Strange monitor behavior

[David Timms]

Alexander Sukhodolsky wrote:

>I set yum to update my packages and it started downloading all of them.  So
>I decided to step away for about 10 minutes.  When I came back to check out
>the progress, the screen had dimmed--but the stuff was still working in the
>background--I am running a laptop hooked up to power, btw.  But the cursor
>is just as bright as normal.  Kind of strange behavior...any ideas?
>BTW--I haven't restarted it yet to check out if it is permanent or not--my
>guess is that it's not.  Will update on that just as soon as yum is
>finished.
>
>Alex
>  
>
I now know what you mean by this ;-{ My HP compaq nx9000 di this while 
yum was downloading about 50M of packages today (Tuesday), I didn't 
notice if the screensaver started, but the screen was black when I 
looked next during package updating (disk going bezerk). Once the mouse 
was moved, the pointer showed up as normal, but quickly (<0.5s) faded 
out once movement was stopped. I tried esc, shift, alt-tab, c-a-f1 (tty 
were still normal). Switched back to gui, again black, except where 
mouse is moved. Waited til disk stopped and then tried c-a-backspace to 
exit the session. For the briefest of moments I saw the desktop as it 
should have been before going to the gui login screen.
I also got a gnome power manager crash at startup, so I think it is 
related to current probs with it, see elsewhere on the list.    DaveT.