Cool screen blank trick
 

I noticed that the console blanks after 15 min of inactivity, but doesn't shut down my monitor so I looked into it some...

In /etc/rc.d/rc.M there is a line towards the top:

...
# Screen blanks after 15 minutes idle time.
/bin/setterm -blank 15
...

I then looked through the man page for setterm and played with some settings until I found what works, it now looks like this:

...
# Screen blanks after 15 minutes idle time.
/bin/setterm -blank 15
/bin/setterm -powersave on
...

And voila! My VESA monitor now powers off when it blanks. There is also a command -powersave [0-60] that will leave the screen blanked but on until the time specified (in minutes) and then will power down the monitor i.e. if -blank is 15 and -powersave is 5 then after 15 min the screen blanks and then after 20 min total it powers down. You can also try -powersave hsync if -powersave on doesn't work on your particular monitor.

Just thought I'd share that since the powerdown and powersave settings don't clearly distinguish their differences in the man page.

Very nice tip! Thank you :)

Very cool, great tip for my router box.