Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

paranoos · 2004-09-03 19:29:33

Usually when I walk away from my computer, I shut the monitor off manually with the power button. However, the button is quite finicky, and I'd rather have an entry in my root window to shut off my monitor.

So I figured out that the xset program can do this. 'xset dpms force off'

But... all this does is make the screen go black. Once I move the mouse, the screen comes back to normal. 'force off' should shut the monitor down completely. I've also tried 'force sleep' and 'force standby'.

'xset q' reports that dpms is enabled. If i get the monitor status after I 'force off', it says the monitor is off, but it clearly is not.

I'm running the standard arch kernel26, with xorg, nptl, udev, hotplug. I'm not running xscreensaver, if that makes any difference.

Maybe I need to install a module? This worked at one point, and that's probably when I had my custom kernel with everything built right in. I just tried modprobing acpi, but it reported there was no such device. and it couldn't find an apm module.

I'm running modern hardware, so I don't think there's a need for 'acpi=force'.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your suggestions

paranoos · 2004-09-05 17:19:13

a bit of an update ...

i tried switching to xfree86, that didn't work. i also tried using xscreensaver and set it up for power management. still no luck.

IceRAM · 2004-09-05 17:46:54

I am also interested in this subject.
My monitor behaves the same way. I'd like it to really turn it off but it just blanks. I blamed my old computer (p3 @ 450MHz / intel 440BX chipset + 1999(or 1997) BIOS) but this (1) might not work as we expect or (2) need some extra BIOS settings.

Has anyone succeded really turning off the monitor with "xset dmps force off"?

paranoos · 2004-09-05 21:10:09

heh well first of all, i have a brand new athlon 3000+ machine, running on an asus motherboard, and I've used power management on hardware older than yours.

According to dmesg, ACPI is enabled, meaning the BIOS supports this feature.

I've run xscreensaver with power management on here before, and it would shut the monitor of. As I said in my last post, this method doesn't work now.

I don't want to point fingers, but I think that perhaps there's a broken package preventing this from working... most likely kernel26 2.6.8.1. Perhaps if we can get some feedback from users for whom this IS working, we can figure out what the problem actually is.

kakabaratruskia · 2004-09-05 21:45:48

I had the same problem, and fixed it by adding dpms to my xorg.conf.

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier   "Monitor0"
       Option "dpms"
### Uncomment if you don't want to default to DDC:
#
    HorizSync    31.5 - 79.0
#    VertRefresh  40.0 - 150.0
EndSection

paranoos · 2004-09-05 21:56:54

wow, that did it. I wonder why it worked before, with the exact same xorg.conf? ... especially since xset q reported that dpms was in fact enabled.

thanks for your help!

pelle.k · 2006-12-08 02:38:04

especially since xset q reported that dpms was in fact enabled

Yeah... I even did a 'xset +dpms' and it still wouldn't work! The "option" in xorg was the magic word though.
Thanks for pointing out the (not) obvious

Arch Linux

#1 2004-09-03 19:29:33

Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

#2 2004-09-05 17:19:13

Re: Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

#3 2004-09-05 17:46:54

Re: Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

#4 2004-09-05 21:10:09

Re: Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

#5 2004-09-05 21:45:48

Re: Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

#6 2004-09-05 21:56:54

Re: Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

#7 2006-12-08 02:38:04

Re: Forcing the monitor to shut off -- fixed!

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