Screensavers and power management

[Alex]

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?

[Branko Grubić]

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

[stan]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 21:43:27 -0500
Alex <mysqlstudent(a)gmail.com&gt; 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.

[Wolfgang Pfeiffer]

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

[Alex]

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?

[Joe Zeff]

On 2/10/22 16:50, Alex wrote:
>  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.

[Alex]

>  > 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?