Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
Absolute Linux beginner here...
Using Ubuntu 10.10 (32-bit).
Every x minutes my screen blanks out for about five-ten seconds. This happens when I am using the computer, so I do not think that it is the screen saver. I had the same problem with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
My BIOS has no "green" settings (computer is ten years old!).
Is this a bug or a setting in Ubuntu? I've looked everywhere...
Ubuntu Member
Perhaps you need to provide us with more detailsOriginally Posted by tb75252
When exactly this is happening? are you doing something specifically? are you listening to Music? watch a Movie? typing? chatting? browsing?
I can't tell what exactly the problem is but most likely it's either your screen or something wrong could be with the driver. We need more details so that we could find a solution together
Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
This behavior appears to be happening no matter what I do. Yesterday evening I was browsing the Internet and it happened intermittently. But it also happens intermittently when I am using OpenOffice or Thunderbird. It does not do it immediately after I start Ubuntu. It happens after about 15 minutes or so of usage. (I have not really timed it.)Perhaps you need to provide us with more details
When exactly this is happening? are you doing something specifically? are you listening to Music? watch a Movie? typing? chatting? browsing?
I can't tell what exactly the problem is but most likely it's either your screen or something wrong could be with the driver. We need more details so that we could find a solution together
So, after an x amount of minutes, the screen freeze and dims to a light gray color, Underneath I can still see text and images of the application that I am using at the moment but for a five- and sometimes ten-second moment I cannot do anything although I can move the mouse on the screen. The mouse moves but the icons etc are not responsive; also, typing does not output anything to the screen.
My video card is EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 6200. Going into System -> Administration I can see that there is a driver installed called NVIDIA X-Server Settings. I do not know if this driver is the correct one for my card and how to tweak that driver. It installed itself when I loaded Ubuntu, I guess.
My display is HannStar HNC iX191.
I should also add that when I was using Microsoft Windows XP SP3 none of this was happening.
Ubuntu Member
It happened with me when one of the programs stops responding and I do nothing but wait for it to back to normal.
You mean it (mouse) does move while the screen is gray, right?The mouse moves but the icons etc are not responsive; also, typing does not output anything to the screen.
Or you can't do anything even after the screen is back to normal?
I'm not very sure about this ... you may check the forum as there are lots of threads about Nvidia.My video card is EVGA NVIDIA GeForce 6200. Going into System -> Administration I can see that there is a driver installed called NVIDIA X-Server Settings. I do not know if this driver is the correct one for my card and how to tweak that driver. It installed itself when I loaded Ubuntu, I guess.
Yes, I thought your screen turns to BLACK and then back to normal.I should also add that when I was using Microsoft Windows XP SP3 none of this was happening.
Do you still have XP? can you double check? just to make sure everything is fine with your monitor.
Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
Yes, the mouse moves while the light of the screen dims and the screen takes a grayish tint. After this screen dimming etc. is over, I can resume normal operations with mouse and keyboard.
I temporarily reinstalled my old Windows XP hard drive to make sure that everything was ok. The screen does not dim or have a grayish tint with Windows XP! It's got to be some setting or incompatibility within Ubuntu.
I'll poke around the forums to see what kind of problems people have with the Nvidia Linux driver and if somebody has found a way around it.
Ubuntu Member
It happens with me but not frequently, only when one of the programs stops responding.
Please, would you list your machine's specifications and how did you install Ubuntu, partitions, etc?
Thank you!
Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
The motherboard is a Tyan Trinity 400 (S1854). The microprocessor is a Pentium III 1100 MHz. The computer has 1.5 GB of Crucial ram (that's the max for this PC!). The HD is an 80 GB Western Digital EIDE. The video card is EVGA Nvidia GeFoce 6200 (AGP bus type, 512MB DDR). The LCD is an HNC iX-191APB. I think I've mentioned the most important specs...
I've installed Ubuntu using the whole HD and accepted the default installation for partitions. (I do not know how to check what partitions I have but I can assure you that it is the default suggested by Ubuntu.) There is no other OS installed on the HD.
Caffeine Fueled
It sounds like a process is using all you resources, you can check resource usage with System->Administration->System Monitor, be aware that the System Monitor creates it's own overhead, so you won't get a truly accurate reading, but it should be good enough to help diagnose the problem. To get a more accurate reading of resource usage, you can open an Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:
Code:top
Gee! These Aren't Roasted!
I am showing below the output of command "top". Being an inexperienced computer user, I am not quite sure what it is telling me...
tb@Tb-caabc42553dc:~$ top
top - 14:00:44 up 2:24, 2 users, load average: 1.41, 1.42, 1.43
Tasks: 126 total, 1 running, 125 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 18.4%us, 4.9%sy, 0.0%ni, 76.7%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1543336k total, 802008k used, 741328k free, 48372k buffers
Swap: 3227644k total, 0k used, 3227644k free, 302352k cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1456 tb 20 0 204m 149m 19m S 16.3 9.9 21:04.83 plugin-containe
859 root 20 0 125m 54m 12m S 5.9 3.6 9:38.21 Xorg
1408 tb 20 0 452m 130m 29m S 5.5 8.7 19:39.24 firefox-bin
1629 tb 20 0 88040 12m 9.8m S 2.9 0.8 0:02.13 gnome-terminal
1179 tb 20 0 72500 43m 10m S 1.6 2.9 5:01.18 compiz
1652 tb 20 0 2620 1116 824 R 0.7 0.1 0:00.22 top
1 root 20 0 2892 1648 1180 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.64 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.19 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.90 events/0
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 async/mgr
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pm
12 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 sync_supers
13 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 bdi-default
14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0
15 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.13 kblockd/0
16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
17 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_hotplug
19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_aux
20 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.64 ata_sff/0
21 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd
22 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.01 kseriod
23 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kmmcd
25 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khungtaskd
26 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0
27 root 25 5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksmd
28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 aio/0
29 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ecryptfs-kthrea
30 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 crypto/0
37 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kstriped
38 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kmpathd/0
39 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kmpath_handlerd
40 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ksnapd
41 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kondemand/0
42 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kconservative/0
177 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 scsi_eh_0
179 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.42 scsi_eh_1
198 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.29 jbd2/sda1-8
199 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 ext4-dio-unwrit
261 root 20 0 2392 604 460 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.15 upstart-udev-br
265 root 16 -4 2636 968 340 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.16 udevd
403 root 18 -2 2632 872 248 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 udevd
408 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kpsmoused
415 root 18 -2 2632 876 252 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 udevd
532 syslog 20 0 33572 1164 972 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.20 rsyslogd
567 messageb 20 0 3448 1684 856 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.72 dbus-daemon
590 avahi 20 0 3012 1320 1088 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.08 avahi-daemon
592 root 20 0 19128 3968 3332 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.13 NetworkManager
594 avahi 20 0 3012 436 216 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 avahi-daemon
603 root 20 0 4432 2480 2004 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.07 modem-manager
627 root 20 0 4900 1504 1244 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 wpa_supplicant
629 root 20 0 2300 972 848 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 dhclient
632 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kgameportd
702 root 20 0 1856 548 468 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 getty
707 root 20 0 1856 552 472 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 getty
715 root 20 0 1856 548 472 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 getty
717 root 20 0 1856 548 472 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 getty
720 root 20 0 1856 544 472 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 getty
723 root 20 0 2116 892 532 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 acpid
726 root 20 0 2460 872 688 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.01 cron
727 daemon 20 0 2316 352 224 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 atd
741 root 20 0 19544 3192 2672 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.07 gdm-binary
763 root 20 0 7176 2660 1732 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.05 cupsd
767 root 20 0 19984 2956 2348 S 0.0 0.2 0:00.16 console-kit-dae
First Cup of Ubuntu
I am having exactly the same problem and my computer is not old (Its a white box with an Intel D975XBX2 system board, Intel Core2Duo E 6400 2.1Ghz and a ton of DDR2 RAM). The problem is most noticeable when I am in OpenOffice and retrieve an odt document; but it happens with other programs as well. System monitor does not indicate heavy resource use.
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