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Topic: Need blank screen / screen saver function ON

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SomeGuyWithDSL Offline

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Posts: 27
Joined: June 2005

Posted: July 16 2005,01:30

I found several past threads answering how to turn the screen blanking function OFF, but I need to turn it ON. I'm on an old laptop that I fear hasn't got many hours left in the backlight. I have to use framebuffer mode, I don't know if that affects anything.

Anyway, I did a fairly normal frugal install and it's been running all afternoon without blanking the screen. Is there a way for me to activate such a function, or is there a package I can download to add it? Thanks.

newOldUser Offline

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Joined: Oct. 2004

Posted: July 16 2005,01:59

In MyDSL under APPS there's xscreensaverGTK but that might be overkill for what you need.

you add the line:
xscreensaver -nosplash&

before the fluxbox line in your /home/dsl/.xinitrc file to have it initialized at startup

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SomeGuyWithDSL Offline

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Posted: July 16 2005,17:37

Quote (newOldUser @ July 15 2005,21:59)

you add the line:
xscreensaver -nosplash&

Thanks for the advice. How long of a delay does this screensaver have by default? It's been about 15 minutes and it hasn't blanked yet.

**EDIT** Make that about 5 hours it's been running now. Is there another parameter I need to add to that line?

newOldUser Offline

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Joined: Oct. 2004

Posted: July 17 2005,12:41

After you download and install the xscreensaver and add the .xinitrc, then reboot.

open a terminal and do

ps -a

You should see xscreensaver running. If not then something is wrong with your install or with your modification of .xinitrc

Also remember that the xscreensaver.dsl must be in a location where it's picked up each time you reboot.

To see if it's an installation problem. Right-click the desktop to bring up the menu system. Under myDSL you should have a XScreensaver entry if it installed OK. If you click on that it will bring up the xscreensaver configuration screens. I really don't know what the default blank-out time is.

If the entry is on your menu but nothing happens when you click on it then it probably is something with your .xinitrc modification.

Try this... open a terminal and enter

xscreensaver

Do you see the splashscreen? If you're quick you can click the middle button that says "Prefs" and set your options. If you miss it try the entry in the menu again. It should work now that xscreensaver is running. If you get a "command not found" message then the program isn't installed.

You can control-c out of xscreensaver in the terminal window. When you do that your screensaver will be turned off, it will never come on. So you need to always keep it running in a terminal window or fix your entry in .xinitrc

You'll need to figure out why your entry in .xinitrc isn't working. Check the spelling and make sure that permissions are set correctly and that it's owned by user DSL.

--------------
======== Note =========
The DSL Forum Search default is 'OR'
If you search for "cat dog" you will get all "cat" posts and all "dog" posts.
If you search for "cat AND dog" you will only find results that contain BOTH "cat" and "dog"
Add '*' for wildcards, " cat* and dog* "

hawki

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Posts: 175
Joined: Jan. 2004

Posted: July 17 2005,12:46

Hi
I have tried several things to try to get screen blanking to work. If at a bash prompt you type

Xfbdev --help

you will see that starting it with the option -s followed by a number should get it set and working. This doesn't seem to have any effect on my machine. There is also a command called xset that should be able to set the blanking timeout. It also seems to have no effect.

I am starting to wonder if it was compiled with the screen blanking feature not enabled.

If you do get it to work please post the procedure.
Thanks

10 replies since July 16 2005,01:30

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