When switching from battery to ac or back, screen goes black

MrChilly0 · 04-14-2009, 08:43 PM

I guess it's my turn.

I have an Acer amd64 dual with an atix1600 vid card. I've had this happen on various distros, so it's not distro specific.

When I go from AC to battery or vice versa, my screen goes black, I have to ctrl_alt f1 then back to f7 to get my screen back. I can post my xorg.conf if requested, but I have had this prob before and after a kernel upgrade it went away. No clue at all. I'm curious if it's an acpi setting.

I've googled this many times, but not really seeing anything similar.

blackhole54 · 04-17-2009, 07:15 PM

I don't have a clue either, but I have a (not fully baked) idea for a work-around. The basic idea is to have the computer do the switching for you. I believe there is a way to detect which vt/console is currently being displayed, but I don't remember how to do that. (I think there is a command.) I believe there is a notification in the acpi subsystem when the switch occurs. When the notification occurs, you could have a script check, and if you are currently displaying a GUI, have it use chvt to switch to a text vt and back.

maresmasb · 04-17-2009, 08:00 PM

This will not make you happy, but I have sometimes distorted screen contents when the screensaver releases the screen. This happens on a desktop computer, and not even frequently, so it's not something to be traced down easily. Switching back and forth between a terminal screen and the X11 screen solves the problem.

My bet is that this is rather an issue with the X11 implementation. Nasty to fix something like that, as it can be a mixed responsibility between standard X11 and specific video driver code.

MrChilly0 · 04-18-2009, 08:37 AM

This is just a guess, but I think it may have something to do with the way the kernel or possibly x is viewing the event. I've seen this over the years, and it differs from one kernel to the other. Like I said, it's not distro specific. Suse, Ubuntu, Sidux, mandriva and fedora have all done it, but after a kernel upgrade or downgrade it stops happening. I'll keep plugging away. I downgraded my current kernel and the problem is gone.