Fullscreen GLUT app, display blanks after approx 30 minutes

erick.brown · 04-06-2010, 11:12 AM

I'm running a fullscreen display app which shows a 3D scene in OpenGL. The app runs continiously throughout the day unattended.

Here's the sequence of events in how it's loaded:

1) The computer is turned on, and boots into F11 (x86_64)
2) A non-privileged user is automatically logged on
3) The gnome startup applications list contains an entry for a loading script
4) The loading script waits for the network interface (eth0) to ccome up, then starts the display program

This all works just fine, except that about 30 minutes after the computer is turned on and the app starts running, the screen blanks out. Attaching a mouse to the system and moving it around a bit brings the screen back to life. Likewise, SSHing into the machine and killing / restarting the application works as well. Once either of these fixes has been performed, it runs flawlessly for the rest of the day.

I have turned off the screen saver, and set the power settings for monitor shutdown to 'never'.

Any other thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

backblaze.pl · 04-06-2010, 08:13 PM

Code:

xset q

Then:

Code:

xset -dpms
xset q

and compare output with first one. My system shows:

Code:

DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 1200    Off: 1800
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

and after xset -dpms

Code:

DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 1200    Off: 1800
  DPMS is Disabled

Or simply disable Option "DPMS" in your Monitor section in xorg.conf. Or have your app developer disable DPMS on startup and execute 'killall xscreensaver' - just in case.

erick.brown · 04-08-2010, 01:20 PM

Thanks for the info. Looks like we're on the right track. I'm seeing something kind of interesting now though:

xset -dpms works like a charm, but it appears that there's something else turning it back on. If I check back in after a while (I haven't taken specific measurements yet - 20 minutes maybe?) it seems to have turned itself back on. I edited the xorg.conf to disable DPMS permanently.

Any thoughts on what might be the cause?