g-p-m fails to switch off the screen with "DPMS is not enabled"

[Nicolò Chieffo]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

gnome-power-manager sometimes fails to switch off the display after the selected timeout.
I executed it with the --verbose switch and collected the log.
In a normal session I don't see the messages
DPMS not enabled
failed to turn on DPMS: DPMS is not enabled

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: gnome-power-manager 2.30.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.34-5.14-generic 2.6.34
Uname: Linux 2.6.34-5-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jun 6 00:04:22 2010
GnomeSessionIdleInhibited: No
GnomeSessionInhibitors: None
GnomeSessionSuspendInhibited: No
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100429)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Latitude E6400
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.34-5-generic root=UUID=c65f05e4-8a87-4923-89ff-929c3811ba3c ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=it_IT.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-power-manager
dmi.bios.date: 12/21/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: A20
dmi.board.name: 0RX493
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.chassis.type: 8
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvrA20:bd12/21/2009:svnDellInc.:pnLatitudeE6400:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0RX493:rvr:cvnDellInc.:ct8:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Latitude E6400
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

I discovered that DPMS fails when I boot an instance of android emulator, which is a 32bit app in my 64bit ubuntu.
After clicking start->launch on the emulator, g-p-m starts to print the error when the screen timeout occurs, and even after exiting from the emulator this problem remains. Restarting g-p-m does not help.
The only way to solve this is to run 'xset dpms force off' and g-p-m will automatically recover itself.

[Rick Richardson (rick-richardson)]

Confirmed with android emulator.

[Ohad Lutzky (lutzky)]

This also occurs with boxee (http://www.boxee.tv), which seems to make some sense - boxee shuts the screen off itself. Again, running "xset dpms force off" works around the problem.