[Bug 869017] Re: Ubuntu server enables screenblanking, concealing crashdumps (DPMS is not used)

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre]

I'm going to revert this change. We've been carrying this is kbd since
wily, so it landed in xenial, but it doesn't even work (VT still blanks
here, on a newly-installed system). Debian also drops the files, so to
support not blanking the console, we'd need to think of some alternate
method of, for example, introducing consoleblank=0 on the kernel
command-line (via grub-installer/grub2?). Another option might be to
convince kernel people to patch the blankinterval value in vt.c in the
kernel sources themselves.

I totally understand why people might want this feature (a server
crashing is not nice. It shouldn't happen often, but it's already
helpful to have the ILO show an error message and not just a blanked
screen). I'm just not sure what the best way to handle it would be in
light of the changes in kbd (dropping its init script, and the init
script not working in the first place).

In the meantime, please consider adding consoleblank=0 in the command
line for your systems. You can do this by adding it to
/etc/default/grub.

** Changed in: kbd (Ubuntu)
       Status: Fix Released => Triaged

** Bug watch added: Debian Bug tracker #796583
   http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=796583

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/869017

Title:
  Ubuntu server enables screenblanking, concealing crashdumps (DPMS is
  not used)

Status in kbd package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  James Rice of Jump Networks noticed that there is a screen-blanker
  enabled on Ubuntu Server.

  James notes that this blanking is not enabling DPMS power saving
  (thereby negating any power-saving benefit), and is simply turning the
  screen content blank.   This means that the crash output is invisible
  which is unhelpful on a server (virtual or otherwise).

  Ideally the screen should (at a minimum) be turned on and unblanked at
  the point of an OOPs/crash being printed.

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