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#1 2016-10-14 19:23:33

mm___
Member
From: Konstanz, Germany
Registered: 2015-08-03
Posts: 21

[SOLVED] Screen randomly blacks out on XFCE while working

Dear users,

I have been using ArchLinux with XFCE on my laptop (Asus N550JK) for over two years. During the last month or so, I have been facing a strange issue: the screen suddenly becomes black while I'm working. It does not turn off, since I can "see" that the screen is turned off if I press FN+F7 (default key combination for turning off the screen on my laptop), but it seems that the backlight is being set to 0. The only way to resume the brightness of the screen is by closing the lid to suspend the PC and then open it up again, or by forced shutdown. This happens a lot lately, but apparently in a totally random way. Sometimes once every hours, some other times two times in five minutes.

I am pretty sure this is not a hardware issue: the problem does not arise on Windows, or if I do not enter the desktop environment (i.e., if I do not run "startx" after I start the PC). I suppose it is a XFCE Power Manager issue. I posted the issue on the italian forum, and they suggested me to ask here; the problem might be related to the acpi_backlight parameter, but I am not an expert so I am careful in doing any modification. The kernel line on my /etc/default/grub currently reads:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi="

and everything has worked fine since now. I noticed that the xfce4-power-manager package has been last updated on September 19th, which I could argue is the day the problem began.


Please let me know how I can help you to help me! The issue is somewhat stressful. Thank you very much.

Last edited by mm___ (2016-10-26 09:07:42)

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#2 2016-10-15 17:20:34

mm___
Member
From: Konstanz, Germany
Registered: 2015-08-03
Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly blacks out on XFCE while working

I tried with different values of the kernel parameter acpi_backlight on boot (video, vendor, backlight), but the issue remains.

Does anybody have any suggestions? Could it be related to a conflict between the NVidia graphics card and the integrated Intel graphics card? I have always had the NVidia card disabled through bbswitch (for over two years), and I never had any problems.

Hope you could help me.

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#3 2016-10-26 09:07:21

mm___
Member
From: Konstanz, Germany
Registered: 2015-08-03
Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly blacks out on XFCE while working

Turns out it was an hardware issue: I upgraded the RAM from 8 to 16 GB a few months ago. I opened up the laptop, cleaned some dust and checked on every connection, then removed the additional bank. After a couple of days of continuous usage the issue seems gone. I wonder why the compatibility issue (if any) did not show up immediately after installing the RAM...

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