How to disable monitor shutdown

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: How to disable monitor shutdown
started by: gcosta

Posted by gcosta on Nov. 07 2005,12:43

Hello people,

I have a little doubt, and i hope you can help me. I am running a modified version of DSL in a kiosk pc showing advertisements, so it needs to have the monitor on at all times, even when idle. There is any way to disable the blank screen the monitor goes to after a few minutes? by the way, i'm running on XFree86, if it makes any difference.

thanks in advance.

Posted by chickenman on Nov. 07 2005,14:17

Firstly I'd like to admit that I know nothing about any of this.

But having read < http://damnsmalllinux.org/cgi-bin....t=9493; > it seems they viewed not having screensaver/shutoff as a problem, this may be recycled into a solution for you on the proviso that you'll run Xfbdev.

Thats my 2c anyway, hope it helps!

Oscar

Posted by gcosta on Nov. 07 2005,16:05

Quote (chickenman @ Nov. 07 2005,09:17)

Thanks for the advice, but since i am running on a lcd display, Xvesa and Xfbdev are out of question, i've tried and it doesn't work at all with the kdrive binaries. Anyway, i think that this feature can be disabled, i've researched the knoppix site and still can't find a way to disable it.
Thanks.

Posted by mikshaw on Nov. 07 2005,17:08

Try adding one of these to .xinitrc:
xset s off
or
xset s noblank

Posted by gcosta on Nov. 07 2005,22:28

thanks mikshaw, you hit the nail on the head, and i slapped myself for not remembering the xset command (i've used it once to lock the mouse on the kiosk pc.)

I simply added the following commands on .xinitrc:

xset s off #to disable the blank screensaver
xset -dpms #to disable the monitor dpms feature, like suspending, etc.

Posted by tatlow on Nov. 27 2005,20:43

One of the problems w/ these forums is stuff gets so lost. I added a reply to another post but I'll dup here cause I can't remember where I just added it.

For my digital picture frame I had the same issue so I solved it in two places thanks to advice from mikshaw

Posted by tatlow on Nov. 27 2005,20:45

Code Sample

for NUM in `seq 0 9`; do
setterm -term linux -blank 0 > /dev/tty$NUM 2> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -blank 0 > /dev/pts$NUM 2> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -powersave off > /dev/tty$NUM 2> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -powersave off > /dev/pts$NUM 2> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -powerdown 0 > /dev/tty$NUM 2> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -powerdown 0 > /dev/pts$NUM 2> /dev/null
done

And then in a script (/opt/bin/try_to_unblank.sh) I added the following [which aren't all supported by Xvesa but it worked]:

Code Sample

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mouse bs=1 count=10 &> /dev/null
echo > /dev/console &> /dev/null
echo > /dev/tty5 &> /dev/null

setterm -term linux -blank 0 &> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -powersave off &> /dev/null
setterm -term linux -powerdown 0 &> /dev/null

xset b off &> /dev/null

xset dpms off &> /dev/null
xset -dpms &> /dev/null

xset s length 0 &>/dev/null
xset s noblank &> /dev/null
xset s off &> /dev/null
xset -v &> /dev/null

In your ~dsl/.xinitrc file source this script:

. /opt/bin/try_to_unblank.sh

and 'viola... no blank for me