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#1 2011-10-16 18:27:47

cmiles74
Member
Registered: 2011-10-16
Posts: 8

Secondary Display Covered in Black Every Three Minutes

I'm using Archlinux with Gnome 3.2 and the "nvidia" drivers. I'm using a 15" Apple MacBook Pro with an Apple Cinema Display attached as my secondary display. After about three minutes, the external display is covered in black (the backlight stays on); only the first line of pixels remains, when I move the mouse way up I can see the tip of the mouse cursor through this 1 line of pixels. The display in the laptop continues to run without issue. Keypresses and mouse movements targeted at the external display work, I just can't see them. Switching back to the primary display with Disper and then back to the external fixes the problem but only for another three minutes.

I've tried changing settings with "xset", killing the screensaver, turning off DPMS, etc. but nothing seems to work. It is driving me totally crazy, for now I can't really use my external display. This is a new problem that cropped up after some un-interesting looking updates yesterday.

Has anyone seen anything similar, or have a suggestion that might fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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#2 2011-10-16 21:19:18

Strike0
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-05
Posts: 1,429

Re: Secondary Display Covered in Black Every Three Minutes

No solution, but this problem seems very similar:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=128017

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#3 2011-10-17 12:50:46

cmiles74
Member
Registered: 2011-10-16
Posts: 8

Re: Secondary Display Covered in Black Every Three Minutes

Indeed, that does sound very similar!

I've made some small, meager progress on this issue. After uninstalling, installing, and then installing some more I have managed to eliminate Gnome and GDM as the problem entirely. This same issue manifests when Gnome is started from "startx" as well as under XFCE.

I believe this issue lies with either the Nvidia driver (version 285.05.09-1) or with the Xorg server version 1.11.1-2. I can't nail it down to one or the other because the older Nvidia driver won't load with the newer Xorg server and vice-versa. Having rolled back to the Nvidia driver 280.13-1 and Xorg server 1.10.4-1, the issue with the black screen has been resolved. While this is a valid workaround it doesn't represent a long-term solution.

My best guess is that the Nvidia driver is ignoring the DMPS and "xset s" options delivered by the X server and blanks the screen after the set time period.

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#4 2011-10-21 11:29:30

Strike0
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2011-09-05
Posts: 1,429

Re: Secondary Display Covered in Black Every Three Minutes

I have not had to set any of those (DPMS/xset) manually, so I cant comment on that. But good you have a workaround. Maybe you could try to let the nvidia driver do the configuration itself with the nvidia-auto-select option.
http://http.download.nvidia.com/XFree86 … dix-j.html
Just a thought.

Last edited by Strike0 (2011-10-21 11:32:43)

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