Screen blanked, just mouse pointer

User Support General
1

There are times where my screen goes blank except for a mouse pointer that remains responsive. No combination of key inputs will serve to wake it up. If I ctrl-alt-f2 it takes a long time … fifteen or twenty seconds, then it switches to the new text console. ctrl-alt-f1 brings me back to a login screen.

The machine is 4.2.0 upgraded from 4.2.0rc5, keyboard and mouse are PS/2, video card is an Nvidia GTX 1060.

Is there an easier way to escape this situation? Or some fix to apply so it doesn’t happen at all? The machine was largely idle when this happened, pretty sure it’s not a load related thing.

2

Check the journalctl in dom0.
Maybe it’s an out of memory in dom0 problem.

3

I think this is relevant:

xscreensaver-auth[10115] PAM unable to dlopen(/usr/lib64/security/pam_sss.so)

and that file is not in /usr/lib64/security

Did I just find a 4.2.0 release bug?

1 Like
4

I also have this line in my journal…doesn’t think it really matters. And fortunately missing pam_sss is a known issue Several errors about missing pam_sss in dom0 · Issue #8595 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub.

5

But that is exactly the issue I’m having - screen saver going missing. I don’t see any other errors in there.

6

Facing the same issue, had to disable the display going blank as it would lock me out of the system.

When running Xscreensaver setting, i get the following:

running xscreensaver-getimage-file: No such file or directory

But running sudo xscreensaver-demo, beside the initial warning of running it as root, does not prompt the issue mentioned above.

7

Have you found any known solutions or workaround?
Unfortunately, ctrl-alt-f2 and then ctrl-alt-f1 does not bring the login back, the only way for me is to kill the xscreensaver process.
I’ve temporarily disabled the screen going blank in any circumstances but it’s quite annoying.

This seems related: Qubes 4.2 logged out when key combination is pressed (not the intended log-out one) · Issue #8710 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub

8

What if you try to enter the password blindly when the issue happens?

9

I’ve seen other posts where some people had similar issue and blindly typed their password to overcome it.
Unfortunately, I already tried that multiple time with no success.

Also attempted to reinstall xscreensaver, as the issue apoeared after the 4.2 upgrade, with the same results.

10

What is triggering this issue? Resume from suspend? Or is it just randomly occurring?
Are there any related messages in dom0 journalctl at the time when this issue happens?

11

Not random. Every time it resumes from standby or blocked screen.
It does not seems able to toggle the white Xscreensaver login box, but logs does not show anything other than whats already written above.

It also appear that the pam_sss message is related to a moltitude of other issue, similar but not identical, concerning xscreensaver.

12

Fixed by following this: v4.2 - XScreenSaver & XScreenSaver Settings not opening window · Issue #8266 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub

@marmarek issue appeared after 4.1 to 4.2 upgrade