Display goes black and nothing works but force poweroff

Hi,
I’ve been using Linux-based OSes for a while now and I have faced an issue for quite some time. I have chosen to ignore it as it didn’t bother me that much but finally wanted to sort it out.

The problem is this: Whenever I leave my laptop on and go away for a while, one of three things happen.

  1. It is working fine (screen is black, I move my cursor/type something and I can start working) - Rare case
  2. The screen is black but the computer is still on - the power button and Fn key’s light is on. However, nothing that I do (moving cursor/typing) doesn’t change anything. The screen stays black. The keyboard doesn’t seem to respond as well - I’ve tried to use REISUB when this happens to restart the computer but in vain. Only option is to hold the power key until the laptop turns off to switch it back on- Frequent
  3. The laptop restarted on its own and it is back on the login screen. - Frequent

Cases #2 and #3 happen frequently. The biggest problem for me is not being able to diagnose it as I’m not able to reproduce it whenever I feel like it. The above are observations that I have made as I use the laptop. The issue bugs me as sometimes I might be writing something important and part of the work is gone.

I say it didn’t bother me because I try to play some video (so that the screen doesn’t go off as I suspected the issue might have to do something with power-saving features) but at times I forget it.

Output of inxi
dinskid@dinskid-zenbooksux391ua ~$ inxi --full --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host                                                                                                                                                            
System:    Kernel: 5.13.19-2-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.22.5 tk: Qt 5.15.2
           info: i3bar wm: i3 4.19.1 vt: 1 dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: ZenBook S UX391UA v: 1.0 serial: <filter>
           Mobo: ASUSTeK model: UX391UA v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: UX391UA.307 date: 04/27/2020
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 11.3 Wh (28.8%) condition: 39.2/50.0 Wh (78.4%) volts: 7.9 min: 7.9 model: ASUSTeK ASUS Battery
           type: Li-ion serial: N/A status: Discharging cycles: 755
Memory:    RAM: total: 7.62 GiB used: 2.59 GiB (34.0%)
           RAM Report: permissions: Unable to run dmidecode. Root privileges required.
CPU:       Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i7-8550U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Kaby Lake note: check rev: A cache:
           L2: 8 MiB bogomips: 32012
           Speed: 900 MHz min/max: 400/4000 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 900 2: 900 3: 894 4: 900 5: 900 6: 900 7: 900 8: 900
           Flags: 3dnowprefetch abm acpi adx aes aperfmperf apic arat arch_perfmon art avx avx2 bmi1 bmi2 bts clflush
           clflushopt cmov constant_tsc cpuid cpuid_fault cx16 cx8 de ds_cpl dtes64 dtherm dts epb ept ept_ad erms est f16c
           flexpriority flush_l1d fma fpu fsgsbase fxsr ht hwp hwp_act_window hwp_epp hwp_notify ibpb ibrs ida intel_pt
           invpcid invpcid_single lahf_lm lm mca mce md_clear mmx monitor movbe mpx msr mtrr nonstop_tsc nopl nx pae pat pbe
           pcid pclmulqdq pdcm pdpe1gb pebs pge pln pni popcnt pse pse36 pti pts rdrand rdseed rdtscp rep_good sdbg sep smap
           smep ss ssbd sse sse2 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 stibp syscall tm tm2 tpr_shadow tsc tsc_adjust tsc_deadline_timer vme vmx
           vnmi vpid x2apic xgetbv1 xsave xsavec xsaveopt xsaves xtopology xtpr
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: ASUSTeK driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5917
           class-ID: 0300
           Device-2: IMC Networks USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-5:2 chip-ID: 13d3:56b9
           class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 compositor: picom v: git-dac85 driver: loaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz s-dpi: 96
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.3 direct render: Yes
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3
           chip-ID: 8086:9d71 class-ID: 0403
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.13.19-2-MANJARO running: yes
           Sound Server-2: sndio v: N/A running: no
           Sound Server-3: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no
           Sound Server-4: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes
           Sound Server-5: PipeWire v: 0.3.38 running: yes
Network:   Device-1: Intel Wireless 8265 / 8275 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24fd class-ID: 0280
           IF: wlp1s0 state: up mac: <filter>
           IP v4: <filter> type: dynamic noprefixroute scope: global broadcast: <filter>
           IP v6: <filter> type: noprefixroute scope: link
           WAN IP: <filter>
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 1-8:3 chip-ID: 8087:0a2b
           class-ID: e001
           Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 3 state: up address: see --recommends
Logical:   Message: No logical block device data found.
RAID:      Message: No RAID data found.
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 18.93 GiB (7.9%)
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: SanDisk model: SD9SN8W256G1002 size: 238.47 GiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s type: SSD serial: <filter>
           rev: 3002 scheme: GPT
           Message: No optical or floppy data found.
Partition: ID-1: / size: 224.71 GiB used: 18.93 GiB (8.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 label: N/A
           uuid: 0d86c603-749a-4229-89cd-ee0bb4367343
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 299.4 MiB used: 288 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 label: NO_LABEL uuid: E0EF-3CA8
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8.8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda3 label: swap
           uuid: 4070649a-698d-441f-83fd-b5d3373c12bf
Unmounted: Message: No unmounted partitions found.
USB:       Hub-1: 1-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 12 rev: 2.0 speed: 480 Mb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0002 class-ID: 0900
           Device-1: 1-5:2 info: IMC Networks USB2.0 HD UVC WebCam type: Video driver: uvcvideo interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0
           speed: 480 Mb/s power: 500mA chip-ID: 13d3:56b9 class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter>
           Device-2: 1-8:3 info: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: Bluetooth driver: btusb interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0
           speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 8087:0a2b class-ID: e001
           Device-3: 1-9:4 info: Shenzhen Goodix Fingerprint Reader type: Abstract (modem),CDC-Data driver: cdc_acm
           interfaces: 2 rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s power: 100mA chip-ID: 27c6:5201 class-ID: 0a00 serial: <filter>
           Hub-2: 2-0:1 info: Full speed (or root) Hub ports: 6 rev: 3.0 speed: 5 Gb/s chip-ID: 1d6b:0003 class-ID: 0900
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 47.0 C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:      Processes: 256 Uptime: 2h 22m wakeups: 11000 Init: systemd v: 249 Compilers: gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: pacman: 1278
           Shell: Zsh v: 5.8 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.07

Sorry for the long message. I wanted to share my observations hoping it might help in some way.
Another bit of information is this issue prevailed in many OSes as well, not just an issue in Manjaro.

Thanks in advance,
dinskid

What settings do you have for power management?

Thank you for the reply.

Here are the links to screenshots from the settings app (Sorry, Idk if there is a better way to export the profile through text)
On AC power
On battery
On low battery

IIRC, I have never changed anything.

This shows that you are running KDE Plasma using picom as compositor. We should know how did you replaced kwin with it, what configurations you used.

I had followed this github readme to install i3 with KDE. I had installed picom with pacman. I didn’t change any of picom’s configurations. Additionally, I would like to mention that I faced this problem with all of my previous distros as well.

That leads me to conclude, either that tutorial is not suited for your hardware, or has a fault.

Sorry, the way I phrased it has misled you. This is the first time I’m installing i3 with KDE. In all the other distros, I had been using the default/built-in window manager/compositor only.

Does computer suspend or hibernate on power saving?

According to the power management, I believe it is set to suspend (automatically sleep) after 10 mins of inactivity when on battery and 5 mins when on low battery.