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Using display off button results in wierd display issues #18

Open GoogleCodeExporter opened 9 years ago

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
What steps will reproduce the problem?
1.I have the latest Nvidia driver installed (195.36.24). I am sure that 
this issue only started after the installation of that driver.
2.I lock my laptop (Ctrl-Alt-L) then press the display off button. 
3.Then try and log in again, e.g. move mouse to get the screensaver 
password dialog.

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?

I expect to be able to see the screen properly. 

Instead when trying to log back in the display is very dull, with one 
side slightly brighter. I can log in (i.e. no freeze), but the display 
doesn't go back to the set brightness. Even on the desktop it's mostly 
dull with one side slightly brigher. 

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
I have a VPCF117HG. 
Using Lucid Lynx, with latest Nvidia driver installed. 

Please provide any additional information below.
I have tried this with desktop effects turned on and off. The result is 
the same.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by rakesh.m...@gmail.com on 19 May 2010 at 6:08

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
I'm not sure whether this is related or whether I should log a new issue. 

When I logout of my gnome desktop the log in screen shows for a brief second 
and 
then the display looks as though it switches off. The only way to get out of it 
is 
to shutdown the laptop. Though I must admit I haven't tried too much else.

Original comment by rakesh.m...@gmail.com on 19 May 2010 at 7:06

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
This issue should be somehow related to brightness control.
If I set brightness to 100% then I don't see the issue with display off. If I 
do set 
brightness to less then 100% --- then yes, I get this weird thing, like 
non-uniformly 
lit display after shut off / turn.
So I'm still pretty sure that the proposed way in the nearby topic to fix 
"backlight 
problems" isn't a fix actually. Using it still leads other things to work in a 
wrong 
way unfortunately.

Original comment by shand...@gmail.com on 21 May 2010 at 7:01

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
I've found that in the very short period of being able to see the screen, I can 
use the 
brightness shortcut keys to bring the display back up to normal brightness so I 
don't 
have to reboot. 

I also thought that when the screen blanks that it is completely off.. however 
if you 
look carefully you can actually see the windows and menu, but only just.

Original comment by rakesh.m...@gmail.com on 24 May 2010 at 6:04

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
The display off kills the backlight. If the screen is at full brightness, this 
is not 
an issue. If it's dimmed, no bueno. This might be an issue with nvidia-drivers.

Original comment by Jason.Donenfeld on 29 May 2010 at 2:45

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
This seems like the problem with DFP (the way drivers talk to it or whatever), 
it also 
explains why not everyone on Vaio F experiences this problem here.

Original comment by shand...@gmail.com on 29 May 2010 at 11:51

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
I bought a Sony VPCF117HG 2 days ago and I have lucid installed. This problem 
appears 
only when the laptop is running on batteries. Ive never tried the display off 
button 
when the laptop is running on batteries, but it occurs as soon as the display 
goes to 
sleep after the timer which is set in power manager. I did not try to reduce 
the 
brightness as i couldn't get the brightness keys to work yet. I think we should 
test 
if this weird behavior occurs before installing the Nvidia drivers cuz it might 
be 
caused by the drivers like what "Jason.Donenfeld" said. Also, another 
possibility is 
the xorg.conf file we created to get the screen to work. Personally, i think 
the 
xorg.conf is the issue.

Original comment by amras...@gmail.com on 29 May 2010 at 4:31

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Im sorry for double posting but seems like you can restore the screen by 
setting it 
to full brightness and loging out. you can set it to stay at 100% brightness 
when 
using the AC adapter and all you have to do is plug the AC adapter and log out. 
I 
noticed 1 more thing, when I remove the AC adapter, i get a message that says 
the 
battery is critically low although its fully charged. Also, the screen flickers 
slightly but its barely noticeable. This might mean there is something wrong 
with 
power management or acpi or probably the refresh rate is going lower than 50 
hz. I 
will dedicate 2 hours tomorrow to try to fix this problem. Im waiting for any 
suggestions I can try tomorrow or any fix if you got this working. I really 
appreciate the work you guys are doing on this project. Thanks a lot

Original comment by amras...@gmail.com on 29 May 2010 at 5:06

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
I tried 3 different approaches but none worked. 

1. I used a script to control brightness through dbus ---> no use.
2. I used different settings in my xorg.conf file ---> no use.
3. I found an nvidia backlight driver for linux as an attachment of the first 
post here:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=143025

After using some1's edit for the driver to compile under kernel 2.6.34 and 
adding the
GT 330M pci device id, the brightness control worked. However the problem is 
still
there. you will understand what am talking about after reading the thread and 
the
posts. The code of that driver which i edited is attached. To use it, just 
overwrite
the same file in that driver, then compile it by runing "sudo dkms add build 
install
-m nvidia_bl -v 0.52" in the directory of the driver's source using terminal. 
As a
final note, to use this driver you should comment the line
Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1" in the xorg.conf 
file.

After compiling, load it with the following command: "sudo modprobe-d nvidia-bl"

Usage: use in terminal as it has a command line interface only:
Full brightness:
echo 127 | sudo tee -a /sys/class/backlight/nvidia_backlight/brightness
For a lower brightness change the 127 to anything lower. Do not try 0 unless 
you want
to turn off the backlight. For me the display off button problem occurs when 
using a
brightness of 109 or lower which is 109/127 * 100 = 85% or less of the 
backlight.

Original comment by amras...@gmail.com on 30 May 2010 at 2:00

Attachments:

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Same issues on VPC126FM.  

After turning the display on (when it goes off automatically due to power 
settings, or when it goes off because I press the "Display Off" button), there 
is a chance that when I re-activate it, the screen is BARELY visible for half a 
second, and then goes fully blank.

Original comment by earthme...@gmail.com on 21 Oct 2010 at 7:46

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Same issues on VPC126FM.  

After turning the display on (when it goes off automatically due to power 
settings, or when it goes off because I press the "Display Off" button), there 
is a chance that when I re-activate it, the screen is BARELY visible for half a 
second, and then goes fully blank.

Original comment by earthme...@gmail.com on 21 Oct 2010 at 7:46

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
I have the same problem with my VPCF137HG. Using opensuse 11.4 - kernel 2.6.37 
. 

Have found out that both the display problems and brightness control issues 
doesn't occur with nouveau driver. It all works out of the box! . 

Problem only occurs if we install the proprietary NVIDIA driver (and the 
EnableBrightnessControl=1 in xorg,conf). Hope they will fix the brightness 
issue with the next "few" driver releases.

In the meantime, try using the nouveau driver.

Original comment by kevinjos...@gmail.com on 16 Mar 2011 at 9:13

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Anyone found a fix for this yet? Currently, upgraded to version 295.49 and it 
still produces the problem when you come back from DISPLAY OFF.

Original comment by hagen....@gmail.com on 5 May 2012 at 10:51

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Finally found the fix!. I'm using Archlinux. Installed nvidiabl 0.73-3 from AUR 
. Removed EnableBrightnessControl Option from xorg.conf. Blacklisted the acpi 
module "video" .Restarted And voila! No more problems. Even the Gnome and KDE 
keyboard shortcuts for brightness works with OSD. The only problem is that the 
screen backlight flicker when in really low values of backlight... I can live 
with that ^_^'

Original comment by kevinjos...@gmail.com on 20 May 2012 at 2:00

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Anyone know how to implement Kevin's comment (#13) on Ubuntu 12.04?

Thanks

Original comment by rakesh.m...@gmail.com on 25 Jun 2012 at 7:24

GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
[deleted comment]
GoogleCodeExporter commented 9 years ago 
Hi Rakesh, 
Since you are using ubuntu, which is a debian based distribution, you can 
download

https://github.com/downloads/guillaumezin/nvidiabl/nvidiabl-dkms_0.74_all.deb

and then install it by executing 

sudo dpkg -i nvidiabl-dkms_0.74_all.deb

Then to load the module, do

sudo modprobe nvidiabl 

You can check the output of

dmesg

and see if it is loading correctly, you must see something similar to

nvidiabl: loading driver version 0.74
[    9.557728] nvidiabl: Sony Corporation - VPCF1 model detected in DMI tables
[    9.557744] nvidiabl: Supported Nvidia graphics adapter 10de:0df0:104d:907a 
detected
[    9.557849] nvidiabl: backup register value 0x40020f58
[    9.557851] nvidiabl: autodetecting maximum
[    9.557854] nvidiabl: using value 0x20f58 as maximum
[    9.557856] nvidiabl: autodetecting off
[    9.557858] nvidiabl: using value 0x0 as off
[    9.557860] nvidiabl: autodetecting minimum
[    9.557862] nvidiabl: minimum is 5% of maximum
[    9.557865] nvidiabl: using value 0x63 as minimum

If it is working so far, the next step will be to check whether it correctly 
does backlight manipulation. To do that go to  
/sys/class/backlight/nvidia_backlight  (For me it was here, I'm not sure what 
it is on Ubuntu)

cd /sys/class/backlight/nvidia_backlight

cat max_brightness

The output of the above command gives you the maximum value of the brightness. 
For me, it was 127 . So to check whether it was working , I executed the 
command 

echo 100 | sudo tee brightness

The display should dim.
Check if the display problem still exist by pressing "DISPLAY OFF" Button.but 
BEFORE that type but do not press enter, so that you can revert back to maximum 
backlight if in case it doesn't work...

echo 127 | sudo tee brightness 

If you get this much working, the next steps will be to disable nvidia drivers 
backlight code - By removing EnableBrightnessControl from xorg.conf. And then, 
if it doesn't autoload when you reboot, you need to add a line containing 
nvidiabl in /etc/modules. Well, theoretically, it should work (y) . If not, 
post with your problem and I'll try to help :)

K

Original comment by kevinjos...@gmail.com on 1 Jul 2012 at 2:43