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#1 2008-03-26 12:24:20

meo
Member
From: Hong Kong
Registered: 2006-11-10
Posts: 34
Website

Force Backlight Off?

Hi,

I have a Toshiba Satellite A215 [AMD Turion64x2, 2gb ram,ATI Graphics]
I am trying to configure linux to use the smallest amount of battery as possible.  This is going really well, and I have surpassed Vista by 30mins, with a special program on vista to force the monitor to be turned off (apparantly the monitor uses the most amount of power on a laptop).

Is there a way to force the monitor to turn off for a laptop? I can close the lid, but this isn't convinient if i'm constantly opening and clsoing.  it's probably bad for the laptop too.

I'm sure there is a way to do it, I just don't know how.  I've tried following the files in /etc/acpi.. to find out whats making it turn off, but that didn't lead anywhere; just to the laptop-mode stuff.

So overall, question:
How can I force my laptop's monitor / screen to turn off, not just lower brightness?

Anyone?


[img]http://www.meosoft.net/OldSite/images/MatrixSig.png[/img]

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#2 2008-03-26 12:35:11

zyghom
Member
From: Poland/currently Africa
Registered: 2006-05-11
Posts: 432
Website

Re: Force Backlight Off?

would worth to browse "power saving" sources if you are using such (i.e. kpowersave, gnome-power-saving) - should not be difficult at all


Zygfryd Homonto

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#3 2008-03-26 13:01:25

dyscoria
Member
Registered: 2008-01-10
Posts: 1,007

Re: Force Backlight Off?

This should do it:

sleep 1 && xset dpms force off

You could put it as an alias in your .bashrc (alias screenoff='sleep 1 && xset dpms force off') or bind a key to it to make it easier.

Also, scroll to the bottom of /etc/rc.sysinit and change the value of this line to however many minutes. I'm thinking that it only blanks the screen though rather than turning it off:

# Screen blanks after 15 minutes idle time
/usr/bin/setterm -blank 15

Last edited by dyscoria (2008-03-26 13:09:04)


flack 2.0.6: menu-driven BASH script to easily tag FLAC files (AUR)
knock-once 1.2: BASH script to easily create/send one-time sequences for knockd (forum/AUR)

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#4 2008-03-26 14:08:09

brebs
Member
Registered: 2007-04-03
Posts: 3,742

Re: Force Backlight Off?

On my laptop, I put in ~/.xprofile

#!/bin/bash
xset dpms 0 0 120

To turn the screen & backlight off after 2 minutes.

Also, get rid of these packages, which interfere with turning the *backlight* off:

pacman -R gnome-screensaver xscreensaver gnome-power-manager

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#5 2008-03-26 14:11:55

dyscoria
Member
Registered: 2008-01-10
Posts: 1,007

Re: Force Backlight Off?

I would recommend slock (it's in the repos) as your screensaver if you still want one after getting rid of what brebs suggested. Its small, simple and not fancy (just a black screen) but you can bind the command 'slock' to say ctrl-alt-L and you have a nice way to lock the screen that doesn't interfere at all with power management.


flack 2.0.6: menu-driven BASH script to easily tag FLAC files (AUR)
knock-once 1.2: BASH script to easily create/send one-time sequences for knockd (forum/AUR)

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#6 2008-03-26 14:22:52

SiD
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2006-09-21
Posts: 729

Re: Force Backlight Off?

You have an ATI graphics card.
So you could try radeontool from AUR.

I don't remember exactly, but I think you have to run it as root or set the 's' bit on the binary.

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#7 2008-03-26 19:29:27

ph0tios
Member
Registered: 2008-02-23
Posts: 126

Re: Force Backlight Off?

After my laptop idles for a certain amount of time the screen completely shuts off. I'm not using anything special.

But I don't see why you don't just use something like s2ram(it's in AUR)...why exactly do you need everything else running at full power with the screen off? You can do s2m --force --radeontool...the extra command getting rid of the strange white lines when you resume from s2m. I find it to be one of the best ways to save power if I'm not using my laptop.

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#8 2008-03-26 19:57:21

TheBodziO
Member
From: Dukla, Poland
Registered: 2006-07-28
Posts: 230
Website

Re: Force Backlight Off?

dyscoria mentioned using /usr/bin/setterm to set blanking interval. If you're using console often and you want to turn off your lcd display completely after specified period of time you can use:

/usr/bin/setterm -blank 3 -powersave powerdown

It works for me as I'm using lcd panel plugged to my home box.

I think that it would be better to put this code in /etc/rc.local since /etc/rc.sysinit is subject to change with system updates. It's true that won't be changed without your permission yet I remember that a couple of times I've lost some of my settings because I've been updating my configs without paying atention to the fact that I've modified them previously smile. Since then I'm putting my settings in places that are not specific parts of distro.


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