Hi!
I updated a few days ago a Dell Precision M6400 oldtimer to TW (fresh install of root paritition, keeping /home partition), since then the screen never turns of (machine is on 24/7).
I tried various combinations of “Dim” and “Turn off”, in “Power Management” of “Desktop settings”, to no avail yet. Worked fine with 13.2 over the years.
Can anybody point me in the right direction what might have gone wrong here?
Many thanks in advance!
PS: The “Dim” function for the screen is functional. I tried several combinations of “Switch off” with and without “Dim”…
…sitting besides the machine (running no application at all) and working with another computer:
I saw the screen turn “Dim” and later also BLACK (“Switch off”), but only to come back soon in “Dim” mode. Really strange…
When I use the touchpad, the “Dim” goes away.
Does anybody know which program controls the switch off?
Reboot, unpowering the docking station etc. does not help. I still see the display dimming, then turning off shortly and directly going back to dim, not a full “wake up”, as if the machine comes back from pressing a key or using the touchpad.
Do I have to do a full install to get rid of this? :-/
Is there really nothing I can do to stop KDE from killing my screen by turning it off for 2-3 seconds every few minutes and otherwise burning in the icons on my desktop into the panel of my laptop?
Very annoying…
I don’t see this issue anywhere. Could it be that there are some remains of 13.2 interfering ?
Please also test this for a newly created user. If the issue exists for that user, it’s a system problem. If it doesn’t the culprit resides in your homedir.
Hi Knurpht!
Many thanks for your reply!
I created a new user, logged in, changed to “Folder view” and replaced background for desktop by single solid color. Let it stand for 5 minutes, I don’t see “Dim”, after 10 min the screen goes black (I still see the cursor, so the screen is not turned off!) and after 2-3 seconds the screen turns on again.
I don’t think there is a cron job (I did not create any) which wakes up the system…
Still hoping for help (I now install 476 new updates and see if something get’s better)
PS: After reboot (Login-screen looks like 42.2 now!) md126 raid1 (2x 1TB) is resyncing, so the next few hours the machine is busy and will not switch off screen, I guess…
tbc
So, for the new user it’s the same.
Try having a look at the output of
dmesg -T -w
A way to find out if there’s any leftover packages from 13.2 is to use YaST’s softwaremanager. Sort the installed package by Version descending and you would see “red packages”. Manually check and remove those from 13.2 repos.
And … try booting from a TW Live USB, see if the issue exists there.
Hi again!
dmesg does not show anything peculiar, not during boot and not while switching the display to black for 3 seconds.
Only red package in YaST is “openSUSE-released-dvd” with “20160928-1.1”, but no way to update this (only 66 bytes)
TW USB boot: Have here a USB stick prepared TW download and openSUSE Studio imagewriter, from which I successfully installed TW on another machine (the one with BSD, btw), I tried “Rescue system” and “Boot Linux system” andandand, but never got a graphic system booted from the USB stick. Any hint what’s the right way to boot a live openSUSE from USB? 
Finally I found the right .iso for KDE Live USB stick and booted it. After 5 min Dim, after 10 min NO screen turn-off (only for 3-4 seconds black with cursor, as before).
In dmesg there is
dell_wmi: Unknown WMI event type: 0x11: 0x1e3
…found only something on dell function keys via google, but function keys are doing fine here
It’s a mess! It worked fine on 13.2, my son has a Precision M6400 with an ATI GPU (mine has a Nvidia graphics card…) and his machine is doing fine with 42.1.
Any ideas?
If hybrid graphics (intel+NVIDIA) are you using bumblebee???
Nope, Nvidia is the only graphics present in this oldtimer…
Sorry, but: Problem solved. Reinstalled 13.2…:’(
PS: I had a look at dmesg of my sons M6400, correctly turning off the screen after 10 min. He also has these
dell_wmi: Unknown WMI event type: 0x11: 0x1e3
…so apparently it is not related to the screen switch problem.