Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 18255
APM problem w/ kdm & XFree86 4
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:59 EDT
The following is a copy of bug #12311 at www.kde.org: I just installed Red Hat 7 (kernel 2.2.16, XFree86 4.0.1, KDE 1.1.2), and I'm having a strange APM problem. If kdm is running, and the fore- ground virtual terminal is not managed by kdm, the system will not suspend. For example, assume my system boots into runlevel 5, and kdm is managing virtual terminal 7 (display :0). If I close my laptop (or type "apm -s" in an xterm) while vt 7 is the foreground vt, the system suspends and resumes as expected. If however, I type "apm -s" at a text-mode vt, the system will not suspend and the following error will start appearing in the syslog: kernel: apm: busy: Unable to enter requested state This will continue until I switch to vt 7. As soon as I switch to the vt that is managed by kdm, the system suspends. I have seen this problem on both of my systems, an IBM ThinkPad 770Z with a Trident Cyber9397DVD video chipset and a homegrown desktop with a Matrox Millenium G200 adapter. I have only seen this problem with XFree86 4.0.1; it does not occur with XFree86 3.3.6. I am reporting this as a kdm bug, because it does not occur when I use gdm or xdm.
It's more likely an XFree86 or kernel problem; normal programs can't prevent the kernel from suspending. I suspect the DRM stuff is misbehaving. Doesn't happen on a Gericom 3xC with an ATI chipset, btw... Assigning to XFree86
I may have a fix for this... On my Sharp Actius A150, it would not suspend while in the X virtual window. Going into /etc/sysconfig/apmd, I changed the last line (#LOCK_X=1) to be first of all uncommented, and second of all set to zero (LOCK_X=0). If you look at the /etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmscript, I believe you will see that to disable the screensaver lock you have to explicitly set it to zero (not simply comment it out as it appears the configuration file has tried to do). I did not check this rigorously, but it seems to have solved the suspend problem on my laptop... Bill @ KilgallonFamily.com
I was having similar problems with APM on my Sony Vaio XG28 laptop (NeoMagic 256 chipset). At first, it would not suspend at all: it would blank the screen, then hang (forcing a hard reboot). From looking at other bug reports, I used Xconfigurator to downgrade to 3.3.6 (running the SVGA server). I am now able to suspend and resume without difficuly. Note: this is a vanilla apmd -18 setup, no tweaks to CHANGEVT or LOCK_X.
I am not sure it is related, but I am having problem setting DPMS mode with XFree-4.0. 'xset -q' reports DPMS as anabled yet monitor would never go into any DPMS modes. 'xset dpms force off' has no effect. I am running stock Gnome desktop on stock RH7.0. These all work with RH6.2. Matrox Mil card / amdk6 system. Sincerely, Dmitri.
I have the same problem with DPMS mode. Whether power management is enabled in screensaver or directly with 'xset +dpms', there is no effect. I also am running the stock Gnome on RH7.0. I have recompiled the kernel making sure APM functions are enabled, so it doesn't appear to be a kernel fault. I also don't believe it to be an XFree 4.01 fault, unless it is with RedHat 7.0's implementation of XFree 4.01. I had been running Mandrake Linux 7.2 which also implements XFree 4.01 and DPMS worked in both KDE and Gnome.
APM and DPMS are two entirely different things that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with each other. DPMS in XFree86 works fine. Any DPMS problems are in xscreensaver or gnome control center. This is a frequent problem which is reported now. It is not an XFree86 problem. The APM problem wont be fixed in this release (4.0.1).