# Display stays black after inactivity

## mrabe89

I've freshly installed Gentoo on my ThinkPad T60p.

The graphics card is an ATI FireGL v5200, so I configured the Kernel to use KMS with radeon selected and included R300_cp.bin as the firmware. (buildin) (1st Question - Is that correct?)

Now, wenn I use my device, everything works like a charm. - But after some inactivity, the display turn black and whatever I try to do, I can't get it back on again.

It doesn't suspend or anything. - If I execute the command "speaker-test", I hear some noices.

What might be the problem here? - Why doesn't the display turns back on, after I've pressed some keys?

Thanks in advance.

PS: I'm not using X11/Xorg by now, just the textmode. - Kernel Version 3.10.17

(I already asked that Question here: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/106076/gentoo-display-stays-black-after-inactivity-thinkpad-t60p-ati-firegl - but got no response  :Sad:  )

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## Hu

If you did not include the correct firmware, there will be a note in dmesg about failing to load the firmware file it wanted.  The symptom is not like any prior missing-firmware incidents I have seen.  If you use full X11 instead, does the screen recover?  That would be a useful data point for determining whether the problem is just with console unblanking or a deeper problem.  When the screen becomes stuck in blanked mode, does the backlight remain on?  If yes, it will look like you rendered a console with nothing but spaces.  If no, it will look like the monitor is off.

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## mrabe89

Thanks for your reply.

There was no error note in dmesg about the kernel failing to load the firmware. - So I assume I used the correct firmware file. (got that out of the way -  :Smile:  )

I've researched your questions and found out that it doesn't matter if I use X11 or not, the screen doesn't recover.

And I can't see any backlighting so the display seem to be completly turned off.

But it seems like the system doesn't notice that it can't turn the display back on - There is no error message in the logs (after I've rebootet the system). (as far as I can see)

Do you have any tip for me, how I could fix that?

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## mrabe89

Sth. happend just now.

I executed startx after the display had turned off - and nothing happend.

But after 10 Minutes, I saw that die display flashed lightly. And the display came back on (after I pressed a key).

Perhaps this information is of value to you. - Thanks again for your help.

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## mrabe89

I still have the same problem   :Sad: 

Does anybody have a hint for me how to fix this?

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## Kolhell

I had a girlfriend with a similar issue a while back on her Thinkpad T60.  She ran Linux Mint, and most of the time when it was suspended or the screen shut off to conserve power the display would not wake properly.  IIRC it had something to do with the ACPI support, but basically I found that pressing Fn+pgup or whatever increases the brightness on the display would pop it back on and called it "good enough."

Hope this helps.

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## mrabe89

Thanks for the hint - Unfortunately, that didn't help either.

Can I somehow turn the ACPI off, so my Display doesn't get turn off in the first place?

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## Hu

Disabling ACPI on any recent hardware is a bad idea.  Important system power management functions are routed through ACPI.  Disabling it will have consequences ranging from loss of power management and possibly loss of the ability to use S3.  This would technically solve your problem, by way of preventing you from suspending, so that you cannot have the monitor (or the rest of the machine) enter a low power state.

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## mrabe89

So - can I disable it just for the monitor and keep the rest?

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## Hu

I doubt it.  You may need to seek the assistance of kernel maintainers who can walk you through how to extract detailed information about why this is happening.

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## Erdie

Interesting issue, I am running a thinkpad T60 with the same problem here.  But his only happens, when the screen backlight switch off in the console mode, which means after pressing ALT-F1,2,3 ..

If it is dark, i can get it working anymore unless I reboot the machine. I did not found a solution up to now, even a kernel update did not fix it. Currently running gentoo-sources 3.10.7. But it did not try the Fn-PgUp method, will check this soon.

Because of this issue I do not use console anymore, only the commandline windows under X.

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