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I'm running Ubuntu 14.04 with xmonad on a relatively new retina MacBook Pro. During normal computing, my screen will turn black every once in a while. Moving the mouse, clicking, or pressing any key turns it back on.

I am running xscreensaver but there's nothing in the xscreensaver log file about the blackout event. In Xorg.0.log, I see:

[ 30821.541] (II) intel(0): switch to mode [email protected] on eDP1 using pipe 0, position (0, 0), rotation normal, reflection none

When I'm watching full-screen media in e.g. VLC, the screen does not do this. I think that running xset -dpms; xset dpms every minute also prevents the problem.

How do I prevent this from happening in a way that doesn't interfere with normal xscreensaver behavior?

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  • Screen blanking and screensavers can be set up seperately, however I have no idea how to do this with xmonad.
    – s3lph
    Jul 4, 2015 at 12:14
  • The screen blanking is occurring regardless of keyboard/mouse input, which shouldn't be correct behavior under any setting.
    – Espressofa
    Jul 4, 2015 at 16:00

3 Answers 3

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I just researched Apple to find out many people have a problem with this particular screen https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4441040

you could try to replace the current display manager like this:

press Ctrl+Alt+F2 now login and type:

sudo service lightdm stop 
sudo apt-get remove lightdm
sudo apt-get install gdm
sudo service gdm start #or sudo reboot

and yes Gnome all the way please post your results.

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I have had the exact same problem as you. I found that xmonad was buggy, so I recommend that you save your important files and install Ubuntu GNOME. It uses less possessing power aswell, so win win.

Sorry that you are just finding this out now.

(Lubuntu will also work, but I had a high-performance system so I went with Ubuntu)

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  • Does xmonad have an official bug tracker that you can link to? Also, by saying that you had the 'exact same problem' - are you also saying that you were running the same equipment? Or did you have the same glitches on different equpment, but also with xmonad? Specificity will help improve your answer.
    – Clayton
    Jul 14, 2015 at 6:21
  • Using GNOME, or any other desktop environment, is not an option.
    – Espressofa
    Jul 14, 2015 at 13:10
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I know this is an old post but I just learned a way to get the screen back when it goes black. It works consistently for me at least.

Press CRTL+ALT+L to lock your screen (or SUPER+L)

Let the screen sit for a few seconds. This should cause your screen saver to kick in and in my case I have that set to BLACK so the screen goes totally black and turns off.

At this point, any mouse or key action should kick your screen back on.

I discovered this by accident after starting a long running command and having the screen go black. I wasn't about to reboot so I just sat there until my screen saver kicked on by itself then came back as soon as I hit the shift key. I have tried this a couple times since and it has worked every time for me.

Not really a solution, but a work around to get the screen back.

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