[Fwd: wscons: once screen blanker is enabled, can not be disabled]

From: Nick Holland <nick(at)holland-consulting.net>
Date: Wed Feb 26 2003 - 19:17:16 EST

Sent from sendbug, but never came through on bugs@... -------- Original Message --------
From: nick@openbsd.org
Subject: wscons: once screen blanker is enabled, can not be disabled To: gnats@openbsd.org
CC: nick@holland-consulting.net

>Submitter-Id: net
net
>Confidential: no
>Synopsis: Once wscons screen blanker is enabled, it can not be disabled
>Severity: non-critical
        

	System      : OpenBSD 3.3
	Architecture: OpenBSD.i386
	Machine     : i386

>Description:

The wscons screen blanker can be enabled by turning either the wscons variables display.kbdact or display.outact to "on". Unfortunately, once this is done, there is no way to turn both of them off again, disabling the blanker. Note that display.msact shows the same behavior, though that variable does not work anyway (separate problem).

wsconsctl -w will show the variable being turned off, but doing a wsconsctl -a will demonstrate that at least one of the two variables is still on.

>How-To-Repeat:

note: some of the not-important (here) output of wsconsctl has been edited out for size and clarity.

Script started on Mon Feb 24 20:16:08 2003 # wsconsctl -a
...

display.screen_off=600000
display.vblank=off
display.kbdact=off
display.msact=off
display.outact=off

• off, as expected.

# wsconsctl -w display.kbdact=on
display.kbdact -> on

# wsconsctl -a
...

display.screen_on=250
display.screen_off=600000
display.vblank=off
display.kbdact=on
display.msact=off
display.outact=off

• display.kbdact on, as expected.

# wsconsctl -w display.kbdact=off
display.kbdact -> off

# wsconsctl -a
...

display.screen_on=250
display.screen_off=600000
display.vblank=off
display.kbdact=on
display.msact=off
display.outact=off

• display.kbdact is still on!

# wsconsctl -w display.outact=on
display.outact -> on

# wsconsctl -w display.kbdact=off
display.kbdact -> off

# wsconsctl -a
...

display.screen_on=250
display.screen_off=600000
display.vblank=off
display.kbdact=off
display.msact=off
display.outact=on

• As long as one of the *act variables is "on", you can set the others as you wish.

# wsconsctl -w display.outact=off
display.outact -> off

# wsconsctl -a
...

display.screen_on=250
display.screen_off=600000
display.vblank=off
display.kbdact=off
display.msact=off
display.outact=on

• but again, you can't turn all of them "off" to disable the blanker.

Problem has been verified on a number of different systems, including the Dell laptop (dmesg below), Compaq Deskpro 4000N, and other systems.

>Fix:

only known user workaround at this point is to set the display.screen_off to a very large value or reboot the machine.

dmesg of ONE machine demonstrating this problem:

OpenBSD 3.3-beta (GENERIC) #0: Mon Feb 24 13:06:32 EST 2003

    root@CPi.in.nickh.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC cpu0: Intel Celeron (Mendocino) ("GenuineIntel" 686-class, 256KB L2 cache) 397 MHz cpu0: FPU,V86,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SYS,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR real mem = 267939840 (261660K)
avail mem = 242601984 (236916K)
using 3296 buffers containing 13500416 bytes (13184K) of memory mainbus0 (root)
bios0 at mainbus0: AT/286+(00) BIOS, date 08/03/00, BIOS32 rev. 0 @ 0xffe90 apm0 at bios0: Power Management spec V1.2 apm0: battery life expectancy 100%
apm0: AC on, battery charge high, estimated 5:19 hours pcibios0 at bios0: rev. 2.1 @ 0xf0000/0x10000

pcibios0: PCI IRQ Routing Table rev. 1.0 @ 0xfbd80/112 (5 entries)
pcibios0: PCI Interrupt Router at 000:07:0 ("Intel 82371 PCI-ISA and IDE" rev 0x00)
pcibios0: PCI bus #3 is the last bus

bios0: ROM list: 0xc0000/0xe000 0xce000/0x800 0xce800/0x800 0xcf000/0x800 0xcf800/0x800 pci0 at mainbus0 bus 0: configuration mode 1 (no bios) pchb0 at pci0 dev 0 function 0 "Intel 82443BX PCI-AGP" rev 0x03 ppb0 at pci0 dev 1 function 0 "Intel 82443BX AGP" rev 0x03 pci1 at ppb0 bus 1
vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 "Neomagic Magicgraph NM2360" rev 0x00 wsdisplay0 at vga1: console (80x25, vt100 emulation) wsdisplay0: screen 1-5 added (80x25, vt100 emulation) neo0 at pci1 dev 0 function 1 "Neomagic MagicMedia 256ZX" rev 0x00: irq 5 ac97: codec id not read
audio0 at neo0
cbb0 at pci0 dev 3 function 0 "Texas Instruments PCI1225 PCI-CardBus" rev 0x01: irq 11 cbb1 at pci0 dev 3 function 1 "Texas Instruments PCI1225 PCI-CardBus" rev 0x01: irq 11 pcib0 at pci0 dev 7 function 0 "Intel 82371AB PIIX4 ISA" rev 0x02 pciide0 at pci0 dev 7 function 1 "Intel 82371AB IDE" rev 0x01: DMA, channel 0 wired to compatibility, channel 1 wired to compatibility wd0 at pciide0 channel 0 drive 0: <IC25N030ATCS04-0> wd0: 16-sector PIO, LBA, 28615MB, 16383 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 58605120 sectors wd0(pciide0:0:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 atapiscsi0 at pciide0 channel 1 drive 0
scsibus0 at atapiscsi0: 2 targets
cd0 at scsibus0 targ 0 lun 0: <SAMSUNG, CD-ROM SN-124, S004> SCSI0 5/cdrom removable cd0(pciide0:1:0): using PIO mode 4, Ultra-DMA mode 2 uhci0 at pci0 dev 7 function 2 "Intel 82371AB USB" rev 0x01: irq 11 usb0 at uhci0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0 at usb0
uhub0: vendor 0x0000 UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1 uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered "Intel 82371AB Power Mgmt" rev 0x02 at pci0 dev 7 function 3 not configured cardslot0 at cbb0 slot 0 flags 0
cardbus0 at cardslot0: bus 2 device 0 cacheline 0x8, lattimer 0x20 pcmcia0 at cardslot0
cardslot1 at cbb1 slot 1 flags 0
cardbus1 at cardslot1: bus 3 device 0 cacheline 0x8, lattimer 0x20 pcmcia1 at cardslot1
isa0 at pcib0
isadma0 at isa0
pckbc0 at isa0 port 0x60/5
pckbd0 at pckbc0 (kbd slot)
pckbc0: using irq 1 for kbd slot
wskbd0 at pckbd0: console keyboard, using wsdisplay0 pms0 at pckbc0 (aux slot)
pckbc0: using irq 12 for aux slot
wsmouse0 at pms0 mux 0
pcppi0 at isa0 port 0x61
midi0 at pcppi0: <PC speaker>
sysbeep0 at pcppi0
lpt0 at isa0 port 0x378/4 irq 7
npx0 at isa0 port 0xf0/16: using exception 16 pccom0 at isa0 port 0x3f8/8 irq 4: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo pccom1 at isa0 port 0x2f8/8 irq 3: ns16550a, 16 byte fifo fdc0 at isa0 port 0x3f0/6 irq 6 drq 2
biomask c840 netmask c840 ttymask d8c2
pctr: 686-class user-level performance counters enabled mtrr: Pentium Pro MTRR support
dkcsum: wd0 matched BIOS disk 80
root on wd0a
rootdev=0x0 rrootdev=0x300 rawdev=0x302
wi0 at pcmcia0 function 0 "WLAN, PRISM PCMCIA CARD, 37300P" port 0xa000/64 wi0: PRISM2.5 ISL3873, Firmware 1.1.0 (primary), 1.4.2 (station), address 00:0a:e9:00:31:44 Received on Wed Feb 26 19:21:29 2003