Screen is blanking out after x minutes.

[theAdmiral]

Screen is blanking out after x minutes. Don't know how to set it to not do that. Your help is appreciated.

[jamesph]

You mean to say that screen goes blank when you keep your computer idle for x minutes or is it like you are working and it goes blank during it.

[saravanan.2407]

Disable screensaver

[theAdmiral]

Again, I don't know how to set the screensaver to not blank out (including disabling it). How do I do that, please? I am running KDE.

---------- Post added at 12:45 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 12:44 PM CDT ----------


You mean to say that screen goes blank when you keep your computer idle for x minutes or is it like you are working and it goes blank during it.

It is blanking out after being idle for some time.

[BugRocks1]

In gnome:

System -> Preferrences -> Screensaver

Also

System -> Preferrences -> Power Management

The first one controls the screensaver part the second one controls the sleeping mode.

addition:

In KDE:

1. Does your DE allows you to configure sceensaver ? If so, disable it.
KDE-specific way to perform this :
- use 'System settings' -> 'Desktop' -> 'ScreenSaver' configuration dialog
2. Does your DE provides the way to configure DPMS ? If so, disable these features.
KDE-specific way to perform this :
- disable DPMS in the 'System settings' -> 'Display' -> 'Power control' configuration dialog ;
- do the following changes using 'System settings' -> 'Advanced' -> 'Power Management' configuration dialog :
a) disable 'Let PowerDevil manage screen powersaving' checkbox
b) change profile assignments for any system condition to the same profile (for example, 'Presentation' profile)
c) edit selected profile : go to the 'Screen' profile configuration section and disable 'Enable display power management' checkbox
3. In case of (1) or (2) is TRUE, logout from your DE and login back
4. "xset q" command reports that DPMS feature is disabled and screen saver timeout is zero ? If not, you need to find the DE-specific way to execute "xset -dpms; xset s 0 0;" command on startup of your DE.

source:

http://forums.opensuse.org/applications/430207-11-2-kde-4-3-unable-disable-display-power-management.html

addition:

The xset -q command works on Fedora 12, just tested and it should be able to do what the Suse users used on the quote above.

[jamesph]

I hope you have your answer. Furthermore if you ever need to disable screen saver password prompt
Click "K" > Control Center > Appearance & Themes > Screen Saver
Under Settings uncheck "Require password to stop"

[theAdmiral]

This is going to take some time to test. I am in the middle of something right now. Thank you for the generous guidance, and i will get back to you.

---------- Post added at 11:11 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 08:42 PM CDT ----------


I hope you have your answer. Furthermore if you ever need to disable screen saver password prompt
Click "K" > Control Center > Appearance & Themes > Screen Saver
Under Settings uncheck "Require password to stop"

You helped to solve my problem. There doesn't seem to be any issue anymore.

Thanks,

[theAdmiral]

False positive. I followed these instructions, went to the source, and rechecked for thoroughness, rebooted, and my screen is still blanking out. Any ideas are welcome.

Thank you kindly,

[jpollard]

I believe X has DPMS (I think it is) that blanks the video signal after a certain amount
of time of no activity enabled by default.

You can turn this off in a section of the xorg.conf file (It is in the Section "Monitor").
Since you do not want the default, you will likely have to create an xorg.conf file
and then modify it.

[theAdmiral]

Hmm. Sounds like work. Is there an easy way to do that, please?

Thanks,
theAdmiral

[BugRocks1]

You can do a dry run with xset.

Example:

xset s blank
xset s 300

blank, says to X that it wants blanking and 300 set the time in seconds(5 min)


Other options:

xset -dpms
xset dpms off
xset s noblank
xset s off

ps: the "s" option is "screensaver". The explanation for the xset options are in the link below and on the man(manual) pages.

source:
http://www.shallowsky.com/linux/x-screen-blanking.html
Also if you type "man xset" you will get the manual for that app and there is the "xset --help" that will give you some options.

As for configuring the X server:

First you need to know if your driver will accept parameters there is a tiny chance it won't or it uses a different syntax so to do that you type in the terminal "man [name of your driver]" and it should show you your options.

Example:

$man nv

If there is no documentation then you can try the developers webpage if it exists and finally the documentation for the xorg.conf.


Option BlankTime time
sets the inactivity timeout for the blank phase of the screensaver. time is in minutes. This is equivalent to the Xorg server's -s flag, and the value can be changed at run-time with xset(1). Default: 10 minutes.

There are other options on the page below.

Source:
http://linux.die.net/man/5/xorg.conf


Having fun:

sleep 1; xset dpms force off

Addition:

[theAdmiral]

I must apologize, but I do not find that post very helpful. What it boils down to is this: I have never had to go through all this crap to get my screen to stay lit before. Why the change all of a sudden?

Thanks,

[jpollard]

To my knowledge, DPMS has been available in X for years (since about X11 release 3
about 1989).

It does need to be supported by the video driver though. If the drivers you have
been using didn't support it, then it didn't happen.

[theAdmiral]

Dear Sir,

I have owned this laptop since October 2007, and at that time started toying with Kubuntu, then Fedora, to the point where I am primarily using Fedora on it. Never had any issue. Never had to go through any lengthy configuration, reading, disappointment before just to get my screen to stay lit, regardless of idle time. I think we are heading in the wrong direction with this.

Thanks,

[BugRocks1]

I must apologize, but I do not find that post very helpful. What it boils down to is this: I have never had to go through all this crap to get my screen to stay lit before. Why the change all of a sudden?

Thanks,

I can not tell you why, I'm a user not a developer for Fedora.

I'm sorry that I couldn't help more.

Addition:

You could file a bug report to bugzilla against the kernel and see if they solve the problem also :)

Cheers.

[jpollard]

I don't think it is a kernel issue - but an Xorg issue on the inability to easily turn
DPMS off during login - which might make it a kdm/gdm/xdm issue.

Something I just realized - DPMS should be able to be disabled when the X server is
started by specifying the "-dpms" in the /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers files...

I the default entry is:


:0 local /usr/bin/X :0


Try changing it to:


:0 local /usr/bin/X -dpms :0


DPMS is a power saving feature. Originally, it was designed to protect CRT
monitors from burnin, but now it is usefull for saving power.

[marko]

You could just go in System Settings in KDE and in there find "Power Management" and
turn off dpms, it's pretty quick to find in there.

[Lopov]

This here works for me:

xset -dpms s noblank

but does anyone know where to set it so I don't have to open up a terminal and type it every time I login?