Poor performance/lag when host screen is off

[Coleman]

While I’ve been trying to figure out hw acceleration, I’ve just noticed something else. I’m running NoMachine host on a laptop, and if the laptop has powered the screen off, when I connect, the performance is really laggy. I had initially thought this was a problem with my wifi, so I switched it to a wired connection. After some testing, I’ve figured out as soon as I wake the host screen up, everything works very well. While the screen is powered down, it acts like I’m connected over a low bandwidth connection.

Is there anything I can do about that? Even if it’s just remotely causing the screen to wake. I see there’s options for the opposite (blank/lock screen on connect), but I didn’t notice one to wake the screen.

If it comes down to it, I’ll just disable shutting the screen off at the OS level, but if there’s a way I can leave that enabled and not break performance, that’d be preferred.

Thanks!

 

[fra81]

Hi Coleman,

can you show the output of the ‘xset q’  command run inside the NoMachine session, when the screen is off?

[Coleman]

Output here…additional data point, I think it’s specifically when the screen is powered off from the power saver settings, not just from the screensaver blanking.

jason@CB5:/dev/dri$ xset q
Keyboard Control:  auto repeat:  off    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
XKB indicators:  00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    off    02: Scroll Lock: off
03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  20
auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf  fadfffefffedffff  9fffffffffffffff   fff7ffffffffffff
bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control: acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver: prefer blanking:  no    allow exposures:  no
timeout:  60    cycle:  60
Colors: default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path: /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star): Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 120
DPMS is Enabled
Monitor is Off

[Carin]

Hi Coleman,

thank you!
As you well described, although it is possible to connect to a server when the monitor is powered off, in some conditions the performance of the connection is low.
We have created a feature request for this issue: Giving the possibility to automatically awake Linux server monitor from sleep mode.  In the meantime, we recommend avoiding to let the screen shut down on the server machine.

You can tick the box at the bottom of the feature request (‘notify me’) to show your interest and to be notified when it will be released.

[Coleman]

Thanks for the reply! I’ll just do that, disable the power off mode on the laptop.

[Author]

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