Using Gnome and F7, all screensaver and pm disabled. still blanks after 10 minutes!!

SideshowMel · #1 27th July 2007, 05:35 PM

Even if I disable the screen saver completely, turn off all power management functions, and make sure the power is plugged in, I still can't watch movies. As you may have gathered from my title, the screen blanks and the workstation locks after 10 minutes. It truly makes it impossible to watch a movie, and I always need to reboot into Windoze.

by the way, one other feature I've noticed in Windoze is that I can turn the laptop monitor display off while still leaving the S-Video out on. Not sure how to do this in Fedora, but it isn't as big of a problem as the screen blanking.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks. I am currently running kernel 2.6.21-1.3228.fc7, and I am going to skip 2.6.22.1-27.fc7 completely until the new kernel is released due to several issues (suspend, wireless).

pete_1967 · #2 27th July 2007, 05:50 PM

Check that the monitor doesn't have its own power-save features enabled (if it has any) and also if power save features are set in your BIOS.

***Hlingler*** · #3 27th July 2007, 06:27 PM

Hello:

IIRC, I've seen several posts very much like this recently, having to do with some setting(s) in xorg.conf. A search here will probably get you the fix.

V

EDIT: http://forum.fedoraforum.org/forum/s...g+screen+blank

SideshowMel · #4 27th July 2007, 06:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pete_1967

Check that the monitor doesn't have its own power-save features enabled (if it has any) and also if power save features are set in your BIOS.

No power save feature in BIOS

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hlingler

Hello:

IIRC, I've seen several posts very much like this recently, having to do with some setting(s) in xorg.conf. A search here will probably get you the fix.

V

EDIT: http://forum.fedoraforum.org/forum/s...g+screen+blank

that post is for KDE... is that going to be a problem?

***Hlingler*** · #5 27th July 2007, 06:59 PM

Hello:

I saw that you are using GNOME, however, see Post #3 in the link above - xorg.conf is independent of the desktop. In this case, the important difference is ATI vs. nvidia, but you could try the changes to your xorg.conf (back-up first!) to see if that works for you.

Regards,
V

***Hlingler*** · #6 27th July 2007, 08:03 PM

Hello:

This link might help, too: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-...ing-blank.html

Regards,
Vince

SideshowMel · #7 27th July 2007, 10:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hlingler

Hello:

I saw that you are using GNOME, however, see Post #3 in the link above - xorg.conf is independent of the desktop. In this case, the important difference is ATI vs. nvidia, but you could try the changes to your xorg.conf (back-up first!) to see if that works for you.

Regards,
V

I do have an ATI... and I had to use Leigh123's downgrade Xorg instructions for X to work.

I made a backup copy of Xorg.conf, made the suggested changes in that other thread, and restarted. There don't appear to be any problems with loading X as a result. I'm not sure yet if it fixed the original problem, though. I will let you know.

SideshowMel · #8 27th July 2007, 11:16 PM

hmmm... ok so that worked... however:
now it doesn't blank or suspend (based on the Gnome Power Manager settings) after inactivity at all!

***Hlingler*** · #9 28th July 2007, 12:12 AM

Hm...I'm not sure how to get around this.

One other suggestion: It should be possible to edit those xorg.conf options to specify a long time before screen blanks. Example:

Code:

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "blank time" "180"
Option "standby time" "0"
Option "suspend time" "240"
Option "off time" "0"
EndSection

But I don't know what units (i.e., seconds? minutes? hours?) it's using. This example assumes minutes.

Good Luck,
V

marko · #10 28th July 2007, 01:08 AM

I've run into this too, sometimes I want to suspend/sleep the monitor RIGHT now.
So what I did was make some shell aliases to call the xset commands to do it
from a terminal window:

alias dpmsoff "xset -dpms"
alias dpmson "xset +dpms"
alias off "xset dpms force off"

alias standby "xset dpms force standby"
alias suspend "xset dpms force suspend"

(see the man page for xset for much more detail on those)

these are "T shell" aliases in my ~/.tcshrc file. I tend to use the last two
more often, they just force the monitor to suspend or standby but
leave the general dpms state alone.

Most Fedora users use bash shell which I don't like, but bash has similar alias support.
But basically xset -dpms is a very quick way to turn off dpms entirely. You can then watch your movie
and know it won't go to sleep. When you're done do ... :

xset +dpms

If you want to be a bit slicker, you can change the KDE command that's passed to
Linux when you launch your movie program via KDE's menu so that it calls the xset -dpms
call, then the movie program, then the xset +dpms. This way as long as you're starting the movie program from the
KDE start menu, you won't have to
remember to go back to dpms ON mode when the movie is done
(or forget to quit dpms when you start)

You'd do this by using the KDE Menu editor, then in the 'command' slot
for the movie program (say "totem") change this (see attached pic):

Code:

totem %U

to this

Code:

xset -dpms; totem %U; xset +dpms

(NOTE the semi colons must be there to separate commands logically)

I've tried this and it works. I confirmed it by starting totem after making that change and , then in a terminal
I ran "xset -q" to query the Xorg settings, those showed dpms was disabled, then immediately on
quiting Totem, the dpms was back enabled again.

Mark

SideshowMel · #11 28th July 2007, 04:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marko

I've run into this too, sometimes I want to suspend/sleep the monitor RIGHT now.
So what I did was make some shell aliases to call the xset commands to do it
from a terminal window:

alias dpmsoff "xset -dpms"
alias dpmson "xset +dpms"
alias off "xset dpms force off"

alias standby "xset dpms force standby"
alias suspend "xset dpms force suspend"

(see the man page for xset for much more detail on those)

these are "T shell" aliases in my ~/.tcshrc file. I tend to use the last two
more often, they just force the monitor to suspend or standby but
leave the general dpms state alone.

Most Fedora users use bash shell which I don't like, but bash has similar alias support.
But basically xset -dpms is a very quick way to turn off dpms entirely. You can then watch your movie
and know it won't go to sleep. When you're done do ... :

xset +dpms

If you want to be a bit slicker, you can change the KDE command that's passed to
Linux when you launch your movie program via KDE's menu so that it calls the xset -dpms
call, then the movie program, then the xset +dpms. This way as long as you're starting the movie program from the
KDE start menu, you won't have to
remember to go back to dpms ON mode when the movie is done
(or forget to quit dpms when you start)

You'd do this by using the KDE Menu editor, then in the 'command' slot
for the movie program (say "totem") change this (see attached pic):

Code:

totem %U

to this

Code:

xset -dpms; totem %U; xset +dpms

(NOTE the semi colons must be there to separate commands logically)

I've tried this and it works. I confirmed it by starting totem after making that change and , then in a terminal
I ran "xset -q" to query the Xorg settings, those showed dpms was disabled, then immediately on
quiting Totem, the dpms was back enabled again.

Mark

Dude... many thanks, but that's way beyond me! I don't even know the difference between a bash shell and whatever else you prefer. I think for now, I'm going to just work around it based on this thread. Someday I will revisit this and try your suggestions... I have to learn more first.

Not only that, this is a notebook, so when I want to suspend RIGHT NOW I just close the lid. (getting suspend to work at all was a real pain-in-the-butt, and I can't upgrade my kernel right now because the newest kernel doesn't suspend right for me.)

marko · #12 28th July 2007, 05:12 PM

Yeah, you can forget about the shell stuff. A "shell" is what's running when you have
a terminal window up and you type commands. It's possible for a linux user to
never even use it.
I'm just saying you can get movie playing to not suspend the display by just setting that xset command before and after running the movie program. The easy way was to use the menu editor to put
xset -dpms; movieplayer %U; xset +dpms

in the command slot for the program (the picture I attached before shows it better)
Mark

SideshowMel · #13 31st July 2007, 10:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by marko

Yeah, you can forget about the shell stuff. A "shell" is what's running when you have
a terminal window up and you type commands. It's possible for a linux user to
never even use it.
I'm just saying you can get movie playing to not suspend the display by just setting that xset command before and after running the movie program. The easy way was to use the menu editor to put
xset -dpms; movieplayer %U; xset +dpms

in the command slot for the program (the picture I attached before shows it better)
Mark

Yeah I know what a shell is, but I don't know there was anything other than bash. Thanks for the help!