Screen constantly flashing while g-p-m is running

[Georg Brzyk]

Binary package hint: gnome-power-manager

When logging in, my display starts flashing as soon as gnome-power-manager is started. The hotkey events for brightness up and brightness down are polled a dozen times per second.
This happens with both battery plugged and unplugged.
I was able to reproduce this by reinstalling Tribe 5 and updating.

Samsung P35 Laptop
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
acpid-1.0.4
gnome-power-manager-2.20

If I kill gnome-power-manager after login and restart it from the terminal (e.g. gnome-power-manager --no-daemon --verbose) the problem is gone. Is there any way to get the verbose log from session start?

[telos (telos1)]

I have the same problem.

[Vinx (vinxx)]

Same problem. But the brightness is "only" changing 3 or 4 times per minute.
If i kill gnome-power-manager, everything goes fine. (except that the power features are no more running).
Restarting gnome-power-manager from the terminal causes the problem to reappear.

I can provide logs if you want. (Tell me what)

[rayemp (bau)]

Same thing here on a Samsung P35.

There is definitely something wrong with the power manager ....

Tell me how i can help you guys!

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

I have the same Samsung P35 notebook and the very same problem. If i kill gnome-power-manager everything is fine.

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hal/+bug/151675

[rayemp (bau)]

Would somebody please set the priority? I think that this is actually an important error because it leaves newbies with an unusable machine. I don't think that gpm should go in final release like that ....

[Vinx (vinxx)]

My laptop is a MSI GX700 (and not a samsung like yours). It's not a problem related to only one kind of laptop.

Currently, my laptop is running with battery plugged since it started. If i watch the historic of the battery in Gnome Power Management ("Historique de l'alimentation" in my french ubuntu), i see a lot of blue and black points meaning that the battery is plugged or unplugged. That's why the screen is flashing. (Low brightness when the battery is unplugged , and full brightness when the battery is plugged). But my battery is always plugged (mean always charging).

=> See my screen shot. (My english is not perfect !)

Tell me if you need more informations. I can provide you whatever you want.

[dtw (dtw-50g)]

Same problem with my Samsung P35 and Ubuntu 7.10 Final.
I solve it temporary by pressing CTRL+ALT+Backspace.

[Anonymizer (big-bad-boy)]

Same problem here. I have also a Samsung P35 and Ubuntu 7.10 final installed.

[muschel-schubser (bug-4-muschelschubser)]

I have a Samsung P35 too and I have the same problem since Ubuntu 7.10 (already befor installing Ubuntu - using only the "live-cd")

Like "rayamp" already said: What about the priority of this bug?

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

Can we hope for a fix or do we have to install Feisty again ?

[Tobias (tobias-frech)]

Same on Samsung P30. This really renders Samsung Laptops unusable for newbies. The importance should be raised!

[Michael Stein (der-stein)]

Same problem on my p35.

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

could someone attach the output of:

gnome-power-manager --no-daemon --debug

while this problem occurs ?

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

 gnome-power-manager --no-daemon --debug
Für --debug wird ein Argument benötigt
Starten Sie 'gnome-power-manager --help' um eine vollständige Liste verfügbarer Kommandozeilenoptionen anzuzeigen.

means : argument is missing.

[rayemp (bau)]

If I am not mistaken that would work anyway, because gpm would have to be killed in order to start it in debug mode. Once it is killed and restarted the flashing is gone ... .

[Tobias (tobias-frech)]

From where is it started in the session start?

[Tobias (tobias-frech)]

I renamed it in bin and started it from a console after the session start. The flashing came back, so I was able to gather the attached log.

[Tobias (tobias-frech)]

Here is also a log of a later start that did not lead to a flashing screen.

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=479034
Does this howto work for anyone here with a samsung p35 notebook?

[rayemp (bau)]

That bugfix is not working on my machine ...

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

g-p-m is definately getting button press events from hal in that log, attaching hal to the bug

[MGMainz (mgmainz)]

Same problem on my P35. In addition, I also can switch from GUI to a console (<ALT+F1...F5), but never again back to the GUI (ALT+F7). Doing so ends up with a black screen.

[MGMainz (mgmainz)]

I found a workaround which works for me. Just follow the following link:

http://www.bischiweb-online.de/wp/samsung-p35-und-gutsy-gibbon/print

It is written in German, but Ihope it will help anyway.

[Georg Brzyk (gbrzyk)]

I can confirm this workaround works, thanks for the link, MGMainz.

Either open gconf-editor and navigate to apps -> gnome-power-manager -> backlight and set "enable" to false (uncheck) or paste the following into a terminal:
gconftool-2 --set "/apps/gnome-power-manager/backlight/enable" --type bool "false"

After a reboot (or a restart of gnome-power-manager) the problem is gone.

[Anonymizer (big-bad-boy)]

Sorry but this workaround does not work. The flashing comes back when I change the brightness :(

[rayemp (bau)]

Hi there,

is there any work planned / in progress from the developers site concerning this issue? If so, it would be nice to know. What can we provide you with to make it easier for you guys?

Otherwise I have to go back to feisty or change the distribution - which would be a shame, cause I actually like some of the new gutsy features ....

Thanks!

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

My guess is that all Distros with Gnome 2.20 are affected because some day ago i compiled gnome-power-manager from the gnome ftp and had the same result. Maybe things are different with Gnome 2.22

[palino (palypster)]

Same problem here. I must add that power manager has troubles with actual status of battery (i. e. it shows (right) that battery is charged at 70%, now do the flashing and also sometimes change the value of the %. Then i unplug adapter and plug again and it get right % now... bot sometimes it changes again.. also sometimes when AC is plugged it shows that it isn't... and so on)

I ve got a question, if this is just what the power-manager displays, or real status of battery? Has the manager influence of dis/charging?

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/122889/45/

Maybe this helps ?

[rayemp (bau)]

That helps! Thanks Philipp!

For non-German P35 owners:
1) sudo gedit /etc/acpi/asus-brn-down.sh
2) comment out (#) the line thats starts with "acpi_fakekey"
3) sudo gedit /etc/acpi/asus-brn-up.sh
4) comment out (#) the line thats starts with "acpi_fakekey"

works immediately - no need to restart. The pitfall: the brightness icon does not appear when you change brightness. But at least you can change it!

Alright, now we can go ahead and put some time into the other Gutsy bugs ;-)

[Richard Hughes (richard-hughes)]

Why are you still using acpi_fakekey? Seriously guys, those acpi bodges are horrific. I don't think you can blame gnome-power-manager in this case - it's just doing what it's told.

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

i am not blaming anyone or anything i just want gutsy what all ubuntu releases do...work out of te box with no problems.

[rayemp (bau)]

Richard,

"Why are you still using acpi_fakekey? Seriously guys, those acpi bodges are horrific."

I don't know if your comment was serious - I hope not because it is very silly. Anyway, actually we are not *using* (this is an active verb) acpi_fakekey, but Ubuntu is using it because its developers wrote the corresponding code which is obviously full of errors in this release.

"I don't think you can blame gnome-power-manager in this case - it's just doing what it's told."

That's like saying let's not blame Microsoft for the crappy Software, it's just doing what its shareholders tell it to release. I don't care what module causes this, but the P35 was one of the best selling notebooks, and obviously such an error should not be in an Ubuntu release!

Just my 2 cents ...

Ray

[Richard Hughes (richard-hughes)]

>Anyway, actually we are not *using* acpi_fakekey

No, but someone made the choice to hack this in - to be blunt - I'm getting a bugzilla every day about this and people are not generally very polite when filing bugs about a flashing screen.

>That's like saying let's not blame Microsoft for the crappy Software

Well, if a virus scanner puts invasive hacky hooks into the CreateFile API and then saving files in Word stops working - is it microsoft fault or the virus scan vendor?

Bear in mind I've spent quite a bit of my time pushing proper solutions into the stack (like INPUT for ACPI key presses) and installing hacks into distros never fixes the problem. Fixing it properly sure takes time but it's the way it has to be done. This is why I still use Fedora.

Rant over.

[MyName (rk.)]

Have the same problem with flashing screen since gutsy.

The workaround from "philipp beitz" solved the problem.

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

its not "my" workaround. I hope this will be part of a part for gutsy? Or do we have to hope this will be fixed in hardy?

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

what if this two scripts are removed? They dont exist in my feisty installation so it should not affect gutsy ?

[Georg Brzyk (gbrzyk)]

Hardy Alpha 1 is still using acpi_fakekey, which still makes my display blink. I was going to try/test Alpha 1, but I feel kinda ignored here. Could we get any official info if/when this will be fixed?

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

I made a new one for hardy

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/173893

because i think this problem will be ignored for gutsy. Cross fingers it will be fixed for hardy.

[Tobias (tobias-frech)]

Is IS being ignored: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/160144

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

Thanks for confirming with Hardy. I've added this to the target list.

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

Thanks for including this bug in ubuntu hardy but are you sure tha affected package is hal? I thought it it acpi-support?

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

Bug is no more since Hardy Heron Alpha 2 :)

[Peter Baumann (waste-manager)]

Any chance this could get fixed in Feisty, too? It annoys the hell out of
me on my Samsung P30.

[Georg Brzyk (gbrzyk)]

I finally had time to install Alpha 3 and can confirm this bug is fixed. Thank you very much. :)

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Thanks for confirming this is fixed. Closing.

[philipp beitz (philippbeitz)]

And no fix for Gutsy ?

[qrto (qrto)]

I can confirm this bug exists with karmic, 2.6.31-12-generic on MSI WIND. And with 2.6.31-12 it's even worse than with 2.6.31-10 and -11, cause with 10 and 11 i could stop flashing by pressing brightness up/down buttons. With 2.6.31-12 i can't. One thing, i'm not sure if it's kernel version or gnome power-manager version fault, cause i did an upgrade, and dunno if g-p-m was upgraded too. Kernel for sure :)

[agorka (oleg-3630)]

I have the same problem with MSI WIND U90, Karmic, 2.6.31-13, acpi 1.4-2, acpid 1.0.6-9ubuntu8, hal 0.5.13-1ubuntu8, gnome-power-manager 2.28.0-0ubuntu3. I had this problem from time to time for a half of a year. Now it became serious again.

[Lazly (ubuntu-lazly)]

I have same problem, I have an MSI WIND U100