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Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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kerryhall
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Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#1 Post by kerryhall »

Due to an inability to kill a process in the "uninterruptible sleep state", I was forced to reboot, and now my screen keeps randomly turning off. Sometimes it will turn off and on 5 or 6 times in a row.

The monitor itself works fine, I tested it with another computer.

I have a Geforce 1060 GTX.

Never had a problem like this before, this issue only started after a recent reboot.

System is unusable.

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#2 Post by kerryhall »

I noticed in nvidia-settings, that the refresh rate constantly returns to "auto". I used to have it on 60hz, which worked great until I rebooted.

Now when I try and set it to 60hz, it doesn't "stick" and instead keeps returning to "auto". I think this could be part of the problem.

Also when I change settings to "advanced" I see two 60hz settings, 60hz (1) and 60 hz (2)....this seems very very wrong to me and perhaps the source of the issue.

Also version info:

NVIDIA Driver Version: 418.113
Server Version Number: 11.0
Server Vendor Version: 1.20.4

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#3 Post by kerryhall »

I seem to have mostly fixed the screen turning off issue with:

xset -dpms

It still turns off, but about 5% as often now. Not sure why I need that command, but I now have another problem.

If I move my terminal emulator to a certain area of the screen, the whole bottom half of the screen will start flickering and look skewed.

I know it's a problem with Debian and not with my video card, because it depends on where an x window is moved to. Also never had an issue for months, rebooted, issue starts immediately. I can repro 100% of the time now just by moving this window.

no errors in ~/.xsession-errors, syslog, or dmesg.

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#4 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

Try the nouveau driver instead. Or buy a graphics card from a manufacturer that doesn't hate the open source community.
deadbang

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#5 Post by kerryhall »

Everything has been working perfectly for years with this card on Debian 8.

Nuked and paved to Debian 10 back in Jan.

Not sure what rebooting could have done to screw things up.

AMD is the more FOSS friendly of the two mfgs? I was originally told it was the other way around. (Granted, back in 2001)

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#6 Post by kerryhall »

Is there anything I can try here? I'm still having this issue.

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#7 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

kerryhall wrote:If I move my terminal emulator to a certain area of the screen, the whole bottom half of the screen will start flickering and look skewed.
For Me it looks like hardware problem...
What happens if You change (lower) the resolution?
Have tried the Nouveau driver?
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#8 Post by kerryhall »

How can it be a hardware problem if it was caused by a reboot though? And if it was a problem with my monitor, wouldn't it occur regardless of what window is positioned where?

Something must have changed after rebooting, I wish I knew what.

This is a 4k monitor, so the whole point is to run it at 4k/60hz.

I should try the Nouveau driver though and see if that helps.

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#9 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

kerryhall wrote:How can it be a hardware problem if it was caused by a reboot though?
This is just Your assumption -> no logs, no details.

What is preventing You from changing the resolution and/or checking the Nouveau driver?

Can You make a photo/screenshot of that malformed picture?
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#10 Post by pendrachken »

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:Try the nouveau driver instead. Or buy a graphics card from a manufacturer that doesn't hate the open source community.
Yeah, buy worse hardware so people don't have to fix crap software. Makes sense to me. This isn't the good old days where ATI hardware was great but drivers suck.

It semi flipped, AMD hardware is now shittier, but the drivers are better than what they were. NVidia drivers still spank them for performance... and as for "hating open source", NVidia still supports more older cards with drastic performance betterment than AMD. Oh yeah, and CUDA support on AMD? Nope. OpenCL is hot garbage compared to CUDA.


LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: This is just Your assumption
Yeah, because graphical corruption when you place a specific window in a specific location on screen screams hardware failure, not a software issue... oh wait, it's generally the opposite in 99.999999999% of cases.

The only assumption here is YOURS, and it's baseless and almost certainly wrong.
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#11 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

pendrachken wrote:
LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: This is just Your assumption
Yeah, because graphical corruption when you place a specific window in a specific location on screen screams hardware failure, not a software issue... oh wait, it's generally the opposite in 99.999999999% of cases.

The only assumption here is YOURS, and it's baseless and almost certainly wrong.
Short lesson about how the computer works:
While moving the window on the screen, the hardware blitter is constantly re-programmed to copy various regions of GFX memory from one location to another. If some area of the GFX memory is damaged, the blitter will copy a garbage data, producing visual artifacts in the display buffer area.
And I've seen such situation many times.

Now taking into account that the card is old (tested) and the drivers are also tested and stable (418.113) AND the problem showed up after reboot, I'm assuming hardware problem -> f.e. damaged GFX RAM chip.

I've asked to lower the resolution, because this changes the absolute addresses which are used during blitting (moving the window) -> this can completely "fix" the problem or at least the garbage displayed on the screen will differ.

99.9999% of sudden HW failures are happening during power ON/OFF -> overcurrent/overvoltage spikes caused by charging/discharging of the capacitors and undefined voltage levels on power/data lines.

Hope that helps.
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#12 Post by Deb-fan »

Try the nouveau driver instead. Or buy a graphics card from a manufacturer that doesn't hate the open source community.
.

LMFAO ... had to quote this cause it's one of the funniest things I've seen recently.

If you've tried fresh install and yet it persists then yeah would have to strongly suggest hardware failure. Believe bad ram has been associated with the type of weirdness you're describing. Check memory on mobo and/or on the vidcard? Could disable (or remove the card), try integrated graphics to attempt to narrow things down? Fried ram stick or fried vidcard perhaps. Bad PSU (power supply unit)? Battery if laptop?

Might even have to check crazy chit like bad power cord or port you plug such into on the PC if desktop-etc and yet more, bad power strip or even wall outlet?

PS, wonder if MS owns Nvidia or some bigwig at Nvid owns a crapton of MS stock? :P Though to be honest am overall clueless as to the status of graphics cards in relation to gnu/Linux. Other than occasionally reading I've stuck with integrated graphics and the open source drivers.
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#13 Post by pendrachken »

LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote:
pendrachken wrote:
LE_746F6D617A7A69 wrote: This is just Your assumption
Yeah, because graphical corruption when you place a specific window in a specific location on screen screams hardware failure, not a software issue... oh wait, it's generally the opposite in 99.999999999% of cases.

The only assumption here is YOURS, and it's baseless and almost certainly wrong.
Short lesson about how the computer works:
While moving the window on the screen, the hardware blitter is constantly re-programmed to copy various regions of GFX memory from one location to another. If some area of the GFX memory is damaged, the blitter will copy a garbage data, producing visual artifacts in the display buffer area.
And I've seen such situation many times.

Now taking into account that the card is old (tested) and the drivers are also tested and stable (418.113) AND the problem showed up after reboot, I'm assuming hardware problem -> f.e. damaged GFX RAM chip.

I've asked to lower the resolution, because this changes the absolute addresses which are used during blitting (moving the window) -> this can completely "fix" the problem or at least the garbage displayed on the screen will differ.

99.9999% of sudden HW failures are happening during power ON/OFF -> overcurrent/overvoltage spikes caused by charging/discharging of the capacitors and undefined voltage levels on power/data lines.

Hope that helps.
Don't try to tell me how a PC works. I've built them longer, and with your crappy text speak being a clue, probably had my break / fix contracting business longer than you've been alive. Hell, I've probably used Linux longer.

Yes, because a single program causes screen issues. Not crashes, just graphical distortion. That just SCREAMS hardware issue.... not.

Bad VRAM would cause one of two things - a single block of pixels to be corrupted, caught, and marked bad if it's in the same spot every single time - likely leading to a driver crash, or two - just plain cause the driver to kill itself. And that's for drawing just the screen If the screen is fine UNTIL you move a window there, and again, only one single program window is mentioned, that is 99.999% going to be a software issue.
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:twisted: How did it know?

The U.S. uses the metric system too, we have tenths, hundredths and thousandths of inches :-P

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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#14 Post by Deb-fan »

^ HEY BUB ... ya wanna step outside!?!!? It's an internet forum, there is no outside. :P

Would really help things if the OP would try stuff people are suggesting and/or give some dayum feedback! Op ? Hellooo?

Edit: Was going to say screw what I'd posted above but some of it might be worth a try. Op not heard from in dys, screw it I'm going to sleep.
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#15 Post by LE_746F6D617A7A69 »

pendrachken wrote:Don't try to tell me how a PC works. I've built them longer, and with your crappy text speak being a clue, probably had my break / fix contracting business longer than you've been alive. Hell, I've probably used Linux longer.
This has nothing to do with the issue.
Linux has changed a lot since You were born ;)
pendrachken wrote:Yes, because a single program causes screen issues. Not crashes, just graphical distortion. That just SCREAMS hardware issue.... not.
Screen turns off randomly, and the monitor is OK -> what about this?
Possible problem with DDC functionality -> monitor native refresh rate not detected by the driver (can't set the VRefresh rate) -> what about this?

You should read what the OP says, and not just stick to a single sentence...

DE-native terminals are special applications -> their components are tightly integrated with the DE and they are pre-loaded when the DE starts. If some of the files/libs on the HDD has been damaged, then You'll get a read error or a crash during execution of program's code -> not a visual artifacts.
But foremost, this is not a bug in software -> it worked before reboot -> does it hurt to read full text?
pendrachken wrote:Bad VRAM would cause one of two things (...)
I just don't have the time to explain what damaged vram could cause.

Anyway: no logs, no details - we can only guess what could happen...
Deb-fan wrote:^ HEY BUB ... ya wanna step outside!?!!? It's an internet forum, there is no outside. :P
There is a real world outside of the internet - You just need to take the Red Pill :D
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#16 Post by Deb-fan »

^ LMAO, ... Was under the wrong impression, thought OP's whole system was doing that (off/on) bad ram and psu's are associated with that kinda crap. Apparently it's just his monitor and I'm boggled as to possible causes/cures for it. Outside of the usual suspects, vidcard, driver etc. One reason I've always stuck with open source graphics drivers was to avoid tech nightmares like these. Ah Op quit responding a long time ago, so looking like the mystery will never be solved, dammit! Wanted to know what's going on here, in case ever come across it in the future.

Op? What's the situation now, what all have you tried ... etc? Op? Respond dammit! Op !?! :)

PS, really do want to maintain that weird thought about checking stuff like a power strip, they do go bad and could cause all manner of odd tech problems. Likely to be the absolute last thing anyone would consider or never even check at all.

Ps2, How insidious would it be if it turned out the cord or port Op is using to connect this problem system to that monitor has a short in it? We could all be standing there with physical access to the damn thing and would probably never get around to checking that.
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#17 Post by cuckooflew »

kerryhall wrote:I noticed in nvidia-settings, that the refresh rate constantly returns to "auto". I used to have it on 60hz, which worked great until I rebooted.

Now when I try and set it to 60hz, it doesn't "stick" and instead keeps returning to "auto". I think this could be part of the problem.

Also when I change settings to "advanced" I see two 60hz settings, 60hz (1) and 60 hz (2)....this seems very very wrong to me and perhaps the source of the issue.

Also version info:

NVIDIA Driver Version: 418.113
Server Version Number: 11.0
Server Vendor Version: 1.20.4
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Re: Screen is randomly turning off after reboot

#18 Post by kerryhall »

Apologies for the delay, but after months of mucking around with nvidia-settings and different hdmi cables, I had no additional data.

Until today! I think I figured out what is going on here.

After that reboot, there now appears to be a mismatch in color depth between my monitor and xorg.

My monitor normally has the "UHD color" setting enabled. (Which is apparently the setting for 30 bit color)

If this is enabled, and xorg is set to 24 bit color, and my resolution is set to 4k, and refresh rate to 60 hz, I get display artifacts and monitor power offs (when dragging a window to a specific region of the screen).

With xorg set to 24 bit color and "UHD color" disabled, 4k@60hz, no issues whatsoever.

With xorg set to 30 bit color, "UHD color" enabled, 4k@60hz, also no issues with the display! I am assuming that xorg was originally set to 30 bit color before the reboot, and something got mangled. I knew it wasn't a hardware failure with my video card, as the issue started immediately after rebooting, after being stable for months.

However, 30 bit color no longer seems to work. With xorg set to use 30 bit color, the window manager won't start after logging in. My window manager is fluxbox, and login manager is lightdm.

Is there any way I can get 30 bit color working? Colors all look off now after disabling "UHD color" in my monitor, especially red text on a black background, which looks very "smeared". At least 60hz works now!

Or if it's not possible to get 30 bit color working, maybe there is some sort of workaround for getting red text to show up correctly on a black background?

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