[SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

archaeon · Yesterday 12:25:11

Hello

I am new to the forum and just a "desktop-user".
My question might be easily answered, although I searched the forum and on the net, finding some answers but none of them worked for me so far.

I am running an old MacBookPro5,5, running devuan without any major problems for years. (Thanks for all your hard work.)

Now after upgrading to Excalibur my only problem is that my screen, while in the X environment, randomly (could be 1 minute, could be 20 minutes…) turns to black.
At this point all is still working perfectly fine in the background.

It mostly seems to happen when I do not use the touchpad or the keyboard for some time, although when watching a movie e. g. the screen also stays on.
Running a movie (mpv) seems to be the only way so far to keep the screen on.

In any other case, When I use the touchpad/keyboard again the black screen directly dissapears and everything is back to normal. Like a screensaver.

But I turned of the screensaver or any energy saving options.
At least anything I could find. It seems to be a GPU problem?

I can not translate/understand the log entries and do not exactly know where to look at. So any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.

Altoid · Yesterday 12:41:02

Hello:

archaeon wrote:

... new to the forum ...

Welcome to Dev1.

archaeon wrote:

... my screen, while in the X environment, randomly (could be 1 minute, could be 20 minutes…) turns to black.

There is (in all probability) nothing wrong with your screen, it is just going to sleep.

Proof: it comes alive after touching the pad.

See this thread: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=4502

There may be an answer on how to stop this behaviour there.

Edit:
Please open a terminal and run ...

~$ xset q

... then post the output so we can see what is going on with the settings.

Specific to what is going on with your screen are these:

--- snip ---
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking: xxx    allow exposures:  xxx
  timeout: xxx            cycle:  xxx
--- snip ---

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (Yesterday 13:02:41)

archaeon · Yesterday 13:07:40

Thank you Altoid for the welcome and the link.

I am reading this thread right now and later on trying to figure out if anythin of this is working for me.

archaeon · Yesterday 13:14:42

$ xset q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    off    02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  20
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffefffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600    cycle:  600
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,built-ins
DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

archaeon · Yesterday 13:27:10

Ok. So I now tried the following commands:

xset -dpms

xfce4-power-manager -q

And now I am waiting to see if this will change anything at all.

Altoid · Yesterday 13:33:14

Hello:

Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600    cycle:  600

There you go ... 8^D
Your screen is blanking because it is set up to do so every 600 seconds.

As to why it did not happen before (Daedalus) and is happening now (Excalibur), I have no idea.

The solution is probably here ...

https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=31539#p31539
... or here:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/question … acking-out

I have no experience with how to set those parameters, maybe someone else can chip in.

Best,

A.

archaeon · Yesterday 14:14:26

Hello

Ok. Just for the info. The two commands I have tried did not work.
The screen went black again. Whatever that means.

But I have to say sometimes it definitely took less time than these "600 s" for the screen to turn black again.

Thank you Altoid for this finding and your help.
I will read the two threads later and hopefully I will find the answer to that really annoying thing.

Altoid · Yesterday 14:54:27

Hello:

... two commands I have tried did not work.
The screen went black again. Whatever that means.

Means the same thing as before: screen is going to sleep. 8^°

As you can see from your printout ...

--- snip ---
DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
--- snip ---

... DPMS is/was enabled.

What does $ xset q say now?
ie: after the commands.

BTW: what desktop have you installed?

If XFCE, have you read this? it is in the body of https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?pid=31558#p31558

I wrote:

XScreenSaver
If xscreensaver is installed and runs alongside Xfce Power Manager, it may not be clear which application is in control of blanking and DPMS as both are competing for control of the same settings. Therefore, in a situation where it is important that the monitor not be blanked (when watching a video for instance), it is advisable to disable blanking and DPMS through both applications. To know more about XScreenSaver options, see XScreenSaver#DPMS and blanking settings.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (Yesterday 14:56:19)

Calamity · Yesterday 20:32:04

I had similar troubles after the upgrade to Excalibur. The command that helped me is

xset s off

It disables the blanking and allows you to define everything in XFCE's settings, as before.

It seems to occur due to some changes (or bugs) in XFCE's power management. For some reason, the DE settings get overriden by xset's defaults unless you use the aforementioned command or install a screensaver, e.g. xfce4-screensaver. Although I noticed the blanking still happens in LightDM, so it might actually be an xset issue.

Altoid · Yesterday 20:59:22

Hello:

Calamity wrote:

... seems to occur due to some changes (or bugs) in XFCE's power management.

I got rid of all XFCE power management stuff back in ascii, it was a PITA.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (Today 11:30:12)

archaeon · Today 11:33:52

Hello

I found some time to test the following command Calamity suggested.

xset s off

And it did solve the problem.

I tested for about 1.5h, without doing or touching anything, and the screen did not go black again. I am really happy it finally worked.

Thank you very much for your help Calamity.
And also thanks a lot Altoid for the links. I am indeed using Xfce.

Now what would be the best way to start the command automatically?
Should I Just put it to the application autostart as a .sh script?
Or is this a "bad" way of starting the command?
(Is it enough to run it once?)

Last edited by archaeon (Today 11:36:36)

greenjeans · Today 12:32:22

Now what would be the best way to start the command automatically?
Should I Just put it to the application autostart as a .sh script?

That's what I do, works fine.

#!/bin/sh

# Script to turn off base-level power-management.

xset dpms 0 0 0
xset -dpms
xset s off

archaeon · Today 12:45:50

That's what I do, works fine.

Thank you greenjeans. I will use this as well.

Calamity · Today 17:00:50

Glad to hear you got it sorted out!

The way I did it was simply add the command as an autostart item in XFCE's Session and Startup, triggered on login.

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#1 Yesterday 12:25:11

[SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#2 Yesterday 12:41:02

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#3 Yesterday 13:07:40

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#4 Yesterday 13:14:42

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#5 Yesterday 13:27:10

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#6 Yesterday 13:33:14

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#7 Yesterday 14:14:26

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#8 Yesterday 14:54:27

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#9 Yesterday 20:32:04

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#10 Yesterday 20:59:22

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#11 Today 11:33:52

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#12 Today 12:32:22

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#13 Today 12:45:50

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

#14 Today 17:00:50

Re: [SOLVED] Screen randomly turns black

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