I have a new cluster of four OpenSuSE servers serving VM’s for a development lab. I have been fighting the good Linux/OpenSuSE fight against established Windows environment and I am embarrassed by certain hardware behavior in X.
The four machines are in a cluster with an inexpensive TrendNet TK-407 KVM. The Linux Boxes are Dell T3500’s with NVidia Quadro NVS290. I am not running the NVidia proprietary driver.
The behavior is that X keeps placing the display in sleep/powersave mode. If I boot the machine everything works until X takes over upon which point it decides that the display is not there and places it into standby.
I don’t care whether the KVM may or may not be responding correctly to some monitor protocol, and neither do I care to know or learn about the various DPMS or monitor protocols. The important thing here is that Windows experiences no such behavior.
The solution I seek is to configure X to force the signal out of the card, disregarding any DPMS or other protocols. I want it analog, simple and dumb.
Any and all assistance or comments greatly appreciated.
Some more information regarding the card and monitor setup: The monitor is a Acer V193w with VGA only inputs. The NVS290 drives a display port which is equipped with a Trendnet DisplayPort to VGA adapter.
Yes, bypassing the KVM by directly connecting works, but only to prove the superiority of Windows over Linux.
Sorry, not me. I have 3 PCs connected with a KVM (each with different nVidia hardware) and all 3 running openSUSE-11.2 with a KDE-4.3.4 from the KDE repositories. I think I do not experience any such behaviour. My screen does go black typically after a while if no activity from the active KVM, but a movement of the mouse and it comes back. I can’t say if I get the same behavour under MS-Windows as only 2 of these 3 PCs running MS-Windows and I never run windows long enough to see such an effect.
One of these openSUSE-11.2 PCs is a 64-bit, and I do recall on this one, KDE4 used to go black on me, and the screen would lock totally (ie freeze). But that was a KDE4 issue/bug which was solved by an appropriate screen saver and power management setting adjustment. I had a similar hiccup with my openSUSE-11.1 PC running KDE-4.3.2 and it had the same freeze, and required the same KDE4 solution to fix the black screen/freeze bug.
But it reads like you are encountering something different and I can’t help there.
Its not that your post has not been noticed. I just don’t know the answer.
Loaded the NVidia drivers for linux x64 from the NVidia site. Problem went away, we can now switch from any system to any other as long as the system had the monitor focus at time of boot.
Still have issues with NVidia drivers on Quadro NVS 295. Screen blanks out randomly for 2 seconds, I think the driver is hitting an issue and it is resetting. However, this is much better and I think the driver issue will resolve itself in a later release.