Blank screen when I logout, computer screen goes inactive, or whenever I switch virtual terminals

English Hardware
1

Linux newb here, I’ve used Debian and Linux Mint for a while though.
Currently using Leap on my Acer Aspire VN7-592G, and overcome quite a few hurdles regarding booting openSUSE, WiFi and working through the Optimus issues.
The problem I’m currently facing is, whenever my screen goes blank, either when I log out of my current session or after some time of inactivity, I get stuck at a blank screen, which I cannot return from, no matter what I press, and my only option is to manually reboot the system. It also happens whenever I switch terminals (Ctrl+Alt+F1 through F7), all other CLI terminals work fine, but F7 doesn’t get me anything other than the blank screen.
I’ve done as much homework as I could on this problem over Google, but nothing seems to be helping.

Regarding my system display setup, I have Optimus hardware, with an onboard display adapter and an Nvidia GT960M. I went through the forum and found a string of related issues that led me from one topic to another:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/512355-Power-problem-off-screen > https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/510822-Leap-Bumblebee > https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/505270-ultimate-tutorial-installing-Bumblebee-driver-for-SUSE

I’d appreciate any help or direction I can get wrt this problem. Also, let me know if I’d require any output to provide to help diagnose this problem, thanks!

2

You did not mention which desktop: KDE, Plasma5, Gnome, XFCE?

3

I had similar behaviour on two PCs with Leap, where these two PCs have different hardware with KDE5 (Plasma-5). One a laptop with old radeon hardware, and the other a desktop with a nvidia GTX-260.

To address this, I edited the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-device.conf such that it had the following for the PC with nvidia hardware using the nouveau graphic driver:


Section "Device"
  Identifier "Default Device" 
  Driver "nouveau"
  Option "NoAccel" "True"
EndSection

and the following for the PC with radeon hardware using the radeon graphic driver :


Section "Device"
  Identifier "Default Device" 
  Driver "radeon"
  Option "NoAccel" "True"
EndSection

That solved the black screen problem for those PCs , but it also significantly slowed their performance.

A recent Mesa update to LEAP-42.1 was a big improvement for my PC with nouveau hardware. I reported on this improvement here: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/512275-Are-there-any-professionals-left-at-opensuse?p=2749371#post2749371 … I removed the above noted 50-device.conf file, and the PC is running great with the nouveau graphic driver and no more black screens.

I have not tried updating Mesa and removing the custom 50-device.conf entries yet with the radeon PC, as that PC belongs to a friend and not to me (I set the PC up for them).

4

I am afraid I can’t contribute to much. I have the same issue with on Optimus laptop when runnig in the build in intel card.

The current workaround is to close the lid (supend) and the open it back again (resume) this usually does the trick for the build in display I can’t get the hdmi display to work this way unfortunately :frowning:

5

All those with Optimus laptops, please have a look at suse-prime. Works like a charm on my laptop ( and other’s ). Search the forums for suse-prime, there’s a couple of threads about it.

6

Sorry, been a bit busy over the last week, just managed to look in on my problem again, and sorry for the lack of details.
I’m using GNOME, but this problem persisted when I tried KDE as well. Also, I have installed Bumblebee, along with the proprietary drivers from the repo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/X11:/Bumblebee/openSUSE_Leap_42.1/ , after referring to https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/505270-ultimate-tutorial-installing-Bumblebee-driver-for-SUSE , and this openSUSE guide page for Bumblebee: https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_Bumblebee , and I’ve blacklisted nouveau in /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf and set
nouveau.modeset=0
as an optional kernel parameter.

Will try out the suggestions and let you guys know :slight_smile:

7

Okay, so I’ve tried all suggestions except the suse-prime one, nothing worked.
Regarding suse-prime, it looks like a good alternative to Bumblebee that I’m currently trying to work with, but when I try to add the community repo for nVidia Graphics Drivers, I get this error:
Adding repository nVidia Graphics Drivers failed
download.nvidia.com-leap_3:[download.nvidia.com-leap_3 | http://http.download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/42.1] Valid metadata not found at specified URL
History:

  • SKIP request: User-requested skipping of a file
  • Can’t provide./repodata/5b03c21067c04ad01bfbf71648b171192d49e587ee11e7f4057716abb22da3c2-primary.xml.gz
8

Here’s suse-prime: https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:bosim:suse-prime/suse-prime

Try this link: http://http.download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/42.1/