I just installed opensuse 12.1 on a new computer. I am in the habit of leaving my system running all the time. (The computer itself is so quiet you can’t hear it running.) After idling overnight, my system will not “resume” the next morning. Note that I am not suspending or hibernating it. I’m just letting it run. The monitors go blank, but that’s it.
But the first morning it became unresponsive to all input. I had to push the reset button. The second morning it was also unresponsive, but apparently alt-alt-del worked this time (although I couldn’t see what was happening on the screen at the time due to it being blank, but I eventually got to a login screen after ctrl-alt-del).
The system uses an Asus P8B-WS motherboard, Intel Xeon E-3 CPU, 16 GB Kingston ECC RAM, ATI Radeon HD6750 and Opensuse 12.1 (KDE) (new install and pretty much stock).
Where should I start troubleshooting to figure out why the computer stops responding after sitting idle for an extended period?
The problem does not happen during the day, even if I let the screen saver come on or even if I wait longer until the monitors go blank. The problem only happens after not being used overnight.
The motherboard uses an EFI AMI bios and has several fairly advanced power management features. I have not changed these from stock settings yet.
EDIT: I can’t tell if my problem is related to the BIOS power management settings, the monitors, the GPU, or the OS – everything is new.
My video card is a PowerColor Go! Green ATI Radeon HD6750 1 GB DDR5 2DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort PCI-Express Video Card AX6750 1GBD5-NS3DHG. The card has one Display Port, one HDMI and 2 DVI connectors.
I have 3 monitors connected: a Dell U3011 (30" at 2560x1600) and 2 Dell 24" (1920x1280). The U3011 is on Display Port. One 24" uses HDMI and the other one uses DVI.
Today I did notice that I could not get the main monitor (30" on Display Port) to come back on after temporarily switching it to another input (Motorola set top box on an HDMI input video source). The computer was running and the other two monitors showed opensuse. But when I switched the 30" monitor input back to Display Port (which is connected to the ATI Radeon HD6750), it stayed blank no matter what I did, until – using the other monitor – I went into display configuration and changed the resolution from 2560x1600 to 1920x1200. I didn’t even have to accept that configuration. I canceled it, and the monitor remained “awake”. But it was very tough to get the monitor to come back on. This reminds me of what happens after the system sits overnight.
I have not had a problem with this monitor waking up before, but I never used the Display Port input.
Forum posts can only be edited for a short period of time that is true. This prevents users from saying and doing things they feel they can remove at a later date,making them more responsible for what they say. Further, it reduces confusion as to what message content other users here are replying to. There is nothing wrong with how you did your dual posts today and if there was some kind of serious problem with your 1st message, just ask for assistance from any moderator and we will be happy to help you out.
There is no doubt that the proprietary video drivers can often do a better job of driving your branded hardware of their make than the open sources ones can do. Of course, if there is a problem, it is not the fault of openSUSE and further, you are often using closed source software. None the less, in such a configuration as you have, it is one of the things I would try and only if it worked no better would I toss it out. In the end it is your choice however and we do hope that your setup works properly for you.
I’d be inclined to switch off the screensaver entirely and also stop the powermanagement turning the monitor off.
This is what I do, and I physically turn my monitor off if I am leaving it for any length of time
Thanks. I actually did one test that had been problematic (switching main monitor to another input) and it seems to be working much better now. It looks like this might be the solution.
Well, it’s not clear to me how a thread should be marked solved on this forum. I don’t see this topic in the FAQ, so I guess it isn’t an important topic on this forum. I’ll withdraw my question.
Only a moderator could add the word Solved to the original thread Title later (after the first edit time has past for the original poster) and no other moderators appears to be doing that here. I suggest that you just post a message saying its solved (as you did) and for any new message that you post, you can change the title to include the word solved if you like. It really does get picked up in the search on that subject by the way. And, we do appreciated hearing that a problem is solved. A lot of effort by several people can be put into helping and often that “Solved” message is the only reward. Though I do believe that helping others and learning more yourself is also a reward.
Actually, it is more than annoying. It changes my monitor’s resolution settings. And in order to return to the setting I had before turning my monitor off, I now have to reconfigure and reboot. So turning monitors off manually is not a workable solution.
