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July 2011

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From:
Mark Stodola <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mark Stodola <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:02:21 -0500
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Michael Jones wrote:
> 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
Just an observation, but depending on what you need displayed and 
interacted with, you could consider running a more trimmed WM or none at 
all.  This would drop all of the gconf settings and leave you with 
simply dealing with the xset/DPMS features of the X server.

-Mark

-- 
Mr. Mark V. Stodola
Digital Systems Engineer

National Electrostatics Corp.
P.O. Box 620310
Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA
Phone: (608) 831-7600
Fax: (608) 831-9591

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