screen turns black after several hours

ohadbasan · 01-07-2009, 05:58 AM

Howdy.

I am using a toshiba A305 laptop.
this is a linux mint system but the problem occured also on ubuntu.
after a few hours of idle time (I'm away from the computer)
the screen turns black, and the only solution is a hard reset.
this isn't a hibernate or suspend since the computer's power is fully on.
only the screen is black and there's no way out.

does anyone have an idea?

10x!

Simon Bridge · 01-07-2009, 07:06 AM

switch acpi off and see if it recurrs.
check the logs.

This can be so many things ... even a wonky backlight.

ohadbasan · 01-07-2009, 08:43 AM

forgive me for the noob question but messages.log gives me uncomprehensive kernel messages.
in which log will i be able to see it?

Simon Bridge · 01-07-2009, 09:30 AM

Sorry - not psychic

You'll have to read through them and try to understand.

You are looking for messages concerning acpi or screen or output close to the end of a log - may not even be an error.

Have you tried booting with noacpi?

ohadbasan · 01-07-2009, 10:54 PM

didn't seem to solve the problem
I also manually compiled the latest kernel 2.6.28
didn't solve it either.
but -
the following thread
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/289581
is relevant to me too.
that might be related.

DavidMcCann · 01-08-2009, 11:53 AM

It sounds more like a hardware problem to me. Something that happens after a device has been running for some time, especially when it gets warm, is often due to a bad circuit.

ohadbasan · 01-09-2009, 06:59 AM

I've applied a patch that was offered in the bug thread.
since then - the problem did not occur.
seems like it was a bug in the iwlan module.
10x for everything dude!

Simon Bridge · 01-10-2009, 03:41 AM

Impressive! Well done and thanks for telling us what the eventual fix was.