Screen turning on and off when starting GDM/X.

Dark Defender · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 74

I've had this problem for about a week: When I start gdm or X the screen goes black and the power led on the screen starts blinking as if i were rapidly turning it on and off (It doesn't say "no signal" how ever).
If I switch back to the console I get the screen back to normal. But if I change back to X it's the screen start doing that again. Now if i wait for 2-3min and then change back to X it's back to normal. However if I then leave the computer idle for some time it happens again and this time i t won't turn back to normal even if i wait for 20min.
The funny thing is that if i don't switch back to console and the turn of the computer when this happens is that the screen the remains the same (turning on/off) all the time. Even the first boot screen!. To fix this i have to pull out the GPU and then put it back again.

I've tried to downgrade xorg 7.3>7.2, tried with xorg-x11 opengl drivers, downgrade to kernel .23, deleting my xorg.conf and fiddling with the kernels ACPI settings. None helped...

So any ideas?

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

well... dark_me_noBG... can it be that your gpu is about to die? (that would explain the percistance of the problem even after you restart). Do you have a graphical screensaver (using the gpu not cpu)?
Did you recently did an kernel update? Drivers update? What is your GPU? Finally.... laptop user? wait... taking gpu out and plugging again... probably no... :/

If you cant remember what you installed, /var/log/emerge.log will help you

Dark Defender · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 74

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

I thought that you had a screensaver, which used your gpu causing the card to overheat and go nuts.

If we were to assume that the problem was caused by software, than it would be nice to have a guess what application might have caused the problem.

http://www.esqsoft.com/javascript_examples/date-to-epoch.htm

so.... last week was: 11.Feb ->

Try cat /var/log/emerge.log | grep 120268 | grep '::: compl'
This will give you only the packages installed on 10-12.Feb

If the problem was hardware... Then quake should have not be working... but still i don't understand if it is not a hardware problem, why do you need to take the gpu out... I would agree with you, that this probably comes when the gpu tries to go in hybernation or power save mode, but something mailfunctions there.
How do you reboot? Shutdown + start or plain restart? Can you pls use shutdown + restart? The X server can be configured to turn the monitors light after a few minutes of. I wish i could remember the correct option....

And just one wild guess: DPMS
try setting in the Ati card device section:
Option "DPMS" "FALSE"

What about offtime?
grep /etc/X11/xorg.conf | grep -i offtime

Dark Defender · n00b Joined: 27 Dec 2006 Posts: 74