On 9/6/06, Bart Schaefer <barton.schaefer at gmail.com> wrote: > been having sporadic instances where the screen simply goes black for > about 2 seconds. It has nothing to do with whether I'm using the > mouse or keyboard (or not) Just in case anybody was paying attention to this ... Evidently the blanking has something to do with the machine being on a KVM switch with another computer (which happens to be a Mac Mini, but that doesn't seem to be relevant as it was powered off). I thought I had ruled out the KVM before I posted the first time -- among other things, why would rebooting the linux machine fix a failure in the KVM? -- but the problem has not recurred since plugging the monitor directly into the computer. This isn't 100% conclusive because I've gone days or weeks without this happening in the past, but it's the first time I've gotten the problem to go away without rebooting.