[hardy] screensaver fails to start and screen fails to completely black out

[rfvuhbtg]

On Ubuntu Hardy, with the nvidia drivers (nvidia-glx-new) installed, I've noticed that when the system goes into screensaver mode, either from being idle of from lockifeafaefeang the screen, the screen saver does not start. Rather, the screen dims to an almost black screen, except that the screen is still dimly visible. I could go to a web page, lock the screen, and still barely read the text, for example. I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what is causing the problem, and this is on a fresh install of Hardy with the only major modification being the nvidia drivers and compiz fusion. With the compiz effects turned completely off, the screen does completely black out, but the screensaver still does not start properly.

[rfvuhbtg (rfvuhbtg)]

I have no idea how that word got messed up, because it didn't appear that way when I submitted the post. Sorry about that.

[quixote (commer-greenglim)]

After the most recent updates, I'm having the same problem. Worked fine before, then around May 10th I turned screensaving off because I needed to see what was happening during some backup jobs. Today I turned it back on, but after the screen dims, it comes back up with the regular background, not the screensaver. (I'm using photos in the Pictures folder.)

[quixote (commer-greenglim)]

I should add that I'm using Hardy, and have ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics. The screensaver has worked without any issues through all three versions of Ubuntu (back to Dapper) that I've used in the past couple of years.

[rfvuhbtg (rfvuhbtg)]

Interesting that you have an ATI card and I have an Nvidia card, and both are having issues with this. I can also say that I experienced no screen saver problems with my previous Feisty system.

[quixote (commer-greenglim)]

After today's (May 15th) update, the screensaver seems to be working. Keeping my fingers crossed. Like rfvuhbtg, I've didn't have this problem in feisty. (I couldn't run gutsy with my weird graphics, so no data there.)

[rfvuhbtg (rfvuhbtg)]

I can confirm that the screensaver seems to be working now, at least with it set to a blank screen. I haven't been brave enough to set it to a different screensaver since "blank screen" does the job and probably saves a little power anyway.

[lizardmenke (lizardmenke)]

I have a Intel gma 950 and the same problem here: screen dims to almost black and then it pops back up with regular background.
It is now june 27 2008 and i have all updates installed.
I am sure it worked after I installed Hardy so it must have broken along the way somewhere with updates. Though I don't know wich.

[F.H. (fheinsen)]

Same problem here with proprietary nvidia drivers and fully updated 8.04. Let me add that the 'blank screen' screensaver was working as it should until very recently.

[john (johngraham)]

same problem here when my screen goes to idlr after reboot screen saver wont start un less i go in and rest idle time on screen saver then it will work again i have an emachine with a nvidia G force 6100 Nforce405 and a amd sempron proccessor i dont know if it would have any thing to do with graphics card or proccessor but it is annoying to have to reset it every time i have to reboot im running ubuntu hardy on kernel 2.6.24-21 generic im new to ubuntu but i like it this machine originally came with vista when i bought it 2 months ago i could not stand it so i did a clean install with only ubuntu on it like i said everything works exept screensaver bug and suspend it comes back with no sound but thats another issue does any body have a work around for the screen saver please let me know thanks john

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you with Intrepid? Thanks in advance.

[714snoopy (cwolcott)]

I'm having this screen-saver problem on Intrepid as well:

1) I turned it off while playing a game (Padman) because when the screen saver started the game would crash (why is the screen saver going on at all in this case? The computer is not idle!)
2) After re-enabling the screen-saver, it will not activate.
3) I set the time-out for 1 minute to test things...
4) At 30 seconds or so, the screen starts to dim. (In "Power Management" I have "Dim display when idle" enabled)
5) Then at 1 minute, the screen brightens back up and no screen-saver "occurs."

Now, something interesting happens:

6) Every time after this "failed" screen-saver activation, keyboard and mouse clicks are unresponsive. (i can still move the pointer and high-light things on the desktop ... just no click-events on menus and applications appear to be working). But not entirely; I can CTRL-ALT-Fx to switch to one of the TTYs and then come back to the desktop and keyboard and mouse clicks work again.

Question: Will /var/log/message or dmesg show any debug or failure of the screen-saver activation?

Hardware:
Dell M65 Laptop with Dual-core Intel and nVidia graphics

/Charlie

[quixote (commer-greenglim)]

(Shriek!) Now I'm having the screensaver problem again with Intrepid! Please at least give us a workaround!

I'm using 64-bit Intrepid, using my Pictures folder for the screensaver, compiz is at the "intermediate" setting. Somewhere on the forums I saw the suggestion to disable "unredirect windows" in the compiz general settings, but that hasn't fixed it. Graphics is Intel GMA X4500.

[quixote (commer-greenglim)]

I just found a workaround. (Must be something about posting a problem. I've been looking for this for ages.) From PhilCash in this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6680279 :

Find the dir used by one of the default screensavers and put your link there. For instance, "cosmos" is in /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds/cosmos/

[CODE]sudo ln -s /full-path-to-desired-pictures/eg/astron-general/ /usr/share/pixmaps/backgrounds/cosmos/astron-general [/CODE]

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

does anybody still get the issue in jaunty and could describe it clearly? the bug seems to mix different issue some being video drivers ones too

[K8BeBop (kennybob6)]

I've got Ubuntu 9.04, and this problem persists. (Included is my system info file.). On my system, I have all Power Management settings disabled, so that the Monitor never goes to sleep. I'm using the Metacity window manager, so I don't believe I am using compiz. Even though I've got my screensaver to come on if idle, if I set it to 1 minute(to test) on the slide bar to activate it then, the screen will dim to black then come back on, as if I moved the mouse. No Screensaver will ever come on.

When I go into the screensaver window, I can choose whatever screen saver. But when I go back into it, usually the screen saver will show up in the small preview box, but all I see is black. If I choose it again, by going to another one, and coming back to the previous one, it will show again. But if I close that window, and reopen it, the screensaver will just show black again.

I believe this whole trouble, with the dimming, is with the screen saver app, and not with the particular window manager, or the different video drivers, because it seems to effect all of them, from ATI, NVidia, and Intel.

 If you need anything else, I would be glad to test it for you, as this is very annoying.

[K8BeBop (kennybob6)]

Oh forgot to mention, this is run on Gnome

[K8BeBop (kennybob6)]

I've removed the gnome-screensaver, and installed the xscreensaver. It works as it should with the xscreensaver. No dimming.

My version of Gnome is 2.26.1. The version of gnome-screensaver that was installed was 2.24.0-0ubuntu6. There was no update to the screensaver, which is why it was at that version. The version of xscreensaver, I have installed, is 5.07-0ubuntu3.

[LimCore (limcore)]

I can reproduce this bug.

Tested on NVidias (but probably this does NOT matter!)
on ubuntu 9.04 amd64 (and possibly I seen it also on 8.10, not sure).

This happens when:
you switch into middle of fading-out (blackout) animation of screensaver (in example from other VT).

1. Log in as 2nd desktop user
2. Go back to vt-1 (ctrl-alt-f7)
3. Wait the proper amount of time
4. Go to vt-2 (ctrl-alt-f9 or f8)
5. If you are "lucky" then you now see part of the already running black out animation, and then this VT if broken - you can not pop up the unlock dialog

If you kill that screensaver (or restar that X) then it works normally.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Can this issue be reproduced on Maverick (10.10)?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-screensaver (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[wolfgang (wolfgang-ztoeg)]

I have the blocking screensaver-dialog from time to time.

here some debug from today evening:

dmesg:
[ 2000.908296] [drm:drm_mode_getfb] *ERROR* invalid framebuffer id
[ 2054.956255] [drm:drm_mode_getfb] *ERROR* invalid framebuffer id

and as root on textconsole to free X11:
root@localhost:~# ps -afe | grep gnome-screen
wolfgang 2355 1 0 20:10 ? 00:00:00 gnome-screensaver
wolfgang 2675 2355 78 20:42 ? 00:00:33 /usr/lib/gnome-screensaver/gnome-screensaver-dialog --status-message= --enable-switch
wolfgang 2682 1 0 20:42 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/gnome-screensaver/gnome-screensaver-dialog --status-message= --enable-switch
root 2846 2780 0 20:42 tty1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto gnome-screen
root@localhost:~# kill -9 2682
root@localhost:~# ps -afe | grep gnome-screen
wolfgang 2355 1 0 20:10 ? 00:00:00 gnome-screensaver
root 2854 2780 0 20:43 tty1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto gnome-screen

switching back to VT7.. desktop ok!

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=10.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=maverick
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 10.10"

2.6.35-28-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18 18:42:20 UTC 2011 x86_64

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS880 [Radeon HD 4250]

the same thing happened on opensuse11.4 which i replaced with
fedora14 having no issues up to now.

kr