[nvidia] Dual Monitors won't SLEEP in TwinView mode

[BassKozz]

Using Ubuntu 8.04.1 (up to date)
I have a dual-monitor setup and in the past I was using "Separate X-Sessions" for each monitor. I recently switched to "TwinView" and now my monitors won't go into sleep (power saving) state. I've tried changing the settings in System>Power Management>Display> "Put display to sleep when inactive for" but no matter what I set it to (for a time limit) it NEVER goes into sleep mode. I've left the computer on for hours on end, and they never go into sleep. But when I switch from "TwinView" to "Separate X-Screens" the monitors go to sleep right on time, EVERYTIME.

So something is wrong with TwinView. I am fairly new to the Linux and Ubuntu community, so I don't know how to self-diagnose this issue, but if someone can point me in the right direction I don't mind posting log files etc.
Thanks in advance for any/all help,
-BassKozz

p.s. I am NOT using Compiz (don't know if that makes a difference or not).
System>Preferences>Appearance>Visual Effects = NONE.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

I also filed a report on Bugzilla: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=554247

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

Just upgraded to Intrepid Ibex (8.10) and the issue remains
:(

I was hoping this upgrade would fix this, guess not :(

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

thanks for sent it to GNOME, linking the report.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

I still have this problem, is there anything I can do to help diagnose?

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

Still having this issue in Jaunty... I was hoping upgrading to Jaunty would fix
it, but it's still there :(

Any idea's?
Any/All comments/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

gnome-power-manager --version
Version 2.24.2

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

It should also be noted that: xset dpms force off
Doesn't work either... all that happens when that command is issued is the screensaver activates (blank screen) but the monitors stay in Active (Non-Sleep) mode.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

After some googling I found this page: http://www.shallowsky.com/linux/x-screen-blanking.html
According to this page "vbetool" seems to be the solution.

Quick description of vbetool: "vbetool uses lrmi in order to run code from the video BIOS. Currently, it is able to alter DPMS states, save/restore video card state, and attempt to initialize the video card from scratch. It exists primarily in order to increase the chances of successfully recovering video state after an ACPI S3 suspend."
- http://freshmeat.net/projects/vbetool/

So I tried what it said and used: vbetool dpms off
And it Worked :-D !!!
Wait a minute not so fast...
I can't break out of it :-(
The monitors are stuck in standby mode... I tried moving the mouse, slamming my keyboard against my head, ctrl+alt+del... nothing seems to break it out of standby mode. It seems that the GPU's BIOS is stuck in Standby Mode... I had to manually press the reset button on the box to get it to restart.

Hmm, off to do some more research.
Any idea's out there?

[Nicholas Skaggs (nskaggs)]

I too fall victim to this. However, it only started occurring after I upgraded to Karmic (in advance of the official release). I think I was avoiding it because I had installed my own nividia drivers, and I switched to using ubuntu's during the upgrade? I'm not sure as I have been using twinview for years and not found this bug until now. So if this has been around awhile, one could try using older nvidia drivers, and/or dirvers not provided by ubuntu. If I figure it out, I'll post.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

Yeah, I upgraded to Jaunty 9.04, and it still remains.
I have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that I installed xscreensaver a while back. I have since removed xscreensaver, but the problem remains.

The work-around I am currently using is I created two small bash scripts:
#!/bin/sh
# dpms-off.sh
vbetool dpms off

&

#!/bin/sh
###
# dpms-on.sh
vbetool dpms on

And then I setup desktop shortcuts for each script and then keyboard shortcuts for each script:
Ctrl+Alt+0
Ctrl+Alt+1
Respectively. And now when I want to manually put my monitors in sleep I use "Ctrl+Alt+0" and to wake them up when I return I use "Ctrl+Alt+1"

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

dpms-off.sh

[Nicholas Skaggs (nskaggs)]

OK - this "magically" started working again, as it did before I upgraded to Karmic months ago. I'm running 2.6.31-11-generic kernel. That was the only real change I can attribute. After rebooting from updating it started working. I did add this to my Xorg, but it didn't work under the old kernel.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Layout0"
    Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option "BlankTime" "2"
    Option "StandbyTime" "0"
    Option "SuspendTime" "0"
    Option "OffTime" "5"
EndSection

What I can say definitely is that with an up to date karmic, running the kernel above, the 185.18.36 nvidia drivers, and the xorg options above, everything works as expected! :-)

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

@guitara,

hmm, I guess I am going to have to wait for the release of Karmic (24 days from now 10/29/09).
I am currently running:
Kernel: 2.6.28-15-generic
NVidia Driver: 180.44

I don't want to use the beta version of Karmin on my production system. So I'll report back in 24 days.
Thanks for the info.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

@guitara,

Did you do anything special to get Nvidia drivers version "185.18.36" or does this come as part of the update w/ Karmic?
I know the kernel get's upgraded to 2.6.31 as part of Karmic, but not sure how you got to v185+ for the Nvidia drivers?
Thanks in advance,
-BassKozz

[Nicholas Skaggs (nskaggs)]

@BassKozz,
yes, karmic comes with these drivers. I did not do any third party installation.

dpkg -l nvidia-glx-185
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii nvidia-glx-185 185.18.36-0ubu NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

@guitara,
Great, Thanks... I am really looking forward to Karmic now :-D

[Nicholas Skaggs (nskaggs)]

This has been broken again by the 2.6.31-14-generic kernel - can anyone else confirm this? I am not able to reboot the machine that often, but I did reboot to update to what is probably the final version of karmic today. Doing so installed the kernel above and subsequently broke the monitor sleeping again. That means, karmic will ship with this broken.

[Jesse B (jayesbee)]

I have been having this exact same problem since 8.04. I still have this problem with Karmic after installing from scratch. I did not try your fix above however.. its only happened to me once.. i always leave my system on.. it happened to me this morning. Usually always after about 8 or 9 hours of the system not being used.

nvidia 8600 GTS
Asus P5K-VM
nvidia non-free 185
2.6.31-14-generic kernel

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

Sorry for the delay, I FINALLY got around to upgrading to Karmic, and as guitara already mentioned this is STILL BROKEN !!!
Will there ever be a fix?

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

BTW, triaged means it is confirmed + someone from the bug team assigned it a status so that developers can safely look at it. Now we will have to wait for a bug fairy to sprinkle developer's attention on it again.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

@Tormod Volden,
Sorry about that, I didn't know that's what triaged ment, Should I change it back?

How long after it's marked triaged does a dev assign it to someone?
It was in triage status for a month and never assigned.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Well, yes, if you can, but the point is not everybody can set "triaged". A developer assigns a bug to himself when he has decided to work on it.

Anyway, this might be a bug in the Nvidia closed-source proprietary driver so there is not much we can do about it.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

I don't believe the issue is the Nvidia driver...
Back on #14 guitara said it was working with:
nvidia-glx-185 185.18.36-0ubu NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

I just checked and that's the same driver I am using now with Karmic:
dpkg -l nvidia-glx-185
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
ii nvidia-glx-185 185.18.36-0ubu NVIDIA binary Xorg driver

So something changed in 2.6.31-14-generic kernel that triggered this problem to reappear, as you'll see from #16.

[BassKozz (basskozz+ubuntu)]

Tormod Volden,
p.s. Your right I can't set "Triaged", can you?

[Nicholas Skaggs (nskaggs)]

I don't believe this is still occurring for me running the development version of precise. Hard to say what/when it was fixed, but it's working for me now.