Arch Linux

nloudon1

Member

Registered: 2010-02-15

Posts: 21

Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

Hi guys, I'm having a bit of trouble with my laptop and I thought maybe someone here might have an idea to make my life a little bit better. Basically I have my Arch Linux set up exactly how I want it, everything is perfect except for one glaring issue. That issue is when I shut my laptop lid for a long period of time (overnight for example) and come back to use my computer in the morning and open up the lid all I get is a blank screen. I've used Linux in various forms for a while now so my first thought was switch to tty1-6 and see if anything happens. Nothing. I can tell the computer is on because the power indicator light is on and the HD indicator light is flashing, but I get no display. It is a really baffling problem.

I wouldn't even really be having this issue if suspend worked properly though. It actually seems like it might be related somehow. I can resume from suspend no problem if I do it within a short period of time (I'm using uswsusp to manage suspend), but if I wait all night or over a period of several hours I can't get back from suspend. It will usually come up with a terminal that gives me some message about swap space (and I have more swap space than RAM) and get stuck, again I can't switch ttys, all I can do is hold down power until my computer turns off.

If I could only fix this issue my Arch Linux install would be magnificent, but as it stands this situation is really frustrating. I can post any logs that you guys request, just let me know what you need to see or if you guys have any suggestions for things that I might try anything would really be appreciated at this point.

Thanks so much,
Nate

atcq

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-09-04

Posts: 28

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

i have a similar problem with my netbook.
in my case it's the intel video driver causing the problem (i guess, since i can't find the source i got that information from).
haven't found a solution yet ...

phantasmik

Member

Registered: 2010-03-15

Posts: 15

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

What kind of laptop is this,

It may be helpful to know the output from the follow command:

sudo lspci | grep VGA

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Enthusiast

nloudon1

Member

Registered: 2010-02-15

Posts: 21

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

It's a Dell Inspiron 1501, here's the output from that command:

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]

phantasmik

Member

Registered: 2010-03-15

Posts: 15

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

This seems to be a common issue with that Video Card, this appears to have worked for some people, I know its not exactly the same model and a rather old thread, but from what I've read there hasn't been a lot of headway on getting this card to work properly.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=705928

Give this a shot and let us know what kind of results you have.

Edit: screwed up the url

Last edited by phantasmik (2010-03-15 17:24:51)

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Enthusiast

nloudon1

Member

Registered: 2010-02-15

Posts: 21

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

Yeah, it looks like it is a common thing. Unfortunately I tried that before and have my menu.lst configured that way now and I'm still getting the same results .

nloudon1

Member

Registered: 2010-02-15

Posts: 21

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

A small update on this issue. I've seen it actually happen. It looks like it's the display turning off on its own after a period of time and then it just can't come back. Sometimes it has no trouble coming out of it, I move the mouse and everything is back to normal. But for these times that it doesn't come back it is extremely annoying.

Any ideas? I'm not even sure where to look (other than powerdevil settings which I have turned off) to fix this.

Thanks,
Nate

nloudon1

Member

Registered: 2010-02-15

Posts: 21

Re: Trouble coming back to KDE after long periods of time.

Hey guys, I solved the problem where my screen would turn off on its own, and I'm thinking/hoping the two problems might have been related and I might have solved both suspend and the randomly not coming back from turning the screen off thing. But in any case, here's how I managed to get my screen to stop blanking out every 10-15 minutes (in case some other weary Arch pilgrim discovers this thread in search of answers). I just added the following to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerFlags"
    # Enable C-A-Backspace
    Option         "DontZap" "False"

   # Don't use screensaver, turn
   # screens off after 15 minutes
    Option         "BlankTime" "0"
    Option         "StandbyTime" "0"
    Option         "SuspendTime" "0"
    Option         "OffTime" "0"
EndSection

Tada! Now I don't have that problem anymore and I reenabled powerdevil (which works fine) and just have a screensaver instead of the screen blanking out. If the suspend/resume issue persists I'll be back in this thread, if not thanks for your help folks.

Nate