I've had this problem for a long time that DPMS will not work when the framebuffer console is activated. This applies for the Geforce 6200 which I have now and the Radeon 9200 which I was using until 2005 or something. I'm using Slackware which activates DPMS automatically on boot these days.

From /etc/rc.d/rc.M:

# Screen blanks after 15 minutes idle time, and powers down in one hour
# if the kernel supports APM or ACPI power management:
/bin/setterm -blank 15 -powersave powerdown -powerdown 60

This WILL cause the monitor to shut off after one hour when using the standard Linux text console, but when using the framebuffer console the screen will only blank. Sometimes it won't even blank completely and a white horizontal line is left on the top or bottom of the screen.

So is this a common problem? I would think so, but google couldn't find any useful info on the subject. This problem needs to be solved before the NVIDIA driver forces me to actually use the framebuffer console. For some reason the standard Linux text console won't work with newer NVIDIA drivers while running an XDM login session.


Thanks in advance