Ubuntu :: Natty: Display Goes Blank Without Activating Screensaver
May 13, 2011
This issue was resolved in Lucid and Maverick; now it's back... This happens after only 2-3 minutes, even when the screen saver is set to activate after 20 minutes. I believe this has something to do with ACPI power management.
I'm running Fedora 12 and the last couple days I have noticed my screensaver will not start anymore. I did a yum update a few days ago don't know if there is a connection between the two. I've just started to Google the topic. Found different culprits ranging from dbus problems to buggy code.
I'm using a x86_64 PC running kernel 2.6.32.23-170.fc12.x86_64. My Gnome version is 2.28.2. The Gnome-screensaver version is 2.28.3-1.fc12.x86_64.
Since install ubuntu 11.04 natty narwal (unity) i have had issues when leaving my computer for about 10-15 sometimes longer and returning to a frozen screensaver and ubuntu doesn't repond.Lately i have just enabled the screensaver to go on after 5 hours but this is bad for my screen.I am wondering if there is a fix for this i have updated today and still encountering the issue. And is this bug reported?
Installed ubuntu 10.10 without any problems. Everything works fine until i installed the ati display drivers. After this ubuntu shows me 3 different screens before login that apparently broken (see attachments). After the last screen the "normal" login screen is shown.If i dont use the drivers everything looks fine, but then my gpu fan (radeon 4890hd) runs at 100% which is a bit noisy.
It seems that something is causing the memory cache to be cleared when the screensaver launches. Then when moving the mouse or hitting a key to stop the screensaver it takes forever for the already launched and minimized applications to redisplay. I am using the ubuntu classic desktop.
Now time to rant.
Natty has so many bugs it is impossible to work around them all. This memory issue is one of the worst. The dead zone caused by the static application switcher, and the application switcher plugins for compiz (and probably any override redirect window) is another big one. There is not a single window decorator for compiz that works right. I have encountered two packages with binaries that won't even run (emerald and xpdf). The nvidia drivers seem to have issues (this may be related to this memory clearing issue).
Without a doubt more bugs than any other release of Ubuntu to date. I have worked around most of them by recompiling, and etc., but this is a real pain.
This is all aside from the idiotic switch to unity, when it is clearly not ready for release. The general direction of Ubuntu is really starting to look bad. By the way, what is up with the decision to uglify the desktop with gray scale icons (I know this is an old one, but I haven't really ranted on Ubuntu yet).
Specifications: Dell PoweEdge 1600SC ATI Radeon HD 2400 Pro 256MB PCI graphics adaptor Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" Linux 2.6.31-22-generic #69-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 24 08:51:08 UTC 2010 i686 ATI fglrx drivers Set up for dual-head display using two Princeton 19" monitors Using the Gnome desktop and screensaver
At some point, I suspect since the last kernel upgrade, I've begun experiencing a problem when the screen locks: I tap a key on the keyboard and the monitors wake up, but I get no "unlock" dialog. I can usually Ctrl-Alt-F1, login and gracefully reboot the system, but sometimes I have to hit hard reset. For now I've disabled the screensaver in "System -> Preferences -> screensaver" (I assume that'll stop the problem), but that's not an optimal solution.
have you ever tried to type into xterm ? (output of 5-11.1): Code: xscreensaver-command -lock xscreensaver-command: no screensaver is running on display :0.0 If it is working for you, which version of xscreensaver do you have?
However, there are one or two stability issues. In particular, over the last couple of days, I have seen two occasions where my screen suddenly goes blank, and after about 3 seconds I am presented with the login manager. I can then log in, and the desktop works fine again. Of course, everything I was doing is gone... So, where do I look to find what is causing the problem? I'd like to find out and either fix this here or submit a useful bug.
I just did a fresh install of natty, installed a few programs along with the ati catalyst control center.
I am having serious login issues, here is what I do:
I am at the login screen right from start-up, type in username and passward and hit enter, screen goes blank, it appears I am logging in, ubuntu plays a sound and puts me back at the login screen. I do not get an "Authentication Failed" error like I would expect. Unable to login as myself or as root.
However, I am able to login if I select the "safe mode," I am not able to login under the normal mode or the ubuntu classic modes.
I suspect that this issue has to do with the ati proprietary drivers, after playing with the settings for a while in safe mode I am now able to login to the normal natty mode without any apparent issues.
Here is what I changed in ati catalyst control center to boot into natty mode:
I disabled the Xinerama and Tear Free options.
Under the 3D settings, I selected the "override application setting" for all the 3D settings I could.
I believe I still have some display issues as I am unable to drag windows from one display to another, my mouse is able to move just fine across displays though.
I also found that enabling Xinerama prevented me from logging into the ubuntu and ubuntu classic modes, but I was able to login to the ubuntu with no effects mode.
I recently installed Ubuntu on my Powerbook G4 1.6ghz 13". The install went fine along with the first boot off the harddrive. The problem came when I started the computer for the second time. X starts but the display comes up blank. To be sure I didn't mess up the install I reinstalled Ubuntu and installed all the updates and proprietary drivers as well as setup remote desktop options. I can now start the computer and get a remote desktop but nothing on the computer's display. I've tried to edit the xorg.conf but X has not created one. I'm at a loss of what to try next.
I went to lock the screen when I got up from my computer. I came back and there was a black screen. I tried hitting different buttons nothing worked. I rebooted and still went right to black screen. I can get into recovery mode but I can't figure out what's wrong with the computer. Can someone give me a hint. My father is very good with ubuntu but he said that he would just reload the os on it. But I really don't want to go thru that process all over again.
I was installing ubuntu 11.04 natty narwal daily build alongside windows 7 and ubuntu 10.10, and was resizing partition when computer was taking too long to resize, i then restarted computer, my computer appears to be working, but i get no display on my monitor, even though it is powered on. getting my bios to appear, or restoring my computer to normal.
There's an OSS screensaver on windows that I love called PixelCity (links:blog post, github). it's pretty cool. and it runs fine on my Ubuntu (Karmic 9.10) with wine.Is there a way I can tell the gnome-screensaver about it so I can use it as one of my screensavers? I'm still fairly new to Gnome and the whole "screensavers as themes" thing is still confusing me.I've found my themesdir and tried to create a .desktop file for it, but obviously I've gotten something wrong as it just doesn't show when I open the screensaver prefs dialog, no error, no message, it's just not there.
Installing the xscreensaver packages added the extra screensavers I was missing, and I'm a pixelcity away from perfection..Of course the perfect solution would be if someone ported the screensaver natively to linux, which shouldn't be too hard as the source is open, it already runs on openGL and tries to confine most windows stuff to a single file. But I don't know C++ or 3D code or win/linux internals so I wouldn't know where to start..
I am running 9.10 on a HP Compaq. Every few days X will die. The screen goes blank and will not display anything. I have to SSH in, but even trying various commands like gdm restart does not help. I eventually have to reboot the box. Below is a snippet (hopefully not too large) of dmesg:
/dev/sr0 on /media/cdrom0 is a CDROM, but I dont think thats the issue.
[707515.629800] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE [707515.629806] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Sense Key : Illegal Request [current] [707515.629811] Info fld=0x45d18, ILI [707515.629813] sr 1:0:0:0: [sr0] Add. Sense: Illegal mode for this track code....
Why is it on Ubuntu/Maverick that my display insists on going BLANK after a certain period of computer inactivity EVEN THOUGH I have NO screensaver functions set and the put screen to sleep function in power management is set to NEVER and ALL functions in BIOS are all set to not have display go into suspend mode ?
Anyone noticing intermittent problems with the screensaver not kicking in or the display not sleeping? This is in gnome under F11.I have the Power Management Preferences set to put the display to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity and gnome screensaver is configured for 5 minutes idle time.On a regular basis, I'll leave my computer come back anda) the screensaver hasn't kicked inorb) the screensaver kicked in, but the power management features didn't kick in to put the display to sleep.It seems to be an intermittent problem and usually it goes away after I restart X, but then at some point it comes back. In the past, I've gotten in the habit of being logged in for weeks/months at a time but I find that I can't go more than a few hours without logging out and back in or else the screen won't go to sleep.
All of sudden my Fedora 14 machine went to blank screen during startupprocess. I upgraded from 12 to 13 and then 14 last week and it worked fine for a week. I have Dell Optiplex 760 with builtin Intel Q43 video card. I have looked for the solution online, but it seems like it is driver issue. I couldn't find the compatible driver yet.
Today, just hurry the boot process up a few seconds, I manually selected the kernel to boot to. Everything went well and got to the point where I heard the bootup sound and then the screen went blank and my monitor on-switch went orange - indicating nothing to display.
If I pressed the delete key I could hear the sound made when there's nothing more to delete. I switched to one of the virtual terminals and the monitor switch went green but no display.
I rebooted and let the bootup process as normal and everything was OK. I repeated the initial bootup process, with the manual selection, and it went blank again. The odd thing is, I'm sure I've recently done this before and all was fine.
I just upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS from 9.10. After the upgrade process, I restarted and chose "Ubuntu, with [the current kernel]" and now I am greeted with a white screen with no login or boot splash. My processor is pegged according to the processor case light. My computer's specs are as follows: AMD Athlon X2 5200+, ATI Radeon X1300 Pro, 2GB DDR2 ram, Dell Socket AM2 Motherboard, and 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. I really need to get this computer to work.
I downloaded 5.4 DVD iso, burnt it to DVD and installed it, when booting up it goes through gives loads of green okays, then when going into the GUI (presumably) it shows a blank screen.
I did some googling and found out to run system-config-display, however when I run this the monitor goes blank and does not work, I have tried a few variations of setting the resolution etc. but nothing worked.
i just installed opensuse yesterday and it's very nice. i wanted to install the driver for my ati mobility radeon hd 5470, so i followed the steps on:SDB:ATI drivers - openSUSEunfortunately, after the reboot, opensuse had booted but there was nothing on my screen (basically, just a blank screen)
I tried in November last year to install 11.2 on a machine with NSRock K8NF6P motherboard which has an onboard GEForce class 6 graphics card. Installation went ok until the very end. Then driver problem surfaced, display went blank and was then damaged and required repair.
The NVIDEA driver install appears to require the system is up and running before it is installed. As I did not get a running system how do I install the drivers before any damage is caused?
i just installed opensuse 11.4 on my system(gigabyte 7n400pro2,amd athlon xp 2.8ghz,ocz vertex2 ssd,ati radeon x1550) and i have this strange problem: the screen gets blank(for about a second) every 40-50seconds. everything else works fine.
I have installed fedora 10 successfully but when reboot the system after installation not initrd or vmlinuz load and display first blue screen and some processing show after this blank screen display and held the system please tell me what should I do? I have reinstall many times but the problem is same.
I just installed Linux 5.5 on a Toshiba laptopn (i3, 64 bit). Centos runs until it reaches a very dark screen. On a few occasions, I am able to see something but the screen is very dark.
I'm running nxfree to log into my remote xubuntu PC from my local xubuntu laptop since the X protocol was broken.Has been working fine. Recently upgraded from Lucid 32bit to Maverick 64bit Xubuntu.Now when I run nxclient in fullscreen mode, if I minimize the window (or just log out) my local display does not return.I'm left with just the background colour. The windows are still there but not visible. For example I can:* randomly right-click and a menu pertaining to the invisible window appears;* press alt-tab and cycle through the windows but activating one does not display it (it remains invisible);* press ALT-F and bring up the current active (but invisible) application file menu;Basically I press ALT-F and ALT-TAB and close everything and then log out and log back in to restore the windows/panels.
Just finished wiping and re-installing F12 From a DVD on an Dell Inspiron 9300 with a NV 6800. The NVidia site driver refused to install, so I used the method documented here
[Code]...
as instructed to in the sticky. On rebooting, after the load animation, the screen goes blank/black. If I click around, I can hear some beeps from the OS so I assume that things are running but i just can't see anything.
I am having a problem getting my virtual console back after starting XWindows. The display goes blank when I press Ctrl-Alt-F1. If I press Ctrl-Alt-F7 I get the X session back. I have tried setting vga=x31A on the linux boot up. Also tried rdev -v /vmlinuz -1, and rebooted. I have tried two different monitors, same problem. One is a an LCD (Philips 170S6Fb/27, the other a Samsung Sync Master 750s. Originally the Samsung worked fine. I could switch between X and VC no problem. Now that I have the LCD monitor working after changing the XF86Config, I have this problem.
My kernel is 2.2.15-5.0, Redhat 6.2. Here is the output of lspci for the video card:
00:0c.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage II+ 215GTB [Mach64 GTB] (rev 9a) (prog-if 00 [VGA]) Subsystem: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4755 Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 0 Memory at e2000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) I/O ports at b400 Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled]
Hopefully there is someway to control how linux sets the video mode when switching consoles.
The video projector I have to use this week projects an image too large for its screen and spills over on every side.
Fixing the physical setup is not possible or at least unlikely for the moment: the only solution is to carefully resize and position windows so that they display in the visible part of the screen - using full-screen mode is out.
Is there a way around this via software, using xrandr for example?
# xrandr doesn't have a padding option...xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1360x768 --left-of LVDS1 --padding 200