resolution, color depth, the graphics card (xorg vs i810) and in mcc and systemsettings the resolutions showed correct every time, that is they showed what I had set them to. (they were correct when I first discovered this) The net resolution is the same after every reboot.

I pulled the battery out and mashed the power button for a minute to drain all power off the board, too.

I don't see how resolution could have changed without a root password, and to my knowledge there is no 'keyboard shortcut' for doing so that you don't have to explicitly install.

I either am victim of a bad joke (hack) or there is a hardware failure, but is it possible to reboot and otherwise use a machine with bad RAM or video hardware? Yet it seems to me failure can be the only cause.

Any input welcome, thanks for reading.

oj wrote:I don't see how resolution could have changed without a root password, and to my knowledge there is no 'keyboard shortcut' for doing so that you don't have to explicitly install.

You don't need a root password to change the resolution via e.g. systemsettings or xrandr.

Why not simply use screenlocker, that way your cat can run across the keyboard (like mine do, too) and nothing happens.

Amazing she "typed" exactly the right thing though, eg the thousand monkeys, no?

This terminal is expected to display current weather info at a glance making locking a defeating proposition. I'll try turning off the wireless kbd and covering the on board one and see what happens.

Since it's her laptop now, you should ask for her permission first

That's a problem, she's been deaf from birth and I don't know American cat sign language.

She's one of those snow white cats that are frequently congenitally deaf. (this one has one bright blue eye and one emerald green eye, stunning!)

Anyway, turning off the wireless keyboard has been a marginal help, it's harder for her to actuate the on board kbd with any dexterity, as it's covered with a large mouse pad now. But that has brought a new problem: when she sleeps on the thing it overheats and shuts down. (or locks up) Maybe I should get a phone booth to lock this thing away from her.

Her name is TinyMight, btw. One of the most clever cats ever. She found a crack in the floor boards, stole some marbles from my sons and put them in the crack, where they'd slide back and forth. She basically made her own toy. We dug the marbles out and she simply stole a few more and replaced them. In retrospect I should have anticipated the troubles that led to this post.

Cats enjoy so much sleeping on overheating laptops. Now that you added a *mouse*pad in the equation it only doubled the appeal.

However, I have seen some solutions for this specific problem, in Japan they sell a cat-friendly contraption to protect the laptop, like a wooden tray above the keyboard, maybe you can mimic one with cheap plywood.

Good idea. I may just have to fashion some additional protection. I came home this afternoon and in the 3 hours I was gone she managed to lock the system up again, I know it was her because the wireless kbd was on the floor.

Now as for this mouse pad, it's a 2011 calendar with advertisements for Frontline, a flea and tick repellent oil you put just a drop on the skin behind their neck, which provides3 or more months of flea/tick protection. But since she isn't one of the outdoor cats she doesn't get a regular dose of Frontline. Perhaps first thing I should try is replace the mouse pad with something less desirable to a cat. I have one that's an ad for pet insurance covering emergency surgery. If that doesn't keep her away it'll have to be the wooden contraption. :\

Perhaps this is what is happening when you are gone from home:

http://pad3.whstatic.com/images/6/69/Geek-cats.jpg

I found this Japanese invention I talked about, the first link says it's sold out, which speaks volumes of the popularity of the product, and the second says it's not available out of Japan, but still you can get the idea and mimic one with cheap materials from homedepot:

http://www.kittykeyboardkover.com/
http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/09/08/prot ... -from-cats