Lately my screen has seemed to go out on me a number of times–mostly, I think, after the computer has been sitting and has locked and dimmed. When I come back and use the mouse/touchpad to get to the login screen, it does not respond. That is, the computer responds but not the screen–I can see the login screen very, very dimly. But it won’t brighten to a usable level. Most recently, it darkened as I was starting to type in my login password.
If I power down the machine and reboot, the screen comes up fine, so I think it’s a software rather than hardware problem. Any ideas about how I might troubleshoot/fix this?
Running openSUSE 11.2 on lenove 3000 N100. All software is updated.
I don’t have a screensaver. The system just dims down and locks the screen after it sits for a while. It’s only recently that the problem has come up. Normally a jiggle of the mouse or touchpad brings up the logon screen and everything works fine. Now, seemingly at random, the screen doesn’t brighten properly.
Look in powermanagement. The system suspends and does not get back from suspend properly. This can be driver related.
In Systemsettings - Powermanagement, take a look at what actions are taken after how long. Tell it not to lock the screen
On 2010-11-29 16:06, SuseNeo wrote:
>
> I don’t have a screensaver. The system just dims down and locks the
> screen after it sits for a while. It’s only recently that the problem
> has come up. Normally a jiggle of the mouse or touchpad brings up the
> logon screen and everything works fine. Now, seemingly at random, the
> screen doesn’t brighten properly.
Well, /that/ is a screen saver :-p
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
> On 2010-11-29 16:06, SuseNeo wrote:
>>
>> I don’t have a screensaver. The system just dims down and locks the
>> screen after it sits for a while. It’s only recently that the problem
>> has come up. Normally a jiggle of the mouse or touchpad brings up the
>> logon screen and everything works fine. Now, seemingly at random, the
>> screen doesn’t brighten properly.
>
> Well, /that/ is a screen saver :-p
>
could also be the monitor going into sleep; either by itself, or prompted
by BIOS or openSUSE power management. as far as i remember, the ‘blank’
screen saver isn’t the default. the OP would have to change it, and
probably remember doing so.
I thought suspend was something different than “session idle actions.”
I see under “Screensaver” settings that the blank screen is a form of screen saver. If I turn off the commands to start screen saver and lock screen, then if the problem still occurs I’ve learned something. But if the problem is linked to the idle settings, and it’s only happening “randomly”, then does it follow that there’s some sort of bug in the Gnome Power Management system?
I hibernated the box this afternoon.
This evening when I tried to start it, it came up dark, but I could very very faintly see the Evolution screen–maybe I had clicked 'Suspend" by mistake rather than 'Hibernate".
So I powered it down. 3x this result: The Lenovo splash screen would appear very briefly; then dark. Then the Logon screen very briefly and again dark, tho again I could very very faintly see an image.
Now I’m thinking: this must be hardware-related.
I tried booting from the openSUSE DVD and it started fine (allowed me to log into my account, which i didn’t expect from booting from the disk; I thought that boot would be totally independent of my HDD). After hibernating from that boot it restarted fine. I shut it down, removed the DVD, and rebooted. The first time it came up fine except the Desktop didn’t appear, tho the side and bottom panels did. When I shut it down I got a “Nautilus not responding” warning. Once restarted, it’s working fine.
So I’m stymied. I’ve turned off the power management stuff. The fact that the screen wouldn’t brighten on boot makes it seem like a hardware problem. But then the fact that now it’s working fine after the round with the DVD boot makes me think software again.
SuseNeo wrote:
> I tried booting from the openSUSE DVD and it started fine (allowed me
> to log into my account, which i didn’t expect from booting from the
> disk; I thought that boot would be totally independent of my HDD).
i think by default the openSUSE DVD will “Boot from Hard Disk” the
first selection on the list…check and see if i’m not right…if i
am, then how do you explain that everything was fine when it booted
from the hard disk via the DVD, but not when booting from the hard
disk without the DVD ??
i THINK the difference is what is delivered as kernel boot parameters
from YOUR hard drive’s /boot/grub/menu.lst vs those from the DVD…
and, i guess the one on your hard drive is different when it comes to
like apm, acpi, apic, and maybe there are other which impact power
management and/or savings…
you may not like this idea: but the ability to hibernate or suspend is
a ‘relatively’ new capability…i guess if you use your machine when
you need it and shut it down when you don’t you won’t have this
problem and it won’t cost you a lot extra in shut/start time compared
to these can’t-see/use-it-troubles…(in other words, if hibernate or
suspend kills the machine, then don’t use it…instead, use what works…)
On 2010-11-30 13:25, DenverD wrote:
> SuseNeo wrote:
> i think by default the openSUSE DVD will “Boot from Hard Disk” the
> first selection on the list…
Yes, correct. But what it does is simply chainload the HD’s MBR, so the
default boot options from the HD still apply. However, if there are several
disks, it might not choose the same one as set in the BIOS, dunno.
> you may not like this idea: but the ability to hibernate or suspend is
> a ‘relatively’ new capability…i guess if you use your machine when
> you need it and shut it down when you don’t you won’t have this
> problem and it won’t cost you a lot extra in shut/start time compared
> to these can’t-see/use-it-troubles…(in other words, if hibernate or
> suspend kills the machine, then don’t use it…instead, use what works…)
Hibernation is crucial for me, even in desktops. I’m used to hibernate and
restore with all my applications opened, which are a lot.
It is also very important on laptops when running on battery. Suspend to
ram too, but this one fails more often.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
That makes sense about the DVD boot–explains why it booted from HDD and why nevertheless it had different results.
But problems with boot power settings wouldn’t seem to explain why this problem is just arising now–I’ve been using the current installation/setup for nearly a year now–unless some SUSE upgrade either changed them or changed something they were affecting. I guess if I don’t use hibernate, suspend or the idle settings and I don’t have the problem, that’s as good an explanation as any.
The problem with limiting myself to using “Shutdown” only is not only the time of restarting the computer but also the time to find all the places I was working (open docs and apps). I hate to leave my laptop running all night and for long periods of the day when I’m not there–particularly with the screen burning all that time.
If it’s a hardware problem, is there a way to troubleshoot between whether it’s the inverter or the screen itself (or some third thing), short of replacing them one by one?
SuseNeo wrote:
> explain why this
> problem is just arising now–I’ve been using the current
> installation/setup for nearly a year now–unless some SUSE upgrade
> either changed them or changed something they were affecting.
do you keep your machine updated?
if so, there could have been an update that affected your machine…
On 2010-11-30 18:36, SuseNeo wrote:
>
> That makes sense about the DVD boot–explains why it booted from HDD and
> why nevertheless it had different results.
>
> But problems with boot power settings wouldn’t seem to explain why this
> problem is just arising now–I’ve been using the current
> installation/setup for nearly a year now–unless some SUSE upgrade
> either changed them or changed something they were affecting. I guess if
> I don’t use hibernate, suspend or the idle settings and I don’t have the
> problem, that’s as good an explanation as any.
I think you could try with a new user (default settings), and see what
happens. Or another desktop. Or another os version if you have the space on
another partition. Plus a look in the Bugzilla to see if there is something
related.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
do you keep your machine updated?
if so, there could have been an update that affected your machine…
I do all the updates that openSUSE sends. Do they have a place that lists them? I tried looking at zypper.log, but that’s hopeless, unless there’s some way to find the lines that refer to the updates. (I suppose I could grep if I knew which string to grep for.) And at best I have only an approximate idea of when this all started, since the first few times it happens one thinks it’s just some kind of fluke. But if it was caused by an update, it was probably one from last week or the week before.
> I do all the updates that openSUSE sends. Do they have a place that
> lists them? I tried looking at zypper.log, but that’s hopeless, unless
> there’s some way to find the lines that refer to the updates.
The history log is more concise
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
FYI: Update. The thread has explored various reasons why my screen might be failing to work (it arbitrarily goes “out”–tho there is, nearly as I can tell, always very faint image of the screen content). Most suggestions centered around power-setting problems and possible changes from a recent update. Since the end of November I have switched to Ubuntu; that has not alleviated the problem. I also got a new inverter for the screen power source and that did not make any difference. I’ve been using NoMachine for remote access and that works fine. Today, apparently quite arbitrarily, the screen decided to work again after not working for 3 or more weeks save for occasional and very brief appearance of the Lenovo splash screen when starting up. So it’s definitely not an openSUSE problem. I don’t have a dual boot setup so I can’t tell if it’s a Linux problem. So I guess I’m stuck with remote access.
@SuseNeo: Assuming this is not a display hardware problem, what does ‘xset -q’ report? Maybe Xorg DPMS is kicking in (may affect most Linux distros). You can issue ‘xset -dpms s noblank’ and similar to control this behaviour if the X-server is running. Type ‘man xset’ for more options.
Would xset settings particularly DPMS settings explain the intermittencies? They look like the kind of thing that would affect things all the time or never.
Should I disable DPMS?
Current settings:
Screen Saver:
prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
timeout: 0 cycle: 0
DPMS (Energy Star):
Standby: 0 Suspend: 0 Off: 0
DPMS is Enabled
Monitor is On
