I was setting up a fourth monitor on my system today and when I finally got my xorg.conf correct the new monitor (VGA) was switching itself off and then straight back on again approximately every 30 seconds.

At first I thought it was the monitor itself so swapped it for another one but as it turns out it was s daemon called ‘upowerd’ causing the problem. Thanks to the guys over at #radeon on freenode for pointing this out.

upowerd polls the monitor every 30 seconds and on some VGA setups this causes the monitor to briefly switch off and then on again. Killing the upowerd process stops the monitor doing so but within a couple of minutes the process starts back up again. In the end I just moved the binary somewhere else so it couldn’t be started and it has cured the problem. From what I can tell upowerd not running isn’t a huge problem but time will tell if it comes back to bite me in the future…

** EDIT – Well there is a problem with not running upowerd it would seem. The PC won’t go into standby without it running. I have decided to look into sorting this out properly but in the short term I am just running upowerd before I put the machine into standby and killing it when I switch it back on. This seems to do the job OK but not an ideal long term solution…

Evolution Systems has an extensive range of experience in all forms of web site development. From smaller personal sites through to full corporate scale sites we are positive we can fulfil your requirements.

We have experience using a wide range of back end software that enable us to get your site up and running as quickly as possible incurring the minimum cost to our clients. The software we use enables our clients to have a fully functioned CMS web site which they can update and modify themselves quickly and easily.

If your project does not fit in to a category where we can use available software we also have extensive experience of building sites from the ground up exactly to your specifications.

Why not get in touch and see how Evolution Systems can help your business on the web.