On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 10:16:23AM +0100, Antoine Jacoutot wrote: >> I've been having an intermittent problem for some months with my X11 >> screen blanking (i.e. going totally black -- however, the mouse still >> displays and changes shape depending on what it's hovering over!). >> Switching to Ctrl+Alt+F1 and back fixes it, though once in a while causes >> X11 to crash. Sometimes this doesn't happen for a few days, at which point >> I think I've fixed it. Sometimes it happens several times in 10 minutes. >> There is no obvious trigger for it: I might have a web browser loaded or >> not, or ffmpeg running or not etc etc. > I have been seeing the same. I can usually reproduce it by having lots of > chromium tabs with heavy web sites opened (like clicking on 5 or 6 links > from google news).
A follow-up to this, since the problem still occurs. I've been playing around with not running Chrome or Iridium, and I think Antoine has put his finger on the nub of the problem: if I don't use Chrome or Iridium, the problem never manifests. At some point after using them, I then have intermittent blanking, which sometimes needs a console switch to fix, and perhaps 1/3 of the time a console fix kills X. I don't know what Chrome or Iridium are doing that triggers this problem, but nothing else I run seems to trigger it. Laurie
