Monitor turns off regardless of settings

[Zeikcied]

I've had this problem going back to KDE 4.0. After maybe five or ten minutes of no activity, KDE sets the monitor to power-save mode. Now I have my Screensaver turned off and I have my Power Management settings set so that it shouldn't turn off the monitor, but it does anyway.

Now my ~/.kde folder is pretty old, and some files may date back to the KDE3.5 series. So I don't know if it's an old KDE3.5 config file that's causing trouble or if it's some other bug. I don't really remember if this happened in KDE3.5 or not.

I also use the official NVIDIA driver, if that makes a difference. I looked in the nvidia-settings and I didn't see any power save options. This happened on my old computer and my new one, so I know it's software related.

I'm asking about it now because I just recently found out that joypad input doesn't count as activity, so my screen kept going out while I was playing a game.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Monitor turns off regardless of settings

A temporary work around is to use xset.

Assuming a single monitor,

xset q will show you your current settings. At the bottom it will likely say

DPMS is Enabled
Monitor is On

xset -dpms will turn off screen power-saving and xset +dpms will turn it back on.

I suspect you're not using a /etc/X11/xorg.conf file? If you are, add Option "DPMS" "false" to your monitor section.

If you're not you can add the above command to Xsession or rc.local or bashrc (one of them should work!).

If you prefer to have DPMS most of the time, you caould add the above commands to a startup/shutdown script for a specific program or create desktop short cuts to the on/off commands.

I use the opposite function - I have xset force dpms off set to the "sleep" media button on my keyboard so I can dim my monitors immediately when I rise from my desk.

[Zeikcied]

Re: Monitor turns off regardless of settings

Thanks. DPMS was set to On, so I turned it off. I would have thought that the Power Management settings (or some other KDE setting) would have control over that.

I do apparently have an xorg.conf file in /etc/X11, even though this is a fresh install of Kubuntu 10.10 64-bit. It's a bit barren, though. Only 16 lines according to Dolphin. So I don't know how much it's actually doing. I don't know if I should put the DPMS setting in there or in the other files you mentioned.

I don't like having the power save function on because when I'm not at my desk I'll turn off my monitor myself. Just hit the power button. So when I leave the monitor on, odds are I want it to stay on.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Monitor turns off regardless of settings

Since you have the xorg.conf that's the place to put it (use the Option line above). That should ive you the results you're after.

In case you didn't already know how to do this the quickest way:

Open a konsole (terminal) window.

Enter kdesudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf in the terminal

Add Option "DPMS" "off" to your monitor section. Notice it's slightly different than what I suggested above and include the quotes.

After you add the Option you can restart X without rebooting. Just type sudo service kdm restart in a terminal.

Once you're back in the GUI, open the terminal again and verify DPMS is in fact off by typing xset -q.

There was a bug awhile ago that would ignore the DPMS option in xorg.conf. If this is still the case post back and we'll look at other options.

[Zeikcied]

Re: Monitor turns off regardless of settings

My xorg.conf doesn't have a Monitor section. I have Screen (with Identifier and DefaultDepth), Module (with Load), and Device (with Identifier, Driver, and Option).

[skunk]

Re: Monitor turns off regardless of settings

xset -dpms

[oshunluvr]

Re: Monitor turns off regardless of settings

Here's an example

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier   "Monitor0"
  VendorName   "Unknown"
  ModelName   "DELL 1905FP"
  HorizSync    30.0 - 81.0
  VertRefresh   56.0 - 76.0
  Option     "DPMS" "off"
EndSection