Bug 221272

When exactly does it happen?

It happens :
- Just after 'System Analysis', when creating catalogs for the cd/dvd source (I think), but definitively when the setup is at the 'Time Zone' selection, the screens goes black (not really a standy by mode)
- After the first reboot, during the 'Perform Installation' (initializing catalogs).

So, as I've understood the screen isn't black all the time and you are able to install and run your system, therefore please could you attach your yast log files? Or, if the system is installed, but then the screen is black, you can do that using some other system (e.g. a live cd).
http://en.opensuse.org/Bugs/YaST

Thank you.

Created attachment 106580 [details]
Yast log

This is the yast log after the system has finished to install successfully on my system.

Roman, but the display comes back when you move the mouse, right?

It seems that someone/something sets dpms settings on the display. Or maybe going to standby after some time is just default hardcoded into the hardware as long as the OS doesn't interfere. I doubt that any application is doing this at this point in time. Removing dpms settings form the monitor would be simple though.

But another question is why this behaviour shouldn't be desireable? Isn't it best to do power savings as much as possible? Why should this be a problem at all?

i have also seen that the screen blanked during package installation, looks like a dpms default setting. Maybe X related.

Yes, the display comes back is I press a key or move the mouse. I don't know if this is related with dpms or not. For sure, this 'issue' was not present is previous build of Opensuse, seems to be new with 10.2.
I am not sure if this is a setting from the hardware itself. Anyway, it is not a real bug because it does not crash the installation process. But, as my system is running right now, this 'issue' seems to be here (when I left my system doing nothing for a while, the screen goes black but the led indicating its state still lit, not blinking, which happen when the monitor is on standby).
Maybe it is X related, I really don't know. Since it is not a real bug, maybe a screensaver could be activated by default during the setup process to be sure that the user know that the setup is still there even if the monitor goes black? Like the Suse logo displayed randomly on the screen with a text like "Novell OpenSuse Setup" or something like that.

No, if you start installation and are going away from your system, maybe even for several hours, you definitely want the display to go off to save power. In my opinion this is a WONTFIX. It's more a feature than a bug.

It depends how you see that. If I refer to a standard windows installation (sorry for the reference ;-)) the dpms is never activated during the setup process and the monitor never goes black or goes in standby mode. I am agree that is not a real bug. But the first time I have faced this 'issue' I stupidly rebooted my system because I thought that the setup has crashed. I am agree that it is most a feature request, but I think it is important. At least, don't fix the dpms thing, but a 'setup screensaver' could be dawn cool instead. And by this way, you will be far ahead above any windows installation that does not provide this features during the setup process :-)

Ok, so I'm going to mark this as an enhancement.

Yes, but please assignt to someone else. I just added my comments from a "power management point of view" because I was asked to do so ;-)

Reassigning to Marcus. I suppose the xorg.conf, where probably the DPMS is defined, is generated by SAX2.

Well I'm terribly sorry but you can decide:

a) never detect a monitors DDC record because of an active X display
   (this is the one your installation runs on)

b) accept a short outage of the monitor which is in fact a switch to
   the console to be able to detect the device correctly

I would vote for b)

and maybe you would consider that Windows doesn't configure accelerated
graphics drivers at install time but we do and that's a feature not
a bug ;)

(In reply to comment #13)
> b) accept a short outage of the monitor which is in fact a switch to
>    the console to be able to detect the device correctly
> 
> I would vote for b)

*beep*
sorry, wrong answer.

This bug is not about activating DPMS for the installed system.
This bug is about the screen going blank during package installation, long before you detect the monitor etc.

It looks line in 10.1 and earlier, the fbdev x server (or whatever is used in stage1) just did (or could?) not activate DPMS, but now he does.

This is not very critical IMO (we could even define it as a feature, although i preferred if the display only went out after installing the pakcages while waiting for input or even only in stage2, since my machines often sit quite some time in stage2 when waiting for me to enter the root password).

And i do not even believe that it is sax's fault, i think it's whoever generates that xorg.conf that is used during stage1 of the installation :-)

the configuration file used for fbdev at the very first stage doesn't
contain any DPMS option and hasn't changed in that area. If the X-Server
goes blank now after some time it must be something newly introduced
in the X-Server code

Ok.

*** Bug 225638 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

*** Bug 231044 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Personally I can easily accept a partial screen outage during monitor detection - however traditionally any install package that provides any screen outage is accompanied by a warning to the user that "During the following......you may experience a short video outage". Personally I feel ANY screen outage where the monitor does NOT go into suspense, however the display goes blank together with no HDD activity almost begs the user to think install has failed or frozen. In the duplicate bug https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=231044
I experienced a blank screen after each and every disk change commencing with disk one and I too had thoughts that a blank screen saver was an issue. IF you want to retain current video outages during any part of the install it may be easier to introduce this fact at one of the first display screen dialogue comments. As an aside I think marketing could come up with far better dialogues during install. I found NO real reference to exciting new features in 10.2. The install dialogue is also repartitions.  Much of the information contained in
http://en.opensuse.org/OpenSUSE_News/10.2-Release
could have been well used to a captive audience during install. I also hate making reference to MS, however their install dialogues are well written and really get the user excited about using the new release.
Install dialogues are useful in that you have a guaranteed captive audience you should exploit. There is nothing wrong with well written propaganda to a marketing executive when you have a captive audience.

JFYI.

JFYI, Matthias. This is a bugreport, which is assigned to Egbert/me or with Egbert/me in CC or reported by Egbert/me.

If the screen goes blan when setting the timezone this is most likely related to a time warp which happens at that time. The solution would probably be to disable DPMS before setting the time and reenabling it afterwards.
I think we dealt with a similar problem years ago.

In bug #225638, the screen saver kicks in at random times. So it cant be the timezone changes.

This bug is 100% duplicated. At the end of each and every CD install will request new disk. DO NOTHING for over 10 mins.

What I suspect is happening is that the default screen saver is activated at default 4 minutes, however there is no screen saver file image - hence blank screen - if left a further period of time system will go into DPMS.

All that is really needed is to examine the code that calls for a new disk, it is probably the same code on a normal system and if you do nothing screen saver will default at 4 minutes, however in a running system there is a screen saver file present and thereafter goes into DPMS.

Please examine the portion of the install code that requests a new disk and the code of that process. 

*** Bug 288859 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Please not that with OpenSuse 10.3 alpha (update from alpha 5), the issue still there : way before the selection of the timezone, if I leave for a while, the screen goes black which should be a standy mode for the screen.
Maybe I have already said that but it could be nice to have this behaviour but have a kind of install-screensaver when this issue/behaviour occur, just to let the user know that the install is still in progress.
Any comment on this?

AFAIK YaST2 now uses "xset -dpms" for installation, so this issue should be fixed now. Reopen if it still persists.

Worked for me in beta1. Thanks.

Sounds good. BTW, Arvin told me about this. So it seems it's already active in Beta1.