Bugzilla – Bug 193144
LCD backlight will not turn off
Last modified: 2008-03-31 17:29:42 UTC
Distribution: Suse 10.1 Package: gnome-power-manager Severity: critical Version: GNOME2.12.2 2.14.x Gnome-Distributor: SUSE Synopsis: LCD backlight on Compaq Presaro V2630us will not turn off Bugzilla-Product: gnome-power-manager Bugzilla-Component: general Bugzilla-Version: 2.14.x Description: Description of Problem: LCD Backlight stays on
I have used both Fedora and Ubuntu Dapper and since I have tried SUSE 10.1 there is no going back to those other distro's. I use my laptop all the time and the backlight staying on is very annoying. The Fedora and Ubuntu distros had no trouble turning off my LCD plus backlight. Please fix this.
I don't know if this is something that powersave should be doing or the client.
(In reply to comment #2) > I don't know if this is something that powersave should be doing or the client. > I'm not exactly certain how the gnome-power-manager interacts with HAL, what I do know is that the other two distros had no problems with this LCD backlight. What happens is the screen will turn black (just black background) with the backlight still on. After a couple of hours of sitting there the backlight is still on and the laptop is getting very hot with no activity on it at all. As this occurs, the OS will start to lock up whre eventually I have to restart X or the entire laptop. I have searched this on google and have seen others as well with the same problem. I haven't been able to google up any answers either. I have one other laptop a Compaq M2000 (Intel based) and a Desktop both running SUSE 10.1 and those two machines not have this problem. I would have thought at first it was the laptop, if it wasn't for Fedora and Ubuntu both being able to shut off the backlight in the LCD.
These are dpms settings which are exclusively controlled by the desktop applications. Does the execution of 'dpms force off' turn of the backlight?
(In reply to comment #4) > These are dpms settings which are exclusively controlled by the desktop > applications. Does the execution of 'dpms force off' turn of the backlight? > I checked the Xorg file and "DPMS" is listed there and not commented out. do you want me to just enter that "dpms force off" into the bash shell to see what happens? Or put that into the Xorg.conf file?
(In reply to comment #5) > I checked the Xorg file and "DPMS" is listed there and not commented out. do > you want me to just enter that "dpms force off" into the bash shell to see what > happens? Or put that into the Xorg.conf file? Just execute it in a bach shell as the user which is currently logged in.
(In reply to comment #6) > (In reply to comment #5) > > I checked the Xorg file and "DPMS" is listed there and not commented out. do > > you want me to just enter that "dpms force off" into the bash shell to see what > > happens? Or put that into the Xorg.conf file? > > Just execute it in a bach shell as the user which is currently logged in. > This may sound stupid, but if I enter that command it will bring the screen up from it's "painted" black to a normal desktop again. How will I know if the backlight turning off works when the the screen goes dark? or will it just immediately turnthe screen off?
This command should switch off the backlight. In some cases, the pressing of 'enter' after entering the command with result in an X-event which immediately turns back on the screen. Then you can try 'sleep 1 && dpms force off'.
(In reply to comment #8) > This command should switch off the backlight. In some cases, the pressing of > 'enter' after entering the command with result in an X-event which immediately > turns back on the screen. Then you can try 'sleep 1 && dpms force off'. > I need to re-install the OS, it's locking up so bad now that I can't get anything to work right on it. My media is good I ran a check on it from my desktop. I have re-installed the OS on this laptop once before to try and solve this problem but to no avail. I'm hoping that after i re-install that and run the updates teh machine will stop locking up. After Ido so I will then run the command 'DBMS force off'.
(In reply to comment #9) > (In reply to comment #8) > > This command should switch off the backlight. In some cases, the pressing of > > 'enter' after entering the command with result in an X-event which immediately > > turns back on the screen. Then you can try 'sleep 1 && dpms force off'. > > > > I need to re-install the OS, it's locking up so bad now that I can't get > anything to work right on it. My media is good I ran a check on it from my > desktop. I have re-installed the OS on this laptop once before to try and > solve this problem but to no avail. I'm hoping that after i re-install that > and run the updates teh machine will stop locking up. After Ido so I will > then run the command 'DBMS force off'. > When I re-installed before I did run the updates then too, so I know that as far as the OS is concerened everything was up to date.
Ok I reinstalled the OS with KDE and the same thing still happens with the backlight and when I try to run the command #dpms force off it tells me, bash: dpms: command not found. What am I doing wrong here?
Well, sorry, the command actually has to be 'xset dpms force off', my fault.
ok, that worked. I entered the command xset dpms force off and the screen went off and then right back on again. so I tried 'xset sleep 1 && dpms force off' and then it just returned a long list of options to use. So how do I enter that command to get it to work? I apologize for not knowing these commands right off.
figured it out, 'sleep 1 && xset dpms force off' that worked but for less than a min. The screen and backlight went out but then the backlight was back on in about 30 seconds.
I don't know if this helps or not but when I check the grub.conf file there are a lot of options on the kernel line including apm=off and acpi=off, I remember for sure that these options were never on the kernel line with Fedora or Ubuntu. I tried using the options apm=on and acpi=on rebooted and still the backlight problem remains. I returned those two options to 'off' again.
In addition my video card is a ATI Radeon Express 200M, I've read some other posts in forums on ATI's cards being more buggy than Nvidia cards. I'm not sure if this is the cause or not. I'm not running any other video driver than the stock one that comes with SUSE.
I won't be of any further help on this matter. My laptop started to act up due to it getting very hot with the backlight staying on. Since Fedora Core 5 ran perfectly on this laptop I am going back to that distro. Please take the time to look into this, my laptop model is Compaq Presario 2630US AMD Turion 64 along with ATI Radeon 200M video card. I think the SUSE 10.1 distro is a very good distro, but this problem was a showstopper for me. Thanks for acknowledging the problem and not closing it out right away.
No suprise that your system is getting hot. Both acpi=off and apm=off are set. That seems to me that you installed (by accident? a bug?) the system in "safe settings" mode. After inserting the CD/DVD you get the grub menu with a couple of setttings like: - Installation - Installation (ACPI disabled) - Installation (safe settings) - ... I would really like to debug this further. You can safely remove the acpi=off and apm=off from the grub config file. These are responsible for power management and thermal management to work at all. To strenghten my suspicion, can you please post the output of 'cat /proc/cmdline'? In the meanwhile, I will have a look at the gnome-power-manager code why he isn't able to use the dpms extensions (which should turn the screen off).
I took off everything on the kernel line so that there were no options at all. Same way my Fedora kernel line was. When I installed it I installed it at the "default" install which was "installation". When I had a look at the kernel line there were too many options to remember but the ones that stood out the most were 'apm=off' 'acpi=off' and 'noapic'. I first tried to disable them by using 'apm=on' 'acpi=on' and removing 'noapic' this did not work. I then removed everything on that kernel line completeley, except for the kernel of course. And that would not work either. (These options showed up each time I did a re-install) The closest it came to working was when I tried the command 'xset dpms force off' it would go out for about 30 seconds and then the backlight would come right back on with the screen itself being black (black background). I tried several things like disabling the screensaver, enabling it, random screensavers, then just using the defaults. I'm not an expert, but it would seem to me that the bug is in the powersaved daemon somewhere. In my 'FC5' setup I never had any control of setting a processor speed. I just had the gnome-power-manager in the tray. It also defaults to suspend as well. Also the 'Ubuntu 6.06' edition didn't have the option of setting processor speeds either. I really wanted to use 10.1 on my laptop but just can't take the chance of damaging it as I only bought it new approx. 3 months ago. If you can offer me a better way to re-install it to help you further debug the problem I will. Of further note, this 10.1 is running on my girlfriends 'Compaq M2000' that laptop is all 'Intel' based. the backlight goes off normally on that one, however when the laptop comes back up to the desktop from screensaver, the power for the Dlink DWL-G650 wireless card is gone and then a reboot is required. This just seems like a powersaved bug. Since all of these things are linked to power savings. Please let me know what you would like to do. Jack
Here is a further link that you might find useful: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=254542 I tried this too and it still didn't solve the problem.
Holger, reviewing your comments and those of commenter I'm going to move it back to you for now for investigation of the kernel/powersave issue and I'll put Rodrigo on the CC, feel free to move it back to us if you find out its g-s specific. Looks like we have the latest round of info.
i'd bet this is a duplicate of bug #197858
JFYI, Matthias. This is a bugreport, which is assigned to Egbert/me or with Egbert/me in CC or reported by Egbert/me.
(In reply to comment #22 from Stefan Seyfried) > i'd bet this is a duplicate of bug #197858 Which would mean that it is fixed for openSUSE 10.3.
Based on #11 and #22 re-assigning to Egbert for disposal.
I can well imagine that this is a duplicate of bug #197858. There is no reasonable explanation otherwise why the backlight would go off for around 30 seconds but then come one again. Furthermore the symptoms look identical. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 197858 ***