[Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

MrHritik · 2018-07-15 19:43:35

My DPMS is set to turn off display after 300 seconds of inactivity. But while I'm using a different WM on a different DISPLAY (tty or X), when the clock ticks out for the first one, the screen goes blank.
How can I make it start the timeout clock when there's no interaction on any of the ttys.

EDIT: It's not dpms but the screen saver who is the culprit. Please see #5
EDIT: A solution has been proposed here

Last edited by MrHritik (2018-11-24 10:05:30)

seth · 2018-07-15 19:58:03

Can you please elaborate on the setup? The X11 server should™ not be able to control the output if it's not the active TTY.

Sure this is DPMS and not some backlight control?
Sure it's not a wayland session?
Any VNC/virtualbox/etc. involved?
Does

xset dpms 10 20 30

impact the behavior (monitor turning off after 10-30 seconds now)?
Can you reproduce this w/o a desktop session (ie. a naked xserver, maybe running just an xterm)?

Please paste an xorg log.

MrHritik · 2018-07-15 20:02:54

Turns out it was not DPMS but the screensaver turned on by xset.
Setting

xset s 10

and switching to another tty results in screen going off in 10 seconds.

Last edited by MrHritik (2018-07-15 20:03:38)

seth · 2018-07-15 20:32:23

xset s off

I'm though stunned that it impacts inactive TTYs
(currently on the nvidia blob and can't test, since apparently nvidia wasn't interested in implementing this)

MrHritik · 2018-07-15 20:42:51

So, here I am now.
I have xss-lock installed. It has a notifier command to launch at screensaver timeout. I had configured it to use the default provided dim-screen.sh for a nice dim screen.
The script (dim-screen.sh) uses xbacklight to step up/down brightness. Now, xbacklight changes the backlights for ALL ttys.
Though the man suggests using -display to specify the display but it doesn't work. It changes the backlight of all ttys regardless of their DISPLAY.

Last edited by MrHritik (2018-07-15 20:43:52)

seth · 2018-07-15 21:41:23

Ahhhh, back in the realms of sanity where everything makes beautifully sense.

There's only one backlight per monitor, the "-display" parameter controls which X11 server to contact to control it and the server will just talk to the backlight device, ignoring its tty status.

You could pimp the script to compare

ps -p `pidof Xorg` -o tty --no-headers

and

cat /sys/class/tty/tty0/active

or so.

(Yes, one shall not parse "ps", but the tty is bit-encoded in /proc/*/stat and it's late)

MrHritik · 2018-07-22 16:44:24

Ended up with comparing $XDG_VTNR and /sys/class/tty/tty0/active.
Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-07-15 19:43:35

[Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

#2 2018-07-15 19:58:03

Re: [Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

#3 2018-07-15 20:02:54

Re: [Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

#4 2018-07-15 20:32:23

Re: [Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

#5 2018-07-15 20:42:51

Re: [Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

#6 2018-07-15 21:41:23

Re: [Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

#7 2018-07-22 16:44:24

Re: [Solved] DPMS screen timeout when using another TTY

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