No console text following resume on Toshiba Sat Pro 4600

Dr. Gary E. RAFE drgerlists at gmail.com
Mon Apr 2 18:28:44 UTC 2007


With the video device in my Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100
acting strangely the last few days,
I'm needing to use my wife's
Toshiba Satellite Pro 4600, which runs 6.1-R.

One the the odd "nits" about suspend/resume
on this notebook (using either ACPI or APM)
since it was upgraded from 4.x
(when it last work properly)
has been that upon resume,
the LCD backlight comes on,
but the console is blank.

Under normal circumstances,
the system is suspended from an X11 session,
so we switch the LCD to ttyv0 before
the actual suspend command is issued.
Upon resume, when we restore the LCD
to the virtual console in which the X11
display is running, the display just "comes back"
when the "vidcontrol -s 3 </dev/ttyv0"
command is issued by /etc/rc.resume,
which we issue last so that USB devices
have a chance to come back after the suspend.

If, however, we suspend the system directly
from a console (no X11 running),
upon resume toggling through the LCD/CRT key (Fn-F5) 
acts to restore the state of the LCD console.

The custom kernel has "options VESA" compiled in.

So far, I've tried every combination of:

	acpi_video.ko loaded|unloaded
	sysctl hw.acpi.reset_video=0|1
	sysctl hw.syscons.sc_no_suspend_vtswitch=0|1

and all give exactly the same result:
no text console until Fn-F5 is toggled.

Apart from this, ACPI suspend/resume has
been very reliable on this notebook.

Comments/suggestions as to what else I need to look
to fix this are welcome.

Now on to pulling my 6100 apart for another look at
its video card...
--
Dr Gary E RAFE: drgerlists at gmail dot com


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