Screen save

greengrocer · 04-12-2008, 07:18 AM

I am setting up a Debian system.

I have installed "sudo" then installed "xorg" and "xfce4" and thats pretty much it over and above a standard debian install.

After about 20 minutes of inactivity, the screen blanks during an X session.

What are the mechanisms which handle this screen blanking? (I ask because I haven't installed any screen saver packages that I know of).

I don't want the screen to go blank at all. Where should I look in order to reconfigure the screen blanking and stop it from doing that?

Regards,
Greenie

Maligree · 04-12-2008, 08:21 AM

Code:

sudo xset s off

should disable xorg's automatic screen blanking (it's built into X).
If you want to check if it's really working (without waiting 20 minutes) you could do something like this:

Code:

sudo xset s 3 /* screen will go blank after 3 seconds */
sudo xset s off /* won't go off, even after the prviously specified 3-second timeout */

By the way, xset s off seems to be equivalent to xset s 0.

Also make sure you have DPMS disabled. While..

Code:

sudo xset -dpms

..turns it off, it is still automatically re-enabled upon X restart. To make sure it stays off, add..

Code:

Options "NoDPMS"

..to your screen section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

You can always check your current settings with xset -q.

greengrocer · 04-12-2008, 08:20 PM

Hey thanks Maligree.

I did:

Code:

sudo xset s 3

and sure enough the screen went blank after 3 seconds.

Next I added:

Code:

 Options        "NoDPMS"

to the monitor section of xorg.conf.

After restarting X, the screen no longer went blank after 3 seconds, but still went blank after 10 minutes.

I then again did:

Code:

 xset s 3

and the screen started blanking again after 3 seconds.

I then did:

Code:

xset -q

and noticed that while the DPMS is disabled, the built in screensaving of X is still working uless we do:

Code:

 sudo xset s off

So I then put the following line into the .bashrc file:

Code:

 sudo xset s 0 0

But the screen still blanks after 10 minutes, although judging from the output of xset -q below, there should not be any more screen blanking:

Code:

Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0    WhitePixel:  65535
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi
Bug Mode: compatibility mode is disabled
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 1200    Suspend: 1800    Off: 2400
  DPMS is Disabled

Is there another underlying system external to X which could be blanking the screen after 10 minutes?

Maligree · 04-13-2008, 09:07 AM

Well this turns out to be a tough one.. I just noticed my Fedora box is acting the same way. Doesn't seem to be an X issue, since my screen goes blank after 10 minutes even when in runlevel three (no X).. Thought it may be an ACPI thing,but disabling acpid gave nothing.

Huh. Maybe check your BIOS settings for some powersaving options? No other ideas right now..

mrclisdue · 04-13-2008, 10:08 AM

Just a guess, but would the xscreensaver daemon be running by default in Debian? Do a ps aux | grep xscreensaver and see what's up. If it's running, you can try to determine how it's called at boot, and disable it....

cheers,

greengrocer · 04-15-2008, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Just a guess, but would the xscreensaver daemon be running by default in Debian?

Interesting you mention xscreensaver.

Since my last post, I installed xscreensaver with a simple:

Code:

apt-get install xscreensaver

When I opened the xscreensaver settings GUI, I received a prompt saying:

"xscreensaver daemon not running, would you like to start it now?". --- So that answers your question mrclisdue.

So I started the daemon, turned off the power management in the xscreensaver GUI (there is a check box for this).

Then I set xset to 0 0 and I think that has achieved what we set out to achieve from my tests so far. Not 100% convinced just yet though. Maligree, would you like to try this and see if you get same results?

Overall I think there is another bug in X.