On 07/14/2011 01:41 PM, Dag Wieers wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Jul 2011, Michael Jones wrote:
>
>>    Despite this radically overkill approach, the screen still turns 
>> off after around half an hour. I suspect that the reason is the 
>> monitors built in power saving features, which I believe should be 
>> prevented by the "xset -dpms" command, but doesn't appear to be.
>>
>>    Does anyone have any ideas? Is there something that can be added 
>> to the xorg configuration to prevent the screen from turning off, 
>> perhaps?
>
> We have been investigating this somewhere in 2008 for a conference 
> (FrOSCon) with the aim of providing 2 large conference screens 
> directing people to various talks at the entrance (a bit like as you 
> can see at airports), but also for the various presentation computers 
> in the various rooms.
>
> Obviously, the first year having to provide input every hour to make 
> sure they didn't blank was not very much appeciated. (But hey, 
> CentOS+ELRepo actually worked on the hardware, in contract to latest 
> Fedora and Ubuntu) So our LiveUSB solution that was not designed for 
> it, was not tested for this kind of use.
>
> The next year I came up with the following configuration (tested on 
> CentOS 5), which worked:
>
>  ### Disable screensaver start
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> bool  /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/screensaver/start_screensaver false
>  ### Disable screensaver locking
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t bool 
> /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_enabled false
>  ### Disable screensaver altogether
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t bool 
> /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled false
>  ### Increase screensaver idle time (max 2h, we set to 10h)
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t bool 
> /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_delay 600
>  ### Disable DPMS screen blank on AC and battery
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> string /apps/gnome-power-manager/ac_dpms_sleep_method off
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> string /apps/gnome-power-manager/battery_dpms_sleep_method off
>  ### Disable Computer sleep when on AC and battery
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> integer /apps/gnome-power-manager/ac_sleep_computer 0
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> integer /apps/gnome-power-manager/battery_sleep_computer 0
>  ### Disable Display sleep when on AC and battery
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> integer /apps/gnome-power-manager/ac_sleep_display 0
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t 
> integer /apps/gnome-power-manager/battery_sleep_display 0
>  ### Disable Dim-on-Idle
>  gconftool-2 --direct 
> --config-source=xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults -s -t bool 
> /apps/gnome-power-manager/dim_on_idle false
>
>  ### Other noblank features
>  cat <<EOF >/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/noblank.sh
>  echo "Disable screen blanking for $TERM and $DISPLAY"
>  setterm -powersave off -blank 0
>  #xset -dpms
>  xset dpms 0 0 0
>  xset s noblank
>  xset s off
>  EOF
>  chmod 0755 /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/noblank.sh
>
> It is quite possible some things are redundant, but once it worked I 
> wasn't very interested to find those items that were not helping the 
> cause ;-)
>
> Hope this works for you. Do let me know if you can improve this scheme !
>
> Kind regards,

This does indeed work! I'm going to hand it off to the rest of our 
software staff for integration and any necessary improvements. If I hear 
of any changes that seem useful to others, I'll certainly pass them along.

Thanks a bunch!

Michael Jones
Software Engineer
CyberMetrix
2860 N National Rd #A
Columbus, IN 47201-4746 USA
812-375-5868