Screen always goes blank after 10 minutes

[Barry Warsaw]

Even though my screen saver settings say to "Turn off after: 1 hour", my screens always go blank after 10 minutes of inactivity. This is entirely reproducible. I am using the free glx driver with my Radeon HD 4670 card, dual-headed.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: xorg 1:7.6+7ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.14-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
BootLog:
 udevd[362]: error: runtime directory '/run/udev' not writable, for now falling back to '/dev/.udev'

 fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
 /dev/sdb2: clean, 142348/90841088 files, 6520516/363354368 blocks
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,decor,mousepoll,vpswitch,regex,animation,snap,expo,move,compiztoolbox,place,grid,imgpng,gnomecompat,wall,ezoom,workarounds,staticswitcher,resize,fade,unitymtgrabhandles,scale,session,unitydialog,unityshell]
CompositorRunning: None
Date: Mon Aug 29 14:52:39 2011
DistUpgraded: Fresh install
DistroCodename: oneiric
DistroVariant: ubuntu
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ExtraDebuggingInterest: Yes, whatever it takes to get this fixed in Ubuntu
GraphicsCard:
 ATI Technologies Inc RV730XT [Radeon HD 4670] [1002:9490] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
   Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:2542]
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Alpha amd64 (20110705.1)
MachineType: Dell Inc. Studio XPS 435MT
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-9-generic root=UUID=7ffae0c6-66ea-4bbd-ae3d-f98ddd9603a5 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: xorg
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
dmi.bios.date: 05/05/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.bios.version: 1.1.1
dmi.board.name: 0R849J
dmi.board.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.board.version: A03
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Dell Inc.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnDellInc.:bvr1.1.1:bd05/05/2009:svnDellInc.:pnStudioXPS435MT:pvr:rvnDellInc.:rn0R849J:rvrA03:cvnDellInc.:ct3:cvr:
dmi.product.name: Studio XPS 435MT
dmi.sys.vendor: Dell Inc.
version.compiz: compiz 1:0.9.5.92+bzr2791-0ubuntu1
version.ia32-libs: ia32-libs 20090808ubuntu19
version.libdrm2: libdrm2 2.4.26-1ubuntu1
version.libgl1-mesa-dri: libgl1-mesa-dri 7.11-0ubuntu3
version.libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental: libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental N/A
version.libgl1-mesa-glx: libgl1-mesa-glx 7.11-0ubuntu3
version.xserver-xorg: xserver-xorg 1:7.6+7ubuntu6
version.xserver-xorg-input-evdev: xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.6.0-1ubuntu13
version.xserver-xorg-video-ati: xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.99~git20110811.g93fc084-0ubuntu1
version.xserver-xorg-video-intel: xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.15.901-1ubuntu2
version.xserver-xorg-video-nouveau: xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.16+git20110411+8378443-1

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi Barry,

It sounds sort of like gnome-settings-daemon is not capturing the settings properly, so your system is defaulting to 10 minutes. I notice this in your dmesg which hints perhaps gsd is dying (coincidentally in some power module):

[22483.782153] gnome-settings-[2178] trap divide error ip:7fdd4a47931b sp:7fff856edb10 error:0 in libpower.so[7fdd4a46b000+17000]

You can query and set the default X screen blanking via xset. For instance:

 $ xset q | grep -A4 DPMS
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 7200 Suspend: 7200 Off: 14400
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

humber:~$ xset dpms 10 20 30
humber:~$ xset q | grep -A4 DPMS
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 10 Suspend: 20 Off: 30
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

Run 'xset' by itself to see other options it supports.

Since the line in dmesg suggests something's gone wrong with g-s-d I'm reassigning this bug there. However, if you find tweaking dpms settings via xset doesn't work around the bug, feel free to reopen an X task.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Barry, btw I noticed a couple other things you might look at...

Your xorg.conf only specifies "glx", but that's loaded by default now. You should be able to entirely delete your xorg.conf with no impact to X. (In fact we ship without xorg.conf and recommend you run without one, unless you actually need it for some reason.)

Second, in your dmesg file there's some aufs crashes; I think those may be unrelated to this bug, but look worth further investigation.

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

Hi Bryce, thanks very much for looking at this.

On Aug 30, 2011, at 01:56 AM, Bryce Harrington wrote:

>Your xorg.conf only specifies "glx", but that's loaded by default now.
>You should be able to entirely delete your xorg.conf with no impact to
>X. (In fact we ship without xorg.conf and recommend you run without
>one, unless you actually need it for some reason.)

Not sure how that got there, but indeed, I removed the file and everything
worked just fine.

>Second, in your dmesg file there's some aufs crashes; I think those may
>be unrelated to this bug, but look worth further investigation.

I think it's unrelated. I do a lot of sbuilds, and I remember seeing some
aufs problems in the past, but hadn't seen them in a while. I'll investigate
that separately.

[Barry Warsaw (barry)]

On Aug 30, 2011, at 01:32 AM, Bryce Harrington wrote:

>It sounds sort of like gnome-settings-daemon is not capturing the
>settings properly, so your system is defaulting to 10 minutes. I notice
>this in your dmesg which hints perhaps gsd is dying (coincidentally in
>some power module):
>
>[22483.782153] gnome-settings-[2178] trap divide error ip:7fdd4a47931b
>sp:7fff856edb10 error:0 in libpower.so[7fdd4a46b000+17000]

Indeed, I think this is exactly the problem. xset reported dpms at 600 for
all three values, which is, of course, exactly 10 minutes. I've manually set
these to 3600 and we'll see, but I'm fairly confident this will increase the
screen blank time to 1h. This has to be reset on every reboot.

To the g-s-d maintainers: please let me know if there's anything further I can
do to help you debug the problem.

Thanks Bryce.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Fabio Alessandrelli (mckenzie)]

I'm not sure if it's the same problem that affected me but it seems that gnome-shell goes blank after the number of seconds setted in the following gsettings key:
"org.gnome.desktop.session.idle-delay"

It doesn't follow the settings in gnome power manager nor screen lock options.
You can disable it with the following command:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 0

[Oleg Moiseichuk (berroll)]

Actually there exist 2 settings, 1st one affects screensaver (blank screen), 2nd affects monitor power saving mode (suspends monitor):
1. Schema: org.gnome.desktop.session, Key: idle-delay
2. Schema: org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power, Key: sleep-display-ac
"System Settings" > "Brightness and Lock" seems to set both of them simultaneously, when you choose the timeout "Turn screen off when inactive for:". But you can set them separately with 'dconf' tool or using gsettings.
If your screen blanks unexpectedly, check these 2 keys and correct them as needed.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) reached end-of-life on May 9, 2013.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.