Radeon DPMS problems? backlight turns back on after a minute

[Lowell Alleman]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 8:04 PM, Alex Deucher <alexdeucher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/6/09, Lowell Alleman <lowell at allemansonline.com> 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.
> >
>
> It should work fine.  If you use xset sometimes events come in after
> the command to the display comes back on.  try:
> sleep5; xset dpms force off

Sorry, I forgot to say that I'm running all of these "xset" commands
remotely (using ssh) to eliminate any kind of local keyboard/mouse
interactions like that.

ssh user at host
export DISPLAY=:0
xset dpms force off

>
> >
> > 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.
> >
>
> XAA is still supported.  There is just no render accel with XAA on
> r3xx and newer chips.  Blits/fills/lines/etc. are still accelerated
> with XAA, but EXA is generally preferable.
>
> >
> > 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
> >
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> >