Could a software bug cause a SteamOS / Arch system to think it's power button has been pressed?

Posted by MuddyFootedKiwi@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 4 comments

Please forgive me for having used windows all my life and having only the most basic knowledge of Konsole and linux in general.

I have a new Steam Deck, which is running SteamOS obviously. I understand it's based on Arch linux. That's about where my understanding ends.

Today I was launching a game when my system suddenly went into sleep mode, which usually you have to do by pressing the power button, but nothing was even close to it and it takes a decent bit of force to do, and a tactile "click". Suffice to say the button most definitely wasn't pressed.

I'm trying to rule out some kind of hardware problem, and I don't know much about Linux, so I'm asking here.

I managed to track down two entries in journalctl under "systemd-logind[860]: Power key pressed short" that occur within about a second of each other, followed by a long string of some other random stuff and then a message saying the system will suspend. All starting at 19:11:00 my time.

It hasn't happened since, and the system resumed fine, but I'm worried that something might be wrong with my hardware, so I'm trying to figure out if there's anything software wise that could have caused this.

I can provide more info on request, I just wouldn't know what to look for pre emptively.

A firmware glitch. An emulated button press from a virtual or compatibility-layer input device. That said, I’d trust Valve to have designed their custom input stack in a way that prevents it from ever emitting a power button event—even if you tried to misconfigure it deliberately.

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JaZoray@reddit

Theoretically possible, but highly unlikely.

The stars would have to align for the kernel to accept and act on a fake ACPI event. One that somehow passes all validation and plausibility checks and reaches the corresponding interrupt handler. But if your kernel is in a state where that can happen, then halting is probably the most reasonable response it has left, because it can no longer trust its own memory. That scenario implies such deep corruption that all bets are off. so, very unlikely.

Much more likely:

Or...

A cheeto crumb in the power button housing.
I’m not trying to make fun of you -this is genuinely the best working theory I have, per Occam’s razor.

Stellanora64@reddit

This seems like a hardware fault, not an issue with SteamOS (at least as far as I know). I would contact Valve for support, as even if it is an issue with SteamOS, this is something they should cover/ fix.

FeistyCandy1516@reddit

Sounds rather a hardware issue. I have the LCD and OLED steam deck and on none of both I had to use "force" to start them up. It's a normal push.

You might wanna return/replace it.