Laptops :: Need blank screen / screen saver function ON

I checked the bios (Phoenix bios) and found that the ACPI was enabled. I disabled it and was still able to set the power management options in xscreensaver.

It wasn't until a google search found this:

Quote

Power Management Enabled
Whether the monitor should be powered down after a period of inactivity.

If this option is grayed out, it means your X server does not support the XDPMS extension, and so control over the monitor's power state is not available.

If you're using a laptop, don't be surprised if this has no effect: many laptops have monitor power-saving behavior built in at a very low level that is invisible to Unix and X. On such systems, you can typically only adjust the power-saving delays by changing settings in the BIOS in some hardware-specific way.

Then I remembered that the machine that has the power management working is also the machine I installed xfree86.dsl on. See MyDSL....System....xfree86.dsl.

So the bottom line is that the x server dsl runs doesn't look like it supports power management through xscreensaver. You could switch to xfree86 but that comes with it's own set of headaches (and some nice displays...). If you go the xfree86 route, search the forums. Plenty have done it before you.

On a side note... I haven't tried this but maybe you have. The "xset" command. In a terminal window enter: xset --help

"xset dpms 0 0 600" is suppose to turn off the monitor after 10 mintes (600 seconds). At least that's what a google search said.... and you know the internet is always right. My guess is that the dsl x server may not work with xset, but give it a try.

original here.