Bug 13199

Summary: Monitor turns off when internal screensaver is activated
Product: xorg Reporter: Petr Svoboda <petr>
Component: Driver/RadeonAssignee: xf86-video-ati maintainers <xorg-driver-ati>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact: Xorg Project Team <xorg-team>
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium CC: gsr.bugs
Version: 7.3 (2007.09)   
Hardware: All   
OS: All   
Whiteboard:
i915 platform: i915 features:
Attachments:
Description Flags
revert monitor blanking to pre 6.7 behaviour none

Description Petr Svoboda 2007-11-12 07:25:19 UTC 
When I activate internal screensaver with blanking on (e.g. xset s activate s blank), monitor is turned off. It is able to resume correctly, but I think this behaviour is not wanted, because I can use dpms for this and at least basic KDE screensaver sets blanking on, so it is hard to turn it off.

I got this behaviour after upgrading from xf86-video-ati-6.6.3 and xorg-1.2 to
xf86-video-ati-6.7.195 and xorg-1.4. When I use xf86-video-ati-6.6.3 with 
xorg-1.4, internal screensaver is working as with xorg-1.2. I am using CRT monitor and ATI Radeon 9250.

I was able to track it down to RADEONBlank function in radeon_display.c in xf86-video-ati. When I comment out lines with ...->funcs->dpms(...,DPMSModeOff), screensaver don't anymore turn monitor off. Obviously, it is not fix.

I think this is also triggered when X server is started, reset and when switching between X server and text console - in all these cases is monitor turned off and on again - it disappears with my "not-fix".
Comment 1 gsr.bugs 2007-11-14 12:57:14 UTC 
I was going to report the same thing, as old behaviour was pretty nice:
"xset s 300 300": make the screen go black in 5 minutes
"xset dpms 600 600 600": and then make it turn off in another 5 (10 from start)

Now "s" will let you choose between off with "xset s blank" or the
moire inducing cross pattern with X logo with "xset s noblank", but
no way to make it black but still give time to avoid a start/stop cycle.

Old behaviour, even if what the man page says contradicts it, was
the most complete (if I want animations eating CPU, even if slow, I
will install xlock, xscreensaver or something like that, which I just
had to do to get a black screensaver). New behaviour forces CRT tubes
and LCD backlights a bit too much without option to have the two phase
power off. And in the case of CRTs, it is even worse, as I doubt a high frequency pattern is nice for the driving circuits (at least I saw it
moves slightly, so no burn in if using fast cycle time as "xset s 300 30").

A less extreme pattern would be better (or even just show the X logo in
faded colours, without any bg pattern), if there is no way to go back to
"s makes screen black". Yes, I tried "xset dpms 100 900 900" to test if
first level would be OK, but it seems this monitor does the same for
all modes.
Comment 2 Petr Svoboda 2008-02-14 11:34:45 UTC 
Created attachment 14313 [details] [review]
revert monitor blanking to pre 6.7 behaviour

With this patch applied, "xset s activate s blank" will blank the video output but will not turn monitor off. So it should work like in version 6.6.3 and before.

Only tested with one CRT monitor, so I don't know if it will work with different configurations.
Comment 3 Petr Svoboda 2008-04-19 12:24:01 UTC 
The patch still works for xf86-video-ati-6.8.0.
Comment 4 Alex Deucher 2010-10-19 15:57:35 UTC 
turning off saves more power.
Comment 5 gsr.bugs 2010-10-19 16:39:10 UTC 
That is what DPMS was doing. Now the only way to have a progressive turn off is running yet another process.
Comment 6 Petr Svoboda 2010-10-20 01:51:55 UTC 
Hmm, this is sad, you just ignore CRT monitors. Using DPMS is not option for CRT, because after power off/on it takes some time before colors stabilize.

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