[Arm-netbook] LCD goes haywire after inactivity

[Frans Pop]

(Public reply to private mail.)

On Monday 29 March 2010, Michael Howard wrote:
> There is some kind of issue with the screen on the netbook with the last
> couple of kernels/installers. At least with my netbook. If you leave it
> without touching it for a while, it goes into what a assume is some kind
> of power saving mode whereby the the screen blanks and the only way to
> recover is an underside reset. It's done it now whilst I was copying the
> pics over to  the web server.
>
> I'll try and replicate the other situations.

I've seen that too while working on the graphical installer. You can still 
ssh into the system and do a 'poweroff' (for the installer: assuming you 
loaded and activated the network-console component...).

I very much doubt it's a regression as there have been no changes that 
should affect this. But if you have a kernel with which it does not occur, 
that would be a good data point.

I suspect it is related to running X.Org and having that activate DPMS 
powersaving for the LCD, which the kernel does not (yet) support 
correctly. It happens after exactly 10 minutes of inactivity, so that 
would make it the screen blanking kicking in.

It would be good to confirm that it does not happen with the "regular" 
installer or when simply logged in to an installed system on the console.

Cheers,
FJP