Arch Linux

ianhoolihan

Member

Registered: 2011-08-20

Posts: 85

Diagnosing laptop contrast flicker + pc beep (Thinkpad X40)

Hi all,

Currently my laptop randomly decides to flicker the contrast, accompanied by an audible beep at each "flick". Generally the flicks are half a second or so apart, and continue as a five to ten second burst. Most of my time there is no issue, but then a burst of flicker/beeps will hit, and I can't seem to correlate it to anything I'm doing on the computer (though sometimes it's worse than others).

Anyway, I was just wondering if someone could suggest how to diagnose this? I've included the below logs, but I can't seem to see anything obvious (apart from installing xf86-vesa-video, which I just did, but I also just got a flicker/beep). There didn't appear to be anything in dmesg.log either. Any other suggestions? Is there a way to make a log for everything that calls the pcspkr, so I can check what's telling it to beep?

Cheers!

$ sudo tail -n 10000 /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE
[    43.797] Current Operating System: Linux typewriter 3.9.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon May 20 08:00:01 CEST 2013 i686
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[    43.844] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
[    43.902] (EE) Failed to load module "modesetting" (module does not exist, 0)
[    43.903] (EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)

[~]$ sudo tail -n 10000 /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep WW
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[    43.799] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/" does not exist.
[    43.814] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/".
[    43.828] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/".
[    43.902] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module modesetting
[    43.903] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module fbdev
[    43.906] (WW) Falling back to old probe method for vesa

[~]$ sudo tail -n 10000 /var/log/Xorg.1.log | grep EE
[ 12092.219] Current Operating System: Linux typewriter 3.8.11-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu May 2 17:52:13 CEST 2013 i686
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[ 12092.226] Initializing built-in extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
[ 12092.229] (EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)
[ 12092.230] (EE) Failed to load module "modesetting" (module does not exist, 0)
[ 12092.230] (EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)
[ 12092.235] (EE) intel(0): [drm] failed to set drm interface version.
[ 12092.235] (EE) intel(0): Failed to become DRM master.
[ 12092.235] (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.
[ 12092.235] (EE) 
[ 12092.235] (EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.1.log" for additional information.
[ 12092.235] (EE) 

[~]$ sudo tail -n 10000 /var/log/Xorg.1.log | grep WW
	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
[ 12092.222] (WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/OTF/" does not exist.
[ 12092.222] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/".
[ 12092.222] (WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/".
[ 12092.229] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module vesa
[ 12092.230] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module modesetting
[ 12092.230] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module fbdev

ianhoolihan

Member

Registered: 2011-08-20

Posts: 85

Re: Diagnosing laptop contrast flicker + pc beep (Thinkpad X40)

Update: I installed linux-lts, but booting with that doesn't make any difference unfortunately.