Monitors do not consistently power off and stay off after inactivity

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gardenlist

Monitors do not consistently power off and stay off after inactivity

Post by gardenlist »

Hi, this is my first time posting and I wouldn’t say I am brand new to Linux but I certainly wouldn’t consider myself an expert, so some patience would be appreciated and I would greatly appreciate any assistance with this issue. I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 desktop machine (with an integrated Intel HD Graphics 530 card), and am using 64-bit Linux Mint 20.2 with Cinnamon (full output of inxi -Fxxxrz is at the bottom) which I recently set up about 1 week ago, as a dual boot with Windows 10 which was already installed. I have two Acer monitors, one connected as HDMI and one as DisplayPort.

My issue is that if in Cinnamon, I open Power Management and set "Turn off the screen when inactive for" to any amount of time (eg. 5, 10, 15 minutes), my monitors do not consistently turn off and stay off in Mint, although they have always done so without any issues in Windows 10, which I have been using for a number of years. In Mint, they will sometimes power off after inactivity as scheduled, and then without touching the mouse or monitor, after some seemingly random period of time (could be a few sounds, could be 1 hour) the monitors just turn back on, and sometimes stay on for hours at a time. I have even tried powering off the (wireless) mouse, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect. I have tried closing apps (in case for example Firefox with a YouTube video playing or VLC is somehow blocking turning the monitors off), although I have not consistently noticed any difference, and I noticed this issue pretty early on after setting up Mint, when I had very few packages installed beyond the default (although more than none). I have tried physically shutting off one monitor, and I also didn’t see any difference.

I have tried running "xset dpms force standby" and this command does indeed successfully power off the monitors.

When I run xset -q, I see the following as of the time of writing this:

Code: Select all

xset -q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    off    02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  33
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
I have tried researching the issue, but did not happen to find any solutions that worked. I don’t know if it makes sense, but one thing I tried doing for example based on a web search of similar issues is running the following script as a crontab job (as my user) every two seconds:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=:0
while true
do    
    /usr/bin/sleep 2
    /usr/bin/xset dpms 600 0 600
done
However, that did not solve the issue. If I ran the cron job less frequently (eg. every 5 minutes), I could observe that Standby and Off (when running xset -q) seemingly randomly get reset, sometimes very quickly and sometimes after a longer period of time, perhaps an hour. I have disabled the cron job for now.

Code: Select all

$ inxi -Fxxxrz
System:    Kernel: 5.4.0-90-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.3.0 Desktop: Cinnamon 5.0.7 wm: muffin 5.0.2
           dm: LightDM 1.30.0 Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Uma base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal
Machine:   Type: Desktop System: LENOVO product: 10FMCTO1WW v: ThinkCentre M900 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 3
           serial: <filter>
           Mobo: LENOVO model: 30D0 v: SDK0J40697 WIN 3305033966563 serial: <filter> UEFI: LENOVO v: FWKTB9A date: 08/17/2021
CPU:       Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-6700T bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Skylake-S rev: 3 L2 cache: 8192 KiB
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 44798
           Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 801
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 530 vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:1912
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 530 (SKL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.0.3 direct render: Yes
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 100 Series/C230 Series Family HD Audio vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
           bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:a170
           Device-2: Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo bus ID: 1-6:6 chip ID: 046d:082d
           serial: <filter>
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.0-90-generic
Network:   Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-LM vendor: Lenovo driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: f040 bus ID: 00:1f.6
           chip ID: 8086:15b7
           IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
           Device-2: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: f040 bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 8086:24f3
           IF: wlp1s0 state: down mac: <filter>
           IF-ID-1: nordlynx state: unknown speed: 10 Mbps duplex: full mac: N/A
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 4.10 TiB used: 1.02 TiB (24.8%)
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: MZ7LN512HMJP-000L1 size: 476.94 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter>
           rev: 2L0Q scheme: GPT
           ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: Seagate model: BUP Fast HDD size: 3.64 TiB serial: <filter> rev: 9409 scheme: GPT
Partition: ID-1: / size: 27.37 GiB used: 10.31 GiB (37.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda5
           ID-2: /home size: 274.90 GiB used: 21.89 GiB (8.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 7.45 GiB used: 7.8 MiB (0.1%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda6
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 41.0 C mobo: 29.8 C
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/alessandro-strada-ppa-focal.list
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/alessandro-strada/ppa/ubuntu focal main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/b-rad-kernel_mediatree_hauppauge-focal.list
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/b-rad/kernel+mediatree+hauppauge/ubuntu focal main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/brave-browser-release.list
           1: deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/brave-browser-archive-keyring.gpg arch=amd64] https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/graphics-drivers-ppa-focal.list
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/graphics-drivers/ppa/ubuntu focal main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/jcfp-nobetas-focal.list
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jcfp/nobetas/ubuntu focal main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/linuxuprising-shutter-focal.list
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/linuxuprising/shutter/ubuntu focal main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nordvpn.list
           1: deb https://repo.nordvpn.com//deb/nordvpn/debian stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
           1: deb http://mirror.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/linuxmint-packages uma main upstream import backport
           2: deb http://mirror.ca-tr.kamatera.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
           3: deb http://mirror.ca-tr.kamatera.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
           4: deb http://mirror.ca-tr.kamatera.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
           5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
           6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/signal-xenial.list
           1: deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/signal-desktop-keyring.gpg] https://updates.signal.org/desktop/apt xenial main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/spotify.list
           1: deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-boot-repair-focal.list
           1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/yannubuntu/boot-repair/ubuntu focal main
Info:      Processes: 297 Uptime: 22h 22m Memory: 15.53 GiB used: 5.23 GiB (33.7%) Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers:
           gcc: 9.3.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash v: 5.0.17 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.38
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Tonytn
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Re: Monitors do not consistently power off and stay off after inactivity

Post by Tonytn »

Any resolution for this? Just put a system together with LM20.3 and having this same issue. Nitro video card, using 1 HMDI and 1 DisplayPort. Will go to screensaver and the monitors will turn off but only for a few seconds, then they turn back but still in screen saver / lock mode. Very odd.
gardenlist

Re: Monitors do not consistently power off and stay off after inactivity

Post by gardenlist »

No resolution. Maybe I see it less after upgrading to 20.3 Una.
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SMG
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Re: Monitors do not consistently power off and stay off after inactivity

Post by SMG »

Tonytn wrote: Mon Mar 14, 2022 6:26 pm Any resolution for this? Just put a system together with LM20.3 and having this same issue. Nitro video card, using 1 HMDI and 1 DisplayPort. Will go to screensaver and the monitors will turn off but only for a few seconds, then they turn back but still in screen saver / lock mode. Very odd.
The interactions with monitors is often a function of the GPU and its drivers. You are not using Intel so you should create a new topic for your issue.
Image
A woman typing on a laptop with LM20.3 Cinnamon.
gardenlist

Re: Monitors do not consistently power off and stay off after inactivity

Post by gardenlist »

This might be fixed now. I got in the habit of manually turning off my monitors, so I hadn't been trying to reproduce it for a while, but I got out of that habit recently and they seem to be powering off so far. Upgrading to Una might have helped.
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