Screen goes blank at random...

[maverick3n1]

Running on linux, and I have one of my players sitting at my desk (home built) since it keeps happening in the field.  Initially, I thought the players were locking up, but I was wrong.  After approx 3 days or so (no exact set time, but it seems to be 2-4 day range), the screen will go blank.  I plugged a mouse and keyboard into it, clicked the mouse, and all of the sudden the screen came back.  The player was still running, but the screen had gone blank for some reason.

The system is running on Ubuntu version 10.04.  I have the xautomation script installed so that the mouse moves for the first few seconds when the player boots up, even though no mouse is plugged in, as a bug fix you guys released before to prevent the screen from going blank after 30 minutes or so.  All screen savers and power management features are disabled.  The HDD is a SSD, so it's not spinning down obviously.  We haven't made any updates to the player file either, so it didn't simply error on an update, at least manually sent, and we currently do not have any auto update scheduling configured.  This happens on any content we configure, and on every ubuntu player we have.

Any suggestions would be great!

[admin]

The script we provided should do the trick... if this is happening only after 3 days, I would recommend using the daily reboot feature to reset any counters...

Regards.

[maverick3n1]

I checked my settings and apparently it is auto-rebooting every day.. so I guess some days it's rebooting properly, and other days it is not.

I also noticed that when the system boots up, and the shell window pops up listing everything that's loading, I get an error message twice before it says "Run SignagePlayer" stating "No Process Found".  I don't know what those 2 processes are it's looking for, but I'm assuming I shouldn't be getting those errors, and perhaps that is part of the cause of my issues.

As I said previously, I do have xautomation installed, and when the system boots and starts loading the signage player without a mouse and keyboard plugged in, I see the mouse arrow jump around on the screen for a few seconds as your script is intended for, so I know that aspect is functioning.  For some reason however, I still get the "No Process Found" twice before it starts to run the rest of the steps.  Everything appears to work fine otherwise.  I'm wondering if maybe the mouse moving around should be done for a slight bit longer period of time.  Perhaps when the system boots, the mouse movements are only done barely long enough to fix the odd bug, and sometimes they seem to happen a fraction of a second faster than necessary to keep ubuntu happy, thus causing the power management to kick in again.

I'm disabling the reboot feature and checking to see if it works in the future.  Let me know if you have any ideas for the no process found errors.

[admin]

ya try that.. and these errors you are referring to as "No process founds", that's normal and just indicating only one SignageController is running which is normal operation.

[maverick3n1]

I've got reboot every day turned off, but even so, it appears as though the player is rebooting every day at midnight.  Any thoughts as to why it's still doing that?  I haven't witnessed it rebooting, but I restarted the player a few days back, and with it being 5:30 am right now, it says the player has been running for 5 hours and 30 minutes...

[admin]

Be sure to check all of your OS power savings options and tun'em off!

[maverick3n1]

Those have been double and triple checked.  No power management features, no screen savers, everything is off.  It seems to reboot still at midnight, even though it's set not to.  I am rebooting it today in case for some reason it's viewing old settings from when it was set to reboot every night at midnight.  I'll find out tomorrow AM if it rebooted.

[maverick3n1]

The system shows running time as 5 hours and 26 minutes, even though it's not set to reboot, and it was powered up last night.  This either means that the system only shows run time for the current day, or the system is sending a command to my player to reboot it at midnight every night.  Any clue why it would be rebooting my system when I have that function turned off?

[admin]

I really don't have a clue, I never ran into a issue that a player will reboot daily.
Maybe something is wrong with your PC, like memory or something and it crashes and resets... maybe?


Eric.

[maverick3n1]

I have numerous players.  All do the same thing.  Maybe it's just a mis-report on the media player manager.  The manager is what tells me that it was up and running for X amount of hours.  Perhaps after it hits midnight, it resets?

I'm also having the same problem with after 3-4 days of going, suddenly I find the screen it blank.  If I plug a mouse into it and move the mouse a little bit, suddenly the player comes back visible...

[admin]

1. Did you disable all power savings in OS?
2. Did disable all power savings in Studio?
3. Which OS are you using?
4. Did you enable the Kiosk / Screen saver mode per the campaign?

Always glad to help,

Eddie - MediaSignage.com

[maverick3n1]

1. Yes
2. Power saving features are set to none.
3. Ubuntu 10.0.4
4. Kiosk mode is not enabled

[admin]

Ubuntu 10.04 has a bug that will black out the screen.
What you need to do is use the Linux lib called Xautomation (see -f /usr/bin/xte in script) and script it so on the first 10 seconds the mouse is automatically moved a few times around... I know sounds funkey, but it does disable this counter bug in Ubuntu 10.04.

Here is the signageController.sh script that fixes the issue:

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/bash

echo 'startup ver 1.0.20'

### disable Screen saver modes ###

sudo xset -dpms
xset -dpms
xset dpms 0 0 0

if [ -f /usr/bin/xte ]
then
   sleep 1
   xte 'mousemove 150 410'
   sleep 2
   xte 'mousemove 0 0'
   sleep 1
   xte 'mousemove 100 100'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 110 100'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 120 100'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 130 100'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 130 100'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 140 100'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 440 120'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 450 130'
   sleep 0.3
   xte 'mousemove 170 100'
   xte 'mouseup 1'
fi;

# unclutter -idle 2 &

cd /opt/SignagePlayer/share/
killall SignageController
sleep 8
killall SignageController
while [ 1 ]
do
echo 'run SignageController'
sudo /opt/SignagePlayer/share/linux/SignageController
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
killall SignagePlayer
sleep 1
exit 0
fi
echo 'SignageController Fail'
sleep 1
done
echo 'end'



[maverick3n1]

I am aware of this bug.  As I stated in my very first post, I have xautomation installed and the script is in place, and when the system boots with no mouse connected, I do see the mouse arrow jump around the screen due to the script.

[admin]

I wish I could give more info, but with our players that's all that we need...
maybe someone else can post if they have a similar issue!