hi,
i am using ubuntu dapper.
to turn off the screen ,i tried
xset dpms force off
but it did'nt work
then i tried
xset s standby
that and
xset dpms force standby
also dont work.
what i mean by not working is that nothing at all happens on typing these commands in bash.

but,
vbetool dpms off
and
vbetool dpms standby
both turned off the screen.However, i was only able to turn it back on using cntl+alt+del.
xset dpms force off worked for me earlier in a previous install of dapper.i had to recently reinstall it(over edgy that i did'nt like).Could the problem be related to that?

Hi, I have the same problem with my nx6310 laptop display. I had to do:

xset s off #turns off the screensaver function
vbetool dpms off (on) #to switch it off (on)

If you want to give your user access to vbetool, do this:
# chmod a+s /usr/sbin/vbetool

If you use Fluxbox, you can now map the vbetool command to a combination of keys. I have this in my ~/.fluxbox/keys file:
Mod1 x :ExecCommand /usr/sbin/vbetool dpms off
Mod1 c :ExecCommand /usr/sbin/vbetool dpms on

Now I can switch it on/off with Alt-X and Alt-C.

thanks man

No problem, anirudh, I hope it works for you.

For some reason my display still is getting switched back on again after a few minutes, although I've done: xset s off

gnome-screensaver and xscreensaver are off. So what is switching it back on again? Would somebody else please care to enlighten me?

Btw, I'm only using vbetool because that actually switches off my LCD backlight (which gnome-screensaver and xscreensaver don't).

On a side note: Why does even such a simple thing have to be such a PITA in Ubuntu? xscreensaver just did what it was told to do in Slackware, but Slackware won't even boot on my laptop :/