Random Screen Blank on startup all the Time.

[T. 'Nifty New Hat' Mitchell]

On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 02:02:48AM -0700, Christopher Stone wrote:
> 
> This option is already disabled and it happens to me anyway.  I think
> this is actually some kind of ACPI bug in the kernel itself.  I
> restarted X today, and again it happend.  3 monitor shutdowns about 20
> minutes apart.  After that, everything is back to normal.

Caution ACPI depends on BIOS based functions.  If there are ACPI BIOS
bugs it is unfair to point only at the kernel.

   http://www.acpi.info/presentations/ACPI_Overview.pdf
   http://www.acpi.info/

Since some ACPI BIOS bugs can be worked around by the OS you can file
a bug (bugzilla).  And yes to be fair the Linux side could have bugs as well.

Sadly Microsoft encourages hardware vendors to work around bugs in
vendor specific distribution disks, not fix them.  This means that
some fixes may only show up via Microsoft channels.

You can turn ACPI off in the BIOS.  You can turn it off in Linux via
grub options.  If you turn it off I would recommend that you turn it
off in both.

A number of vendors have BIOS updates to address ACPI bugs so
constantly check back with the vendor.  Be sure to use their help
search functions and search for ACPI bug and BIOS updates.  And give
feedback to the vendor that this is important to you any place you
can.  After a BIOS update be sure to follow vendor instructions with
care and reinitialize the configuration so random bits are not used 
as configuration states.

There are some multiprocessor issues with ACPI so if you are on
a SMP box and see any trouble that smells of ACPI then turn it
off as the first diagnostic step (off both in BIOS and Kernel/grub)

Laptop folks value this stuff...  communicate kindly and positively
with your hardware vendor for updates and support.


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