# Screen goes off and on again at 60s uptime [SOLVED]

## uaqg

Hello fellow Gentoo users,

I encountered a strange problem with my self-configured Linux kernels: at 1 minute uptime my screen goes off and shortly back on again. Always exactly 60 seconds after boot!

I'm pretty sure my kernel configuration causes this problem. It doesn't occur when I'm using distributions with precompiled kernels. But when I let them boot my own kernel images, they have the same problem. This is also not xserver related, because it already happened prior xserver installation.

I really don't know what could cause this problem. The only thing I discovered: booting with acpi=off prevents it. 

I'm using a Samsung N130. It uses a Intel Atom N270 processor with a Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics Controller. My full kernel config can be found here.

These are my Power Management settings:

```

[*] Suspend to RAM and standby

[*] Hibernation (aka 'suspend to disk')

()  Default resume partition

[ ] Opportunistic sleep

[ ] User space wakeup sources interface

[*] Run-time PM core functionality

[ ] Power Management Debug Support

[ ] Enable workqueue power-efficient mode by default

[*] ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support  --->

[ ] SFI (Simple Firmware Interface) Support  ----

< > APM (Advanced Power Management) BIOS support  ----

    CPU Frequency scaling  --->

-*- CPU idle PM support  --->

[*] Cpuidle Driver for Intel Processors

```

These are my ACPI settings:

```
--- ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support

    [*]   Deprecated /proc/acpi files

    [*]   Deprecated power /proc/acpi directories

    < >   EC read/write access through /sys/kernel/debug/ec

    [*]   Deprecated /proc/acpi/event support

    < >   AC Adapter

    < >   Battery

    -*-   Button

    -*-   Video

    < >   Fan

    [ ]   Dock

    <*>   Processor

    < >   Processor Aggregator

    <*>   Thermal Zone

    [ ]   ACPI tables override via initrd

    (0)   Disable ACPI for systems before Jan 1st this year

    [ ]   Debug Statements

    [ ]   PCI slot detection driver

    [*]   Container and Module Devices

    < >   Smart Battery System

    < >   Hardware Error Device

    [ ]   ACPI Platform Error Interface (APEI)

```

These are my Device Drivers > Graphic support settings:

```

<*> /dev/agpgart (AGP Support)  --->

-*- VGA Arbitration

(1)   Maximum number of GPUs

[ ] Laptop Hybrid Graphics - GPU switching support

<*> Direct Rendering Manager (XFree86 4.1.0 and higher DRI support)  --->

    I2C encoder or helper chips  --->

< > 3dfx Banshee/Voodoo3+

< > ATI Rage 128

< > ATI Radeon

< > Nouveau (nVidia) cards

<*> Intel 8xx/9xx/G3x/G4x/HD Graphics

[*]   Enable modesetting on intel by default

< > Matrox g200/g400

< > SiS video cards

< > Via unichrome video cards

< > Savage video cards

< > DRM driver for VMware Virtual GPU

< > Intel GMA5/600 KMS Framebuffer

< > DisplayLink

< > AST server chips

< > Kernel modesetting driver for MGA G200 server engines

< > Cirrus driver for QEMU emulated device

< > QXL virtual GPU

-*- Lowlevel video output switch controls

-*- Support for frame buffer devices  --->

[ ] Exynos Video driver support  ----

-*- Backlight & LCD device support  --->

    Console display driver support  --->

[ ] Bootup logo  ----

```

Last edited by uaqg on Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:49 pm; edited 1 time in total

----------

## eyoung100

Try Setting your Resume Partition to Your Swap Partition

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## chithanh

60 seconds is the poll interval for VGA output load detection. It is known to cause screen blanking for some setups. You can try to disable polling with drm_kms_helper.poll=0 kernel parameter.

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## uaqg

Thank you for your help. Sadly neither resume=/dev/sda2 nor drm_kms_helper.poll=0 solved this problem. So I rebooted with default settings, logged in as root and ran htop with kernel threads shown. At one minute uptime kworker/0:0 woke up and my screen turned black. I did some Google search and somehow ended up in /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts. Running 

```
grep . -rn *
```

showed that gpe17 was the only interrupt that occured (total of 38 times). I rebooted again, logged in and the first thing I did was

```
echo disable > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe17
```

At the time I disabled gpe17, it already occured 31 times. I waited until 60 seconds uptime passed and what can I say: kworker/0:0 stayed asleep and nothing happened. Disabeling this interrupt prevents my screen from blanking. Now I've got one last question:

What's the best way to disable this interrupt every boot?

----------

## John R. Graham

Wow. Nice troubleshooting. Probably the easiest would be to put that line in /etc/conf.d/local.

- John

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## uaqg

Thanks! Works like a charm. Problem solved.  :Very Happy: 

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## chithanh

If this happens with kernel 3.11, it would be good to report this issue to kernel bugzilla, so it can be fixed there.

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