Hi, I have fedora35 installed on my desktop with a Radeon RX 570 driving three monitors, with the Cinnamon desktop, although it could be the other variation of Cinnamon that's available by default - I checked the Settings menu and can't find any way to determine which it is. I'd like all three monitors to turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity. What is the best way to do that? Simple question, but clearly not a simple answer.
I'm an old-school admin from a time when we had to build our own X11 config files. I just expect things to work now, so I haven't really kept up with the desktop, even though fedora and whatever graphical display it provides by default has been my primary desktop since before Windows XP.
Now, when I set the "turn off the screen when inactive for" option to 5m in the Power Management settings, I find that it takes far longer than five minutes for it to actually turn off the monitors, but then not only do they all immediately turn back on, but all of the windows on the middle monitor are shifted to the two left and right monitors. wtf? It's incredibly frustrating to have to reposition all windows back to their original location.
How do I troubleshoot this?
On Tue, 2022-02-08 at 21:43 -0500, Alex wrote:
Hi, I have fedora35 installed on my desktop with a Radeon RX 570 driving three monitors, with the Cinnamon desktop, although it could be the other variation of Cinnamon that's available by default - I checked the Settings menu and can't find any way to determine which it is. I'd like all three monitors to turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity. What is the best way to do that? Simple question, but clearly not a simple answer.
I'm an old-school admin from a time when we had to build our own X11 config files. I just expect things to work now, so I haven't really kept up with the desktop, even though fedora and whatever graphical display it provides by default has been my primary desktop since before Windows XP.
Now, when I set the "turn off the screen when inactive for" option to 5m in the Power Management settings, I find that it takes far longer than five minutes for it to actually turn off the monitors, but then not only do they all immediately turn back on, but all of the windows on the middle monitor are shifted to the two left and right monitors. wtf? It's incredibly frustrating to have to reposition all windows back to their original location.
How do I troubleshoot this?
...
Hi,
I suspect there are multiple issues you are experiencing, and some of them I have for a long time, totally unrelated to the desktop environment used and distribution.
I'm also experincing issues with display power management not working, I don't know which one it is really and do these match with the issues you are experiencing, but one thing is common and that is AMD graphics card (here: AMD Radeon RX 550 / 550 Series (polaris12)) and there are some known issues with them waking up displays[1][2] (at least what I found, could be unrelated, I gave up when I saw for how long they exist).
I mostly use other desktop environments (Gnome and KDE) both with wayland session, and they had their own issues when they lose a display (output) things were crashing ..., but that is now improved. But still I see issues with applications move to other display after display goes to sleep and returns. (also experienced same issues with XFCE).
Not helpful really, but just my rant about it since I have those issues for some time now.
Regards, Branko
[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1840 [2] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/662
On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 21:43:27 -0500 Alex mysqlstudent@gmail.com wrote:
Hi, I have fedora35 installed on my desktop with a Radeon RX 570 driving three monitors, with the Cinnamon desktop, although it could be the other variation of Cinnamon that's available by default - I checked the Settings menu and can't find any way to determine which it is. I'd like all three monitors to turn off after 15 minutes of inactivity. What is the best way to do that? Simple question, but clearly not a simple answer.
Now, when I set the "turn off the screen when inactive for" option to 5m in the Power Management settings, I find that it takes far longer than five minutes for it to actually turn off the monitors, but then not only do they all immediately turn back on, but all of the windows on the middle monitor are shifted to the two left and right monitors. wtf? It's incredibly frustrating to have to reposition all windows back to their original location.
How do I troubleshoot this?
Haven't any familiarity with multiple monitors, so no direct experience. But, here are some suggestions.
1. Ensure that there is only a single screensaver operational.
2. Have you set the screen to blank at the same time as the power off? It is possible that there is an interaction or dependency between them.
3. Set the screen blank and power off to 1 minute for testing purposes.
4. Try different combinations of the three monitors. Switch the center monitor to the right or left. The symptoms you describe sound like it is slower to respond to the power up, and the system decides it is unavailable, and pushes its windows to the other two monitors. This will confirm if that is the case. Or, if it is the video card output being tardy on one of its outputs.
5. Try different combinations of two of the monitors. Write down the monitors you use, where they are located, and their behavior on awakening.
6. Use each monitor individually, and see what its behavior is.
7. Look in the journal after each test, journalctl -r. Are there any messages that indicate why the problem monitor has a problem? Are there any messages from the power control module about problems?
8. There might be a way to tell the screensaver to put out extra messages (verbose or debug). Set that if you can.
On Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 09:43:27PM -0500, Alex wrote:
Hi, I have fedora35 installed on my desktop with a Radeon RX 570 driving three monitors, with the Cinnamon desktop, although it could be the other variation of Cinnamon that's available by default - I checked the Settings menu and can't find any way to determine which it is.
You're on X11?
To find your environment: env | egrep -i "xdg_curr|session_type"
"session_type" is important: wayland or X11?
If that does not help, I'd try loginctl
then loginctl show-session <number received via "loginctl"> -p Type
[ ... ]
Now, when I set the "turn off the screen when inactive for" option to 5m in the Power Management settings, I find that it takes far longer than five minutes for it to actually turn off the monitors, but then not only do they all immediately turn back on, but all of the windows on the middle monitor are shifted to the two left and right monitors. wtf? It's incredibly frustrating to have to reposition all windows back to their original location.
There might be other settings that clash with "Power Management settings" (no idea what you mean by that: probably some GUI where you set that?)
On X11 I'd try xset q
and then have a look at the "Standby", "Suspend", and "Off"(?) settings.
Also: As Stan already wrote, I'd look at journalctrl output when things go wrong. I'd try: sudo journalctl -f -n 5000
If you're on wayland I cannot help. Sorry about that.
How do I troubleshoot this?
I running X11. And so far I tried to more or less rigorously avoid X settings via some GUI. I run xrandr to attach external monitors to my computer - so if you're on X11, be welcome to come back before I go into details about that.
Wolfgang
Hi,
I have fedora35 installed on my desktop with a Radeon RX 570 driving three monitors, with the Cinnamon desktop, although it could be the other variation of Cinnamon that's available by default - I checked the Settings menu and can't find any way to determine which it is.
You're on X11?
To find your environment: env | egrep -i "xdg_curr|session_type"
"session_type" is important: wayland or X11?
Much to my surprise, I'm running X11 - I thought for sure everything had been replaced by Wayland.
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=X-Cinnamon
There might be other settings that clash with "Power Management settings" (no idea what you mean by that: probably some GUI where you set that?)
On X11 I'd try xset q
and then have a look at the "Standby", "Suspend", and "Off"(?) settings.
$ xset q ...
DPMS (Energy Star): Standby: 0 Suspend: 0 Off: 0 DPMS is Enabled Monitor is On
Also: As Stan already wrote, I'd look at journalctrl output when things go wrong. I'd try: sudo journalctl -f -n 5000
Yes, Stan had some great advice overall that I'll also try.
I have like a hundred different windows open, so I really don't want to experiment until I have an opportunity to reboot this weekend, but I'd love any additional ideas you might have.
I also may occasionally have videos running in a browser, or perhaps paused - could it be something that simple that's causing the screensaver to work properly?
Much to my surprise, I'm running X11 - I thought for sure everything had been replaced by Wayland.
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=X-Cinnamon
I don't know if Wayland works with anything except Gnome and KDE as yet.
I thought Cinnamon was a window manager? Can I get the same/similar functionality with another window manager using Wayland/GNOME?
What are my choices and how do I install them?
-
Alex -
Branko Grubić -
Joe Zeff -
stan -
Wolfgang Pfeiffer