#1 2017-11-26 21:58:47

doicomehereoften1

Member

Registered: 2017-11-26

Posts: 8

[Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

I'm on Helium and didn't have this problem until today.

The chain of events is below, so it could be any of these things, or a combination. However I wonder if the culprit might be something going on with screen saver and xfce4-power-manager?

Yesterday:
1. ran a dist-upgrade, did not use the locker, but did reboot following the upgrade.
2. installed the non-free nvidia-driver because I was getting screen tearing with nouveau. Did a reboot following this, did not use the locker.
3. ran some tests with video to see if the tearing went away, was satisfied and did a full shutdown. still did not use the locker.

Today:
1. booted up and did some work, still did not use the locker.
2. did a shutdown and finally got the laptop on my workbench to upgrade the RAM.
3. booted up and had no issues. CLOSED THE LID.
4. landed at a coffee shop to do some more work, and when I attempted to wake the machine I got a black screen, but the power was on. I was able to switch TTY's, install elinks, and start googling.

When I lock the screen it is totally unresponsive to text input. Even blindly enterring my password will not unlock the screen. However, I've discovered through trial and error that if I switch to another TTY, and back it will display a "Session Locked" message, and after that disappears I get a black screen. At this point I can blindly enter my password and get back into my session.

I checked out the getting started thread on the screenlocker, but didn't see anything useful there.

I've seen some rather old issues and discussions about light-locker and screensavers, but was not sure if they are still relevant.

I haven't made any modifications to lightdm, light-locker, or the default applications. Except for additional things I've installed to do my work and what's listed above, this is a vanilla Helium install. I did try a couple different settings under the "Security" tab in xfce4-power-manager, but none of them changed anything so it has been set back to the defaults.

Any ideas on this?

Last edited by doicomehereoften1 (2017-11-26 22:36:50)

Head_on_a_Stick

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From: London

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 9,078

Website

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

installed the non-free nvidia-driver

Does changing back fix your problem?

Compton (the compositor) can be used to control tearing instead using these flags:

compton --backend glx --vsync opengl-mswc &

The options can be set by copying /usr/bin/bl-compositor to ~/bin/ and editing the latter file.

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doicomehereoften1

Member

Registered: 2017-11-26

Posts: 8

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

I'll give it a shot right now.

doicomehereoften1

Member

Registered: 2017-11-26

Posts: 8

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

Ok, that's weird. Can't believe that would have been it.

Going to give that compton config a shot now.

doicomehereoften1

Member

Registered: 2017-11-26

Posts: 8

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

And that compton config made the tearing all but invisible. I have to be looking for it to notice it now.

Two birds with one stone, thanks enormously for your help!

doicomehereoften1

Member

Registered: 2017-11-26

Posts: 8

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

Funny additional side effect of switching back to nouveau: powertop claims my battery is discharging at a full 4 Watts less than when the nvidia-driver was installed.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2015-09-29

Posts: 9,078

Website

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

^ Interesting  8)

The open-source driver does tend to be more reliable than the non-free version (at the expense of some performance and features) and apparently the Debian stretch version of xf86-video-nouveau is very good indeed.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2017-11-27 06:56:50)

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Para todos todo, para nosotros nada

cloverskull

Member

Registered: 2015-10-01

Posts: 348

Re: [Helium-dev][SOLVED] light-locker showing black screen, no greeter

Yes, interesting indeed. Hate to derail the thread here, but... considering I use bumblebee to switch between onboard intel and non-free nvidia, I wonder if I'm missing out on anything.