Screenly
[BUG] White screen of death
Description
Intermittantly, the display goes white, and stays there. Reboot seems to correct it, but it eventually goes white again.
Steps to Reproduce
I don't really have any steps, but I can tell you that the media I've tried is a single URL or a single image, alone. It goes white for each.
I'm happy to post logs, if you tell me which would be most helpful.
Expected Behavior
Not going white: keep displaying content.
Screenshots
n/a, imagine a white screen.
Environment
- Device: Raspberry Pi 5 Model B Rev 1.0
- OS: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
- Anthias Version: master@2973d59
- Installation Method: curl
@mgroves, while I'm taking a look at it, I would like to ask for more details:
- Did you install Anthias on top of Raspberry Pi OS Lite?
- Would you be able to provide at least the logs of the
anthias-serverand theanthias-viewerservices? Please use this documentation as a guide. - Is your display connected to the HDMI0 port (the one that's close to the USB-C port) or to the other HDMI (HDMI1) port?
Did you install Anthias on top of Raspberry Pi OS Lite?
I don't think it's Lite. Here's the output of cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="12"
VERSION="12 (bookworm)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bookworm
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
Would you be able to provide at least the logs of the anthias-server and the anthias-viewer services? Please use this documentation as a guide.
I've attached the output of docker compose logs -f anthias-server > server.logs and docker compose logs -f anthias-viewer > viewer.logs
viewer.logs.txt server.logs.txt
Is your display connected to the HDMI0 port (the one that's close to the USB-C port) or to the other HDMI (HDMI1) port?
I think it's HDMI0. I'm not physically with the device right now, but ChatGPT suggested for f in /sys/class/drm/*/status; do echo "$f: $(cat $f)"; done, and here's the output:
redacted@raspberrypi:~ $ for f in /sys/class/drm/*/status; do echo "$f: $(cat $f)"; done
/sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-1/status: connected
/sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-2/status: disconnected
/sys/class/drm/card1-Writeback-1/status: unknown
/sys/class/drm/card1-Writeback-2/status: unknown
@mgroves, thanks for providing me the log files and other details.
What do you get when you run the following?
ls /dev/fb*
ls /dev/dri
I tried doing a clean install and an upgrade, but I was not able to reproduce your issue. It might have something to do with the monitors that we are using, but let's try to continue ruling things out.
Here you go:
redacted@raspberrypi:~ $ ls /dev/fb*
/dev/fb0
redacted@raspberrypi:~ $ ls /dev/dri
by-path card0 card1 renderD128
I should mention also that I've been running Anthias since March 2025, and it's only been happening recently.
@mgroves, are you still having issues? I checked the logs that you provided and saw nothing unusual.
Would you be able to provide the specs (e.g., resolution) of the monitor used?
I think I've found the cause of the problem. My Anthias installations display several websites that have an automatic refresh implemented after a certain period. This is achieved partly through an HTTP meta tag with http-equiv='refresh' and partly through JavaScript with Interval and window.location.
Whenever the website is reloaded using these functions, the white screen error occurs. It doesn't leave an entry in the log.
I've done some more testing. The problem appears with release v0.20.3. It works with version v0.20.2.
We have a similar setup to schmaddi: Anthias displays a Website with a builtin refresh per JS which causes the Screen to go blank, but only when one asset is added. Current workaround for us is having the same Website Asset added twice with a 10s sleep timer, but its not ideal.
Our used resolutions: 1920x1080 1024x768
The installation is on an x86-64 system.
@schmaddi, @zurichdevelopmentcenter I'll keep those in mind. Thanks. I'll take a closer look at it.