Re: Intermittent blank screen – Stretch
On Saturday 09 June 2018 04:27:06 Jimmy Johnson wrote:
> On 06/03/2018 06:29 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 03 June 2018 07:54:22 Mike wrote:
> >> On 02/06/18 08:11, floris wrote:
> >>> Mike schreef op 2018-06-01 01:27:
> >>>> I have just installed Stretch and and randomly getting a 2 second
> >>>> (or so) blank screen. I can go for quite some time without it
> >>>> happening, or it can happen several times over a few minutes. I
> >>>> can dual boot with Jessie and do not have the problem with that –
> >>>> so I think I can rule out a hardware issue.
> >>>>
> >>>> I have an Nvidia GTX1050 video card, HDMI output to a Samsung 49"
> >>>> TV, 4K video. There is no other type of input into the TV for me
> >>>> to be able to test.
> >>>>
> >>>> Here is what I have done
> >>>> 1. Installed Stretch (amd64) with XFCE
> >>>> 2. apt-get install firmware-linux nvidia-driver nvidia-settings
> >>>> nvidia-xconfig
> >>>> 3. run nvidia-xconfig
> >>>> 4. turned off screen blanking in power settings
> >>>>
> >>>> I am quite happy to spend time troubleshooting, but don’t really
> >>>> know where to start. The blanking happens too quickly for me to
> >>>> be able to do anything at the time.
> >>>>
> >>>> Does anyone have any thoughts?
> >>>>
> >>>> Thanks
> >>>>
> >>>> Mike
> >>>
> >>> You can try the NVidia driver module from backports [1] and/or run
> >>> journalctl -f in a terminal and wait for the blank screen.
> >>>
> >>> [1] https://packages.debian.org/stretch-backports/nvidia-driver
> >>> ---
> >>> Floris
> >>
> >> Okay, now here is a weird thing.
> >>
> >> I just unplugged a USB cable that was, in turn, connected to a
> >> microcontroller. My screen went blank. When I plugged in back in it
> >> went blank again. This happened about 4 times until I could plug
> >> and unplug without the blanking. I left it for 30-odd seconds and
> >> was able to do the same thing. It did not happen when I unplugged
> >> my computer keyboard, or my USB camera.
> >>
> >> Does this give anyone any ideas?
> >
> > Yes. Unplug it again, and install htop, the run it as root so the
> > kill button, F9 can kill any thing. Plug the cable to the
> > micro-controller back in and see what pops up in the top 10 or so
> > when htop is set to watch cpu. My theory is that the
> > micro-controller is spaming your main box with lots of traffic. But
> > its just a theory.
>
> Hi Gene, I want to make sure I understand your instructions. You say
> install htop and run htop as root, when the screen goes black press
> f9.
>
That may not work. First f9 is the kill command, but does require further
action before it sends the kill, but if the screen is blanked, you won't
be able to see what the top, now highlighted line is.
So this may not be the approach needed after all.
I am inclined to recommend checking with a different HDMI - vga adapter
next. On the armhf jessie buikds, there is a file read at startup, and I
do have an option set to boost the hdmi signal else I had a similar
problem, but thats on a pi-3b, and likely isn't germane to a wintel box.
I do recall seeing some noise on the lists mentioning the adapters in
this problems context.
> Is that correct?
Not in this scenario. I do recommend htop be installed though as its a
great troubleshooting tool IMNSHO. Unlike top, which can't scroll thru
the list of running processes, htop can, making it many times more
usefull.
> Thanks,
--
Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
Reply to: