After a major hard disk failure I had to work at the framebuffer console
to restore the system. I had to see that the i915 framebuffer console blanked
occasionally, more or less in multiples of 10 seconds, with a higher probability
under high  load.

Attached find a log made under the following conditions:

I booted kernel 3.4.4, a monitor attached to the VGA connector.
There were no inputs from the local keyboard, everything was done via ssh.
I raised the drm debug level to 0xf and started a massive load (rsync backup).
Whenever the screen had blanked, I inserted a comment via logger.

The problem seems to be old - all 3.x  kernels up to 3.4.4 seem to be affected
(3.5-rc not tested)

Screen blanking also happens on an identical system with a monitor attached via DVI.

There are absolutely no distortions  as long as Xorg is handling the screen.

Hardware: AOpen i915GMm-HFS, Pentium-M Dothan, 2GHz, 2GB RAM.

Have a look at the log - any suggestions?

cu,
  Knut