[Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

tick1020 · 2019-04-28 20:49:26

So I'm hoping this is just something I don't understand properly and someone here can help me. I'm trying to do something somewhat unorthodox using both Xscreensaver and Xorg "blanking" (if this is possible). But for some reason, I can't seem to get Xorg blanking to work properly in the first place. Essentially the issue is the "Blanktime" setting just turns off my monitor (like "off" or "standby" would). It doesn't blacken the screen (and leave it powered on) as it has in the past for me and as I understand, it's supposed to. Even manually with "xset s activate" it just turns all my monitors off/standby. I've tried disabling and uninstalling Xscreensaver to see if that had something to do with it, but that doesn't make a difference. And xset q says that "yes" I still prefer "blanking". I can't seem to find any information on this issue anywhere either. So I'm just at a loss as to where to go from here to troubleshoot this. I can't find anything about blanking "not working" anywhere online.

Ultimately what I would like to happen is; if I'm idle for 5 minutes my screensaver starts AND THEN, I would like to have my screen go blank after 30 minutes (25 more minutes) stopping the screensaver. Just black, not in any sort of power saving mode (leaving my monitors on). I had thought that I could probably accomplish this with a combination of Xscreensaver (via its own daemon) and Xorg blanking via my xorg.conf ("BlankTime" "30").

At first, I thought I might be able to simply do this with Xscreensaver alone using it's "cycle" option, but i don't think this is possible; if I'm wrong though I'd be happy to learn it... And then I'd thought about trying to use a different screensaver application to accomplish this also and just script in "xscreensaver -deactivate" once the second one has started (or I get blanking to work, preferably...) using my idle time (xprintidle). I looked into xdg-screensaver a little bit... But I can't seem to find much information on it either, other than the man page. If anyone has any helpful thoughts or explanations or some way to accomplish my goal in a different way, I'd appreciate it. Also I was wondering if anyone knew if Xscreensaver uses the same idle timer as Xorg, and if I get this to work how can I script in heartbeat commands for video players, can I just use "xset s reset"?

Last edited by tick1020 (2019-05-18 15:57:44)

Mortimer Houghton · 2019-05-01 19:18:39

Maybe you should post the contents of your xorg config. Does it look like the example here:

Display Power Management Signaling - Setting up DPMS in X

seth · 2019-05-01 20:44:02

He explicitly doesn't want DPMS (for whatever "unorthodox" reason)

Behavioral test:

xset -dpms
s blank
sleep 1; xset s activate (otherwise the keystroke will immediately unblank the screen

You could then eg. use different instances of xautolock to do stuff™ (including using eg. feh to display a fullscreen picture) after time™.

Since this sounds like an xy-problem, what is the purpose and esp. why do you not want to use DPMS (since it's apparently working)?

tick1020 · 2019-05-17 02:48:31

My Xorg config is just simply,

Section "ServerLayout"
	Option 		"OffTime" "0"
	Option 		"Suspendtime" "0"
	Option 		"BlankTime" "30"
        Option 	   	"StandbyTime" "0"
EndSection

And yes i do have

Section "Monitor"
    Option         "DPMS" "true"

as well.

The only real problem is that dpms "blanking" isn't actually blanking my screens it's turning them off completely. When I run "sleep 1; xset s activate" my third monitor (that is actually a tv connected via HDMI) shuts off completely, forcing me to use my remote to turn it back on again AND switch back to the correct input (EVERY TIME DPMS "blanks" my screen. This is VERY frustrating) and THAT is the only reason I "don't" want to use dpms, because it isn't just blanking my screen, it's allowing it to shut off. If someone can explain to me how to make dpms JUST blank the screen and show a black image I would be perfectly happy to use it the way I already have it set up to work.

What I want is for all of my monitors to simply blank and hide my screen 30 minutes after my screensaver starts as a slightly better power saving mode with no GPU usage... And to appear to a casual passerby that the computer is off. But I still want to be able to quickly resume... (on all of my monitors, including the tv... and not have to turn it on and swap back to the correct input...) I've decided to simply script this behaviour in using xscreensaver alone, I suppose. I would actually prefer to just use DPMS "blanking" alongside my screensaver. The "unorthodox" situation is simply that I want to use both a screensaver first and then blank the screen later, but NOT allow the screens to shut off.

Sorry if my original post wasn't more clear. But I just didn't understand why xorg blanking is allowing my monitor's to enter into a power saving state in the first place. In the xset man page it explains that this function is hardware dependant:

... The 'blank' flag sets the preference to blank the video (if the hardware can do so) rather than display a background pattern, while 'noblank' sets  the
preference to display a pattern rather than blank the video. ...

Does this mean the monitor or the gpu? or both? I can't seem to find an explanation. That's why I tried to ask here. Although in a roundabout way I suppose.

Sorry, I've been out of town and I forgot about my post for a while.

seth · 2019-05-17 06:58:12

DPMS doesn't do blank, it tells the output to take a nap.
The blanking statement means that the crtc will (ideally) stop to produce output - your monitor might misinterpret that as "no signal" and nap out.

xset s noblank; sleep 1; xset s activate

will show an ugly pattern rather than blanking and you'll have to go w/o any DPMS at all (because that's gonna make your monitor to pass out)

Essentially what you want to do (?) is to start a fancy animation after n minutes and then kill that animation and eg. i3lock or slock after n+x minutes.

1. Disable DPMS, disable blanking
2. Use xautolock and bind it to sth. like

mpv -fs /path/to/video.mp4 [-loop n]
slock

This will play a fullscreen video for n loops and then run slock (very basic screenlocker, colors can only be configured by building it yoursel. i3lock would be a more fancy alternative)
For videos, eg. search youtube for animated wallpapers and use youtube-dl to download them.

tick1020 · 2019-05-18 15:56:21

Thanks, Seth that makes a little sense. I guess I just misunderstood the way blanking works nowadays post CRT monitors... I just really thought that I've had it simply blank my screen on laptop installs and other times I've made use of it. I will definitely look into xautolock and the other things you suggested. My plan was to attempt to script in a way to get xscreensaver to accomplish what I want. By simply, stopping it (after the 25 minutes of it running a true screensaver); then changing out the config file to simply show a black screen and then reactivating it. Since It has that capability built in.

I suppose I'll mark this as solved then. Thanks

Arch Linux

#1 2019-04-28 20:49:26

[Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

#2 2019-05-01 19:18:39

Re: [Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

#3 2019-05-01 20:44:02

Re: [Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

#4 2019-05-17 02:48:31

Re: [Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

#5 2019-05-17 06:58:12

Re: [Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

#6 2019-05-18 15:56:21

Re: [Solved] Screen Blanking not working / Screensaver Questions

Board footer