Weird screen problems

plockery · 2005-08-02 09:47:23

I am using arch 0.7 with windowmaker on an old p2 350 with a diamond viper 330 (nvidea riva128 chipset) 4meg video card and 192 meg sdram using the default xorg nv drivers.

After about 10 minutes idle the screen goes blank, but I have no screen saver set and have done nothing to the default arch setup.
xorg.conf was generated by hwd.

Sometime after that, I'm not sure when, I think the computer goes into some sort of power down mode (the active led light on the monitor changes from green to orange).

When I then move the mouse to came back to the screen, the screen is full of black and white thick and thin lines (I don't know how else to describe it - like a double spaced writing lines on a page) and the mouse cursor is now a white square.

As soon as I click on a section of the screen the background in windowmaker (just the purple default) reappears in that area and if I right click to restart windowmaker, it comes up fine again. If there had been program windows previously opened they will reappear as soon as I click on where they were.

This behaviour is independent of the window manager (also does the same thing in icewm, xfce etc.) or hardware, since i dual boot with win95 and this behaviour does not occur with win95.
I also have another pc with exactly the same configuration at work that does exactly the same thing.

So it seems it is a linux/arch/xorg/driver or something problem.

Can anyone:

1. Tell me why the screen should go blank in the first place? Is there a setting in arch somewhere that has a timed blank screen or powerdown function?

2. Give me any idea as to what might be the problem with the screen refresh and direct me as to what I might look for?

It is relatively easy to recover but most annoying.

Peter

dtw · 2005-08-02 10:53:26

1. Yes, there is a blank screen command in rc.sysinit

plockery · 2005-08-02 12:07:44

Thanks dibblethewrecker.

I have now commented out that line in rc.sysinit.

I still suspect the monitor or something was powering down as well, but those commands for setterm do not appear to be in rc.sysinit, so who knows.

Still doesn't explain the screen display getting garbled upon reactivation.

Any ideas about that?

Peter

phrakture · 2005-08-02 15:05:32

plockery wrote:

I still suspect the monitor or something was powering down as well, but those commands for setterm do not appear to be in rc.sysinit, so who knows.

Monitor power down is most likely controlled by your monitor - it's an Energy Star feature... if there is no active signal to the monitor, it powers down so as to not emit any useless radiation, and things like that...

plockery wrote:

Still doesn't explain the screen display getting garbled upon reactivation.

Any screen garbling is going to be related to the video card and video driver. You'd probably have to research that. Does it work with the vesa driver?

plockery · 2005-08-03 00:35:20

How do I use the vesa driver? (sorry still ignorant of a lot of linux workings).

I have discovered that despite commenting out the "/usr/sbin/setterm -blank 15" line in the rc.sysinit file, the behaviour is still the same.

The screen goes blank and then a short time later the monitor itself powers down.

So it looks like the power down is as you say an energy star feature. I get the same behaviour for both CRT and LCD monitors, so they both must do the energy star thing.

But I think another process must still be doing the intitial blanking before the monitor itself powers down.

Could this be a process in xorg itself?

Thanks for the help.

Peter

max_sipos · 2005-08-03 01:11:39

It could be that DPMS is enabled in your xorg.conf
See if the reverse steps of this:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DPMS
help.

plockery · 2005-08-03 06:46:30

OK thanks max_sipos.

There was a line in the monitor section of xorg.conf which was "option "DPMS" "true"".
I commented that line out and the screen garbled problem no longer exists.

I presume this means that the video card/driver can't handle standby or suspend mode when I try to come back to the screen.

However, the screen still blanks out.

Any other suggestions as to where this blanking out is coming from?

Peter

tmadhavan · 2005-08-03 07:09:59

Stragne, I have the same problem (without the garbling).

I removed the blank screen line, so that may work. There doesn't appear to be any DPMS line in my xorg either, weird.

T

phrakture · 2005-08-03 15:54:15

plockery wrote:

I presume this means that the video card/driver can't handle standby or suspend mode when I try to come back to the screen.

Quite possibly... I've seen things like that before.

plockery wrote:

However, the screen still blanks out.
Any other suggestions as to where this blanking out is coming from?

Try messing with xset - "xset -dpms" or something like that (check the man pages, I can't recall what it needs to shut dpms off fully)

If it still blanks after that, it may be a feature of your DE - are you using gnome/kde/xfce?

iphitus · 2005-08-03 22:42:26

Try adding

Option "VBERestore" "on"

to the device section for your graphics card in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf

plockery · 2005-08-04 11:54:18

Tried adding the VBERestore line as instructed, but screen still blanks out.

What is the VBERestore meant to do?

Have discovered that if either of the lines
/usr/sbin/setterm -blank 15 (in rc.sysinit) or
Option DPMS true (in Xorg.conf Monitor Section)
is active then the screen will garble.

With both lines commented out, it no longer garbles, but nothing so far seems to stop it automatically blanking.

Have not had a look at xset yet. Not sure what it does either.

Peter

Arch Linux

#1 2005-08-02 09:47:23

Weird screen problems

#2 2005-08-02 10:53:26

Re: Weird screen problems

#3 2005-08-02 12:07:44

Re: Weird screen problems

#4 2005-08-02 15:05:32

Re: Weird screen problems

#5 2005-08-03 00:35:20

Re: Weird screen problems

#6 2005-08-03 01:11:39

Re: Weird screen problems

#7 2005-08-03 06:46:30

Re: Weird screen problems

#8 2005-08-03 07:09:59

Re: Weird screen problems

#9 2005-08-03 15:54:15

Re: Weird screen problems

#10 2005-08-03 22:42:26

Re: Weird screen problems

#11 2005-08-04 11:54:18

Re: Weird screen problems

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