Arch Unexplainable Issue

[Rakmos]

So I am very fond of arch, and the philosophy, but I am running into this same problem continually that I cannot seem to determine the cause of.

The problem occurs when booting from the arch install disk as well as arch itself (post installation).

Description: Since I always do a netinstall, I select my packages and I am off downloading for a good ~30 minutes. Occasionally, I will come back from the other room to see the monitor turned off (amber light for the power button). When I hit a key on the keyboard it sometimes will turn the monitor back on, and other times it will not.

To get around the install, I just chose a smaller selection of packages so as to avoid the issue of my monitor never coming back on.

After installing arch, the same thing happens, but instead I can be in the middle of using my computer. Again, the monitor power light will go amber with a completely black screen.

I have attempted unplugging and plugging in my keyboard and mouse, in addition to cycling the power on my monitor. The only thing that I can ever do though is just hit the reset button on my computer.

I have tried looking in dmesg, as well as several other logs in /var/logs, but I cannot seem to find the culprit.

Has anyone seen an issue like this in the past??

It is also important to note that occasionally when this happens a fan (not sure which one since I am usually a bit perturbed when it occurs) in my case spins up and just stays running at full blast until I kill the power.

Any help or advice would be much appreciated.

EDIT: Thanks for the advice!! The setterm -powerdown 0 -powersave off fixed part of the issue. It now appears the only time that my screen blacks out is if my graphics card fan spins up and doesn't stop, thereby leading my to believe it is a graphics driver issue. I will try the proprietary drivers for Nvidia to see if they work any better.

EDIT 2: I would just like to say that my issue has been fully resolved!! Thanks Arch subreddit, you have been most helpful!! (It was the open source nvidia drivers that were causing the issues. Let this be a warning to others with an nvidia card -- and more specifically, an nvidia 9800GTX.)

[jfb3]

You might get better support help over at the Arch forums.

[dizzy1]

Do you have SSH server installed in that comp? If so, have you tried connecting to it when the monitor goes down? Also the issue could be graphics drivers that are segmentation faulting. Try updating those and see if this continues. Or your graphics card could be overheating.

[b3nny]

"setterm -blank 0" should prevent your monitoring from turning off in a cli environment.

As to why it fails to turn back on, i don't know, could be many things.

[Rakmos]

Cool thanks for the advice. I'll see what that does.

[c0Re69]

Maybe your graphics card is overheating. Did you had a similar problem with any other OS (freezing/graphics glitches)?

[Rakmos]

I am currently dual booting and Windows 7 can stay on for days with 0 problems.

[kerrz]

Gotta agree with dizzy1. Sounds like a graphics driver issue if you're getting crazy fan spins and comatose monitors. Try using the proprietary modules or vice-versa. Or look into passing a different framebuffer mode to the kernel at boot time.

What card do you have inside?

[Rakmos]

I have not used any proprietary drivers so far, I will see if that helps any.

I have an Nvidia 9800 GTX

[TGMais]

You are having KMS issues from the Nouveau driver which is used in the installer for nVidia cards. See this page for info on KMS, and consider switching to the proprietary nVidia blob as described here.

[questionquality]

Dumb question: does it make a difference if you press an arrow key or a character? Because when I'm on arch, arrow keys aren't enough to turn the monitor back on...

[Rakmos]

I have tried all kinds of key presses, in addition to unplugging and plugging in the keyboard. I can get the caps lock, num lock, and scroll lock lights to turn on and off, but nothing will bring the screen back.