screen black after pm suspend

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I’m running openSUSE 11.2 on a Thinkpad T61p with nvidia graphics. I’m running the proprietary nvidia driver. The battery ran very low and the computer suspended itself. After I woke it up, the desktop is completely black.

After troubleshooting as much as I could, I did ctrl-alt-backspace, which brought me to a normal (non-black) login screen. However, as soon as I logged in, I was back to a completely black screen. But the system is operating.

I rebooted the computer (warm reboot as well as cold restart) and each time the video is normal until I get to the desktop and all I get it black.

Everything was normal until the pm suspend. Suspend has never worked exactly right, so I don’t normally use it. But in this case, it used itself :wink:

Next step: I logged in to console mode and looked at the logs. The only messages of interest seem to be in Xorg.0.log I found a couple error messages that might be of interest:

(II) LoadModule: “nouveau”
(WW) Warning, couldn’t open module nouveau
(II) UnloadModule: “nouveau”
(EE) Failed to load module “nouveau” (module does not exist, 0)
(II) LoadModule: “nv”

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the GLX module; please check in your X
(EE) NVIDIA(0): log file that the GLX module has been loaded in your X
(EE) NVIDIA(0): server, and that the module is the NVIDIA GLX module. If
(EE) NVIDIA(0): you continue to encounter problems, Please try
(EE) NVIDIA(0): reinstalling the NVIDIA driver.

Can anyone help?

2

Do you know if you have a xorg.conf or not?
It’s not there by default unless you run sax2

3

I do not have xorg.conf.

4

You could try this to create a new user account. And try logging in with it;
see this slideshow

Picasa Web Albums - caf4926 - YaST level3

Once in YaST create a new user
quit YaST
reboot
Login with new user
Is it the same

5

can I create a new user on the command line?

adduser bob
passwd bob

Or is there something special about what yast does?

6

Whichever you are happy with
I wasn’t sure of your experience level

Trying a new user will just help us see where the problem exists
*user level
*system level

7

The problem does NOT exist with the new user.
What’s next?
And thanks for your help on this holiday!

8

Are you using kde4

9

Yes, 11.2 KDE 64 bit

10

Try doing this from your normal user login CLI

mv .kde4 .kde4_old

You know what that does I take it?

When done, try logging in as normal

11

Doing that solves the black screen problem. I sure hope there is a next step to narrow this down. I don’t want to blow away my entire kde4 config. I’m guessing something related to power management got set and isn’t getting unset. (Screen saver, maybe?) Anyway, I really, really don’t want to throw away all my KDE4 settings. Any suggestions? Thanks again!

12

First make a copy of the folder we renamed to .kde4_old (put it somewhere safe - so we can come back to it if necessary)

Now back to the original delete these files in the .kde4_old folder

/share/config/powerdevilrc
/share/config/powerdevilprofilesrc

Now you need to go to user CLI login as before

We need to delete the .kde4 folder that was just created

rmdir .kde4

then

mv .kde4_old .kde4

try logging in

13

I just learned something new.

With the original .kde4 directory in place, when I log in I get the black screen. From there, I can simply type alt-shift-f12 to disable compositing and my entire desktop appears!

So the suspend has somehow messed up compositing. I am not able to restore compositing - I get a message that the desktop effects cannot be enabled.

Does the fact that this is a compositing problem give any clues as to a possible solution?

14

This sounds very similar (maybe exactly the same) as my issue:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205803

15

Indeed it seems similar.
At least we have you on the right track.
For me - I would just remove the offending .kde4 and bring in my backup (sorry)lol!
And even if I didn’t have one, I might well start fresh and import what I reall need from the old one.

Can you manage from here?

16

I think the solution might be reinstalling nvidia drivers. The new user account I created earlier won’t enable desktop effects. And I continue to have trouble with my main user account in this regard. So I don’t think the problem is in .kde4 – I think it is related to the nvidia driver. And Bug 205803 is probably my issue here.

I’m going to try to reinstall nvidia tomorrow unless someone has better ideas before then…

Thanks for all your help!

17

Oh, OK
Just check
System Settings - Default Applications - Window Manager
set to kwin

18

status update: SOLVED

I reinstalled the proprietary nvidia drivers. I did not need to make any changes to .kde4.

It is a bit crazy that simply suspending my laptop would cause me to have to reinstall nvidia drivers.

The complete steps are:

[ol]
[li]when at black screen with white cursor after resuming from suspend, type ALT-SHIFT-F12[/li][li]follow the general steps here: NVIDIA/The hard way - openSUSE but note that they are different for 11.2. Below are my steps for this specific situation (meaning you already installed the proprietary nvidia drivers before this issue happened and you are not using Xorg.conf for nvidia settings).[/li][LIST=1]
[li]download lastest driver here: Unix Drivers Portal Page[/li][li]CTRL-ALT-F1 to console and enter these commands:[/li][LIST=1]
[li]log in[/li][li]sudo -s[/li][li]cd </your/download/directory>[/li][li]sh NVIDIA-Linux-<arch>-<version>-<build>-<pkg#>.run -a[/li][li]follow prompts. During installation, do not configure Xorg.conf.[/li][li]Do not run sax.[/li][li]reboot[/li][/ol]

[/LIST]

[li]log back in normally and problem should be resolved.[/li][/LIST]

19

Thanks for posting your solution, sorry I was off the mark.

20

Thanks for your help and no need to apologize. It is my experience that the discussion is often more important than anything else. The discussion with you help move me along. And hopefully this thread will help others with the same issue. Merry Christmas :smiley: