DPMS only works for root on XFCE, 12.1

thatquietboy · 06-01-2008, 09:56 PM

The subject line says it all... I've only been using slack as a desktop for a few months, and I was never able to get the DPMS settings to work as a regular user running x (with XFCE). I just worked around it by manually turning my monitor off, but last week i ran x as root, walked away, and to my surprise, the monitor was in power save mode. Ran x as a lowly user, and no monitor power down. I'm guessing this is a permissions issue. Has anyone ever solved this? Its a trivial issue, but I would like to resolve it.

tia,

T3slider · 06-01-2008, 10:16 PM

DPMS is specified in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Usually a simple

Code:

Option         "DPMS"

in your Monitor section should suffice, but if it isn't working you may wish to try adding a section like the following:

Code:

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "blank time" "0"
    Option         "standby time" "0"
    Option         "suspend time" "0"
    Option         "off time" "0"
EndSection

Of course, change "0" to the length of time in minutes that you want. See `man xorg.conf` for more details. If it still doesn't work you could try running `xset +dpms` or some such thing and see what happens.

symatic · 06-01-2008, 11:15 PM

You may also try adding yourself/user to the 'power' group. Make sure you logout and then login as your user. The above suggestions should work, I have had DPMS issues with Xfce w/ my ATI card. This issue does not occur with KDE. It is an issue with xscreensaver. If worse comes to worse the ServerFlags generally do the trick. The Suspend and Standby options with the older drivers used to turn my computer off. That was real strange!!