Comment 34 for bug 750259

On Tue, Apr 19, 2011 at 11:35:52PM -0000, Marius Grigaitis wrote:
> video of flickering: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK5AfUzg6UA
>
> dpms did not solve the flickering problem.
>
> It may be another bug but after trying to switch modes without dpms
> screen goes black and only mouse is shown. On laptop monitor, on
> external monitor, and flickering mouse on external monitor (a little
> block flickering and everything else is black)
>
> After I did dpms force on I managed to get normal extend view (i guess
> without dpms on i was able to get it too, but only black screen +
> mouse). I also did manage to get clone working properly. And next mode
> (probably external monitor only?) was the flickering one.

Mm, alright well that's some progress.

"black screen with mouse" is almost key words for "GPU lockup". Check
your dmesg when it's in that state for error messages (or just post here
and I can look for you). Also snag your
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_error_state file, which can have error
codes in this case.

Since the dpms command appears to have some effect (even though not a
full fix), try this PPA which adds a DPMS forcing functionality to the X
driver.

  https://launchpad.net/~bryce/+archive/elderberry