View Full Version : Weird problem: Screen turns off after x minutes
bartdesign
2009-03-07, 18:54
Hi,
I'm experiencing a weird problem, my screen turns off every 30 or 40 minutes. When i press a key on my keyboard it turns my display on again. However when i press my mce remote it does not. As you can understand it's very annoying, and i've been unable to solve it. Been searching on the ubuntu forums for quite a while but i haven't been able to come up with an solution.
I'm used different svn builds of xbmc and intrepid ubuntu. I have my screensaver disabled, and energy settings turned off aswell(which was default).
I'm using an Nvidia 9600GT with the 177 official driver from the ubuntu repo. I'm displaying the image over TVOut, to my philips tv.
Fixes i tried:
Hardcode the blank and other power save functions in the xorg.conf under ServerFlags.
setterm -blank 0
None of them worked obviously, is there somebody else who experienced this problem? Intresting enough when i connect my beamer through HDMI the problem does not arise, and my movies play fine all the way through.
bartdesign
2009-03-07, 18:57
Also i like to state that i had this problem before with my 1080P tv connected with HDMI to another xbmc box, with the same specs except a different driver 180.35.
I was able to solve that by entering the ServerFlags power saving parameters in the xorg.conf. Strangly enough this solution does not work on my other tvout connected xbmc box. I hope somebody can help me out :nod:
gquiring
2009-03-08, 05:01
I had the same issue, these are the flags I used to fix my issue:
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "BlankTime" "0"
Option "StandbyTime" "0"
Option "SuspendTime" "0"
Option "OffTime" "0"
EndSection
bartdesign
2009-03-08, 05:14
I opened up the xorg.conf again, and i noticed i missed a capital. Maybe it works now, i'll test it tommorow. Thanks.
Had this issue. I used to not have it but when XBMC would dim the screen for it's screensaver it would flash every so often. Read here that this was the Ubuntu screensaver trying to kick in so I went into Ubuntu and disabled the screensaver - then instead of XBMC dimming properly I'd simply lose video to the screen and have to press a key as you mentioned! So, I turned back on the Ubuntu screensaver and live with the occasional flash while XBMC has dimmed - better than Ubuntu dumping video halfway through a movie!
rodercot
2009-03-08, 15:25
I only get this issue after a resume from suspend, I never get it on cold boot. I use myth so I have an xfce4 desktop and in setting manager - screensaver I unchecked "enable screensaver if system idle" and it seems fine now.
But I cannot figure out the difference between a cold boot and a resume in regards to how myth frontend starts to control the screen saver.
Some think it could be a race condition between the frontends and the screensaver. I even added mythfrontend --service to my resume script and that should envoke a bunch of sub-rules for control but that does not work either. I guess I could try and remove any sleep commands from my scripts so it all starts a little faster and see how that works.
The Server Flags seem to be a common fix and works for most I have reads, there is also a gconf line that can be loaded if you google gconf screensaver you should find it.
Dave
bartdesign
2009-03-08, 22:26
Had this issue. I used to not have it but when XBMC would dim the screen for it's screensaver it would flash every so often. Read here that this was the Ubuntu screensaver trying to kick in so I went into Ubuntu and disabled the screensaver - then instead of XBMC dimming properly I'd simply lose video to the screen and have to press a key as you mentioned! So, I turned back on the Ubuntu screensaver and live with the occasional flash while XBMC has dimmed - better than Ubuntu dumping video halfway through a movie!
Your talking about a different issue. My screen turns off entirely; as stated i disabled the screensaver and energy settings. I don't have the xbmc dim flicker problem, my screen turns off until i press a key on the keyboard. Pressing a button on the remote does not work btw.
bartdesign
2009-03-08, 22:27
I had the same issue, these are the flags I used to fix my issue:
Section "ServerFlags"
Option "BlankTime" "0"
Option "StandbyTime" "0"
Option "SuspendTime" "0"
Option "OffTime" "0"
EndSection
Which driver are you using? 177? My screen still turns off. I've checked it at least 20 times now.
gquiring
2009-03-08, 23:01
Which driver are you using? 177? My screen still turns off. I've checked it at least 20 times now.180 using 8.1 Ubuntu with a 8400 GS.
bartdesign
2009-03-09, 01:38
Ok, i'll try to upgrade it to 180 aswell.
Your talking about a different issue. My screen turns off entirely; as stated i disabled the screensaver and energy settings. I don't have the xbmc dim flicker problem, my screen turns off until i press a key on the keyboard. Pressing a button on the remote does not work btw.
NO, what I did was turn off the desktop screensaver to try and SOLVE the flicker problem. When I did that I got a video turn off issue like you are describing. Turning back ON the screensaver brought back the flicker issue but allowed the video to stay on thus solving my problem (sorta').
Originally Posted by BLKMGK View Post
Had this issue. I used to not have it but when XBMC would dim the screen for it's screensaver it would flash every so often. Read here that this was the Ubuntu screensaver trying to kick in so I went into Ubuntu and disabled the screensaver - then instead of XBMC dimming properly I'd simply lose video to the screen and have to press a key as you mentioned! So, I turned back on the Ubuntu screensaver and live with the occasional flash while XBMC has dimmed - better than Ubuntu dumping video halfway through a movie!
bartdesign
2009-03-11, 21:34
Aha, i understand it now :nerd: