Screen Blanking...

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Screen Blanking...
started by: Ohayden

Posted by Ohayden on June 04 2006,01:04

I'm in process of converting an older laptop to a digital picture frame and so far so good. The problem is that I'm using x and feh, since I didn't care too much for zgv. Anyhow, the problem is that no matter what I try, the screen keeps blanking after about 10 to 15 minutes. I've tried the following in .xinitrc:

Code Sample

xset s off
xset s noblank

Any other ideas?

Posted by cbagger01 on June 04 2006,05:52

Maybe your laptop BIOS has a power management setting.

See if you can get into your BIOS and disable it.

Posted by Ohayden on June 06 2006,00:50

Well... I had to recover the BIOS as I bought the laptop from ebay and the seller was smart enough to delete all the partitions (including the BIOS setup partition). After much searching/reading on the hp/compaq web site, I was able to get the BIOS setup program working again. I then turned off the power management and it STILL blanks the screen after 15 minutes exactly. So I resorted to my evil tactics of "just getting the job done" and came up with this script which will fake keyboard input:

flckeys.sh

Code Sample

#!/bin/bash
#############################################################
# Ohayden's Keyboard Faker to keep the screen from blanking
#############################################################
while [ 1 ]
do
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset led 3
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset -led 3
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset led 1
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset -led 1
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset led 2
/usr/X11R6/bin/xset -led 2

sleep 5m
done

Then I added it to ".xinitrc" as such:

Code Sample

/home/dsl/flckeys.sh &

To explain the code, all it does is use xset to mimic the caps lock, scroll lock, and the number lock. On my laptop, this script will flash them from left to right in sequence every 5 minutes. By doing so, the computer thinks someone pressed a key on the keyboard and will not blank to screen.

I hope this helps someone else. Enjoy.

Ohayden

Posted by arkroan on June 15 2006,11:28

I have a compaq armada 1580 dt . I could never figure out how the bios works in that thing.

I want to make it a digital frame as well and this script of yours is really a life savier...

Thank you Ohayden.

Posted by arkroan on June 27 2006,16:33

I have tried the script that Ohayden created but i get the following error:

Code Sample

Invalid argument. Error reading current LED setting. Maybe stdin is not a VT?

I am not using a virtual terminal, how can i make this work???

Posted by arkroan on June 27 2006,18:05

It seems I have no patience....

I have managed to get it work without the path:

xset led 1
xset -led 1

Sorry for the 3 posts in row..