Radeon DPMS problems? backlight turns back on after a minute

[Magnus Kessler]

On Tuesday 07 April 2009, Lowell Alleman wrote:
> Are there any known issues with DPMS not working properly with the latest
> radeon driver?  I've found some old bugs that sound similar, but don't
> exactly match and the workarounds I've found seem to make a difference.
>  Here is what I'm experiencing:
>
> My laptop (IBM T42, r300) LCD will not going into power saving mode on
> its own.  If I force it go into one of these modes, it only stays in that
> mode for a short period of time (a few seconds to a couple of minutes)
> before the screen turns back on again. I'm pretty sure this isn't due to
> any keyboard/mouse events (since the screen saver doesn't
> pop up a login dialog) and I don't see any new events /var/log/acpid that
> correlate to the LCD being re-enabled.  However, every time the LCD turns
> back on, I do see the following message in the Xorg.0 log file:  "enable
> LVDS".  It appears that the X server still thinks that the DPMS mode is
> enabled, because "xset q" says that the monitor is still in "Suspend" (or
> whatever mode I forced it to be in) even after the LCD was turned on
> again.
>
>
> Here are some additional details about my setup, and what I've tried:
>
> Relevant output from "xset q":
> DPMS (Energy Star):
>  Standby: 600    Suspend: 660    Off: 1200
>  DPMS is Enabled
>  Monitor is On
>
> After the display has been disabled using "xset force suspend" the
> display shuts down.  If you check "xset q" it now reports "Monitor is in
> Suspend". A minute or so later the LCD is turned back on.  Now I can see
> screensaver (which is DPMS-aware, and therefore has been paused to save
> CPU cycles).  At this point, "xset q" still shows "Monitor is in
> Suspend".
>
> I've tried switching between EXA and XAA acceleration.  As of radeon
> v6.12.0 XAA says it is not supported any more, but EXA doesn't appear to
> be the default yet.  (Not sure what that means; but in both cases this
> problems still occurs).  I've also tried adding the "NoPM" option, as I
> found as an old workaround suggested, but that didn't make a difference
> either.
>
>
> Versions:
>
> X.Org X Server 1.5.2
> Radeon driver:  6.12.0  (I compiled this locally for improved
> performance in latest release)
> Linux 2.6.27-11-generic #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 19:24:39 UTC 2009 i686
> GNU/Linux Kubuntu 8.10
> KDE 4.1.4
>
> I can provide additional info (xorg.conf and Xorg.0.log) if this is an
> unknown situation and those would be helpful to have.
>
> Thanks,
>
> - Lowell

Hi Lowell,

this was a bug in the KDE 4 screensaver code [0]. It is certainly fixed in 
the latest version of KDE. Try updating to KDE 4.2.1 or above.

HTH,

Magnus

[0] http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165265
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