[mythtv-users] Screen Blanking

R. G. Newbury newbury at mandamus.org
Fri Feb 20 21:36:21 UTC 2009


David Whyte wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 12:11 AM, Jason Gauthier <jgauthier at lastar.com> wrote:
>> Hey all,
>>
>>
>>
>>   I've taken this as long and as far as I can.  Now, I need some ideas :(
>>
>>
>>
>> My frontend only display keeps going off.  This isn't your normal
>> screensaver or DPMS off.  This looks like a video sync problem or something.
>>
>> I'm using a Sony 32" LCD TV attached via VGA.
>>
>>
>>
>> I can watch TV or recordings for an hour, or two.. and it's fine.  Other
>> times, I will watch for 5 minutes and it goes off.
>>
>> Once it's off, there is no coming back on.  I have to reboot.
>>
>>
>>
>> What information can I provide to help figure this out?   I'm running
>> mythbuntu, completely patched up. My video card appears to be an Intel
>> 82865G.
>>
>>
> 
> I upgraded my mythbuntu 7.10 box by apt-get dist-upgrades on the
> weekend to 8.04.  Everything went quite nicely, except I too had a
> problem whereby the FEs would randomly decide that they want to blank
> screen and they wouldn't come back to life.  Nothing from a keyboard,
> SSH, or the remote.  (I too have Intel chipsets, these machines being
> Aopen MP915-P and MP915-X machines).
> 
> I have done plenty of head scratching and last night just decided to
> do a clean install of mythbuntu 8.04 on one of them.  So far, so good.
>  I managed to leave it on the menu overnight and this morning when I
> turned the TV on, the screen was blank.  Pressed the remote button and
> the screen came alive and I was back at the menu.  I have left the FE
> switched on today and will probably leave it another full day, but if
> all goes well, I will just clean install all my other FEs too!
> 
> This screen blanking seems to be a common problem on this list and on
> the mythbuntu forums, but one that has no clear fix.  I hate not
> knowing why something is broken (since I am never know if it is
> actually fixed) but I have had such a crap weekend because of this
> upgrade that if this re-install fixes it, I am happy :P

I had a similar problem with a fedora8 install. The machine seemed to go 
into a deep suspend state: the fan continued to run as if the box was 
up, but the motherboard was effectively dead: no ssh access and no 
reaction to the keyboard or mouse.

I ended up adding the following to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local file:

/usr/bin/xset -d :0 s noblank
/usr/bin/xset -d :0 s off
/usr/bin/xset -d :0 -dpms

I'm not sure whether the first two don't do the same thing. And I not 
sure that the last doesn't do what the first two do! But it works. In 
addition I have all suspend/blank etc times in the ServerFlags section 
of xorg.conf set to "0" and the DPMS option in the Monitor section.

Next step will be to actually figure out what the 'acpi=' stuff on the 
kernel command line does!

Geoff







-- 
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          I may wish to offend you again in the future.

          Tux says: "Be regular. Eat cron flakes."


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