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ilar

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 7

No signal to monitor after several minutes- regardless of X running?

I have a particularly... odd graphics issue. My graphics cards are two crossfired/eyefinity capable radeon HD 6870s, and I'm using the driver xf86-video-ati.

After about 5-10 minutes (regardless of my level of activity- I've had this happen while mid-command), my computer cuts signal to my screen, unless KMS is off. Unfortunately, X can't start with KMS off on xf86-video-ati.

It's not X, either, because it does it even if I don't start X. Doing a blind pkill x does nothing as well.

Here's the weirdest part- if I do a blind reboot, the screens stay off, even though the system does, in fact, reboot. If I do a blind shutdown -h now, and then turn my system back on, everything is fine, unless I boot into arch, then I lose screens again after a small amount of time.

I dual boot Windows/Arch. Windows has never had this issue. I believe also, that if I attempt a blind reboot and choose windows from GRUB that windows cannot send signal to the screen either. I can't confirm that though- since I'm trying to do grub blind, I obviously can't be sure I managed to hit windows.

Annnd finally, here's a Xorg.0.log, just in case it manages to be useful: http://sprunge.us/YEVR

Last edited by ilar (2013-04-09 22:17:09)

ilar

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 7

Re: No signal to monitor after several minutes- regardless of X running?

So I hit upon something that might be relevant- I think it may be power related.

I tried to fallback to software rendering, and it worked fine (except for X being bugged out due to not recognizing anything and being slower).

More tellingly, I realized that there was less noise coming from my computer. SIGNIFICANTLY less noise.

I feel like power management may be screwing up somewhere and running my graphics cards at max (or higher than max) power/speed for extended periods of time for no reason, causing them to failsafe by turning off. This would explain why a reboot (which doesn't cut power to PCI on my computer) doesn't fix it.

Looking at the (not-so) various options for power management on the opensource ATI drivers now.

Last edited by ilar (2013-04-10 16:45:00)

ilar

Member

Registered: 2013-04-02

Posts: 7

Re: No signal to monitor after several minutes- regardless of X running?

Problem seemed to be in the open source drivers. Switched to catalyst and they.. mostly work

jacobopantoja

Member

From: Madrid

Registered: 2011-03-16

Posts: 44

Re: No signal to monitor after several minutes- regardless of X running?

You may help devs by joining their IRC channel for ati drivers (#radeon if I remember correctly). It seems like something done at firmware level, which would explain why it persists on reboot but not on hard power off.

Also, to be sure if it is Windows or Linux what you blindly booted, try ssh'ing from another computer (then it's Linux) or opening some Windows Shares.

EDIT: It seems, from your Xorg logs, that the monitors are not being detected as connected. Additionally, two of them are not supporting some DPMS capabilities, according to their EDID; as they are not being correctly detected as connected, Xorg may try to DPMS-off them, effectively turning off the monitor.
Questions:
1) Do you really have 3 monitors connected?
2) Are all the monitors suffering the same problem?
3) When it happens, try powering off the monitor and powering on again
4) The same but disconnecting the monitor also

Last edited by jacobopantoja (2013-04-11 05:04:54)