Arch Linux

Vitruvian

Member

Registered: 2008-12-28

Posts: 4

External monitor goes blank intermittently

Hello everybody:

When I'm at home I use an external LCD monitor with my laptop.  Seemingly at random, the monitor will lose its input and the screen fills with one solid color (black, white, or blue, so far).  This seems to happen more often when I'm watching Flash videos, but I can't be sure that Flash is the culprit.

When I exit X for the tty1 console (at which point I turn to the laptop's display), I can see several messages about pipe undderuns "(EE) intel(0): underrun on pipe A!", which I suspect are causing the blank screen.  I've come to you after much fruitless searching.

EDIT: I'm using Arch 2.6.25

lspci -s 00:02:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

relevant section of /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "intel"
        VendorName  "Intel Corporation"
        BoardName   "Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
        Option      "UseFBDev"  "true"  
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Screen0"
        Device          "Card0"
        Monitor         "Monitor0"
        DefaultDepth    24
        SubSection "Display"
                Modes   "1440x900"
        EndSubSection
EndSection

I would appreciate any help or a nudge in the right direction.  If you need any more information, I will provide it.  Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Vitruvian (2008-12-28 03:05:01)

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: External monitor goes blank intermittently

I come to you with bad tidings. This happens to me too, and my only known solution is to reboot. I had to reboot three times once.

I get these exact same issues, except only when I exit and restart X, or change screen resolution. Since I use a CRT, my experience differs: when the card decides to give up X only ever comes back up with a black screen, not some other color.

Like you, when this happens the console is full of "(EE) intel(0): buffer underrun on pipe A!" messages. I'm so used to seeing them I noticed you forgot to put the "buffer" in

I have a rather much older chipset:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 01)

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-12-28 05:34:47)

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Vitruvian

Member

Registered: 2008-12-28

Posts: 4

Re: External monitor goes blank intermittently

Like you, when this happens the console is full of "(EE) intel(0): buffer underrun on pipe A!" messages.

I'm beginning to think this a bug in the Intel driver, if only because I can't think of anything else.  Does anyone have a solution, or should we just try to live with the problem until the bug is fixed?