[SOLVED] Screen goes black after ~20mins

[AnotherUser]

Hello,

I'm running KDE MiniMe 2012.08 on a Dell Inspiron I5R laptop. It is fully updated in Synaptic and running 3.2.18-pclos2.pae.bfs kernel. Everything works fine except for one annoying behavior. When I watch online streaming video content (presumably using flash), my screen goes blank after about 20 minutes of not touching the keyboard or mouse.

I have checked to make sure that my KDE power savings settings (Configure Your Desktop --> Hardware --> Power Management) are not turning my monitor off in both powered and battery mode. I also made sure that my KDE screensaver is turned off (Configure Your Desktop --> Hardware --> Display and Monitor --> Screen Saver). I have even make sure that my BIOS is up to date. What else can be turning off my screen?

[AnotherUser]

at the risk of bumping this post, I am surprised that no one has chimed in yet. Are there really no suggestions?

[Texstar]

open a konsole terminal and type xset -dpms and see if that works or not.

[AnotherUser]

open a konsole terminal and type xset -dpms and see if that works or not.

Wow - a word of wisdom from Texstar himself! I have to admit it, you were right on the money.

For the sake of betterment of the community, here's what this all means (based on my newly found knowledge mostly driven by http://www.shallowsky.com/linux/x-screen-blanking.html). Apparently, some power settings and screensaver settings are driven by X, rather than any application (i.e. KDE) running on top of X. To find out what those settings are currently set for, all I did was run xset -q and found that Display Power Management Signalin, better known as DPMS, was indeed enabled. Running the command xset -dpms turns off DPMS. Running xset +dpms turns it back on. And indeed, when I turn off DPMS on my system, then my screen no longer goes blank when I watch online content.

P.S. Interestingly enough, DPMS settings appear to be automatically re-enabled whenever power is applied/removed to the laptop.

[Nish]

I developed the same problem after the last big KDE update.  I have a desktop and use Caffeine to stop my screensaver (which it did and was still doing) but something else is blacking out the screen when I was watching streaming content too.  My desktop is my TV, I don't have cable TV so I do a lot watching streaming content.  After checking all the power save settings I gave up and just put my mouse on the sofa cushion next to me so every any little shift of my body would move the cursor

Going to give this a try, a lot easier.

[agmg]

Also check if you have kde4-noblank installed...

[AnotherUser]

Also check if you have kde4-noblank installed...

Just checked - kde4-noblank is installed

[Nish]

well, xset -dpms works for me but only until the next boot, then has to be reset too on this desktop.  I checked and do not have kde4-noblank installed.  Can try it but would would also like to  find a way to have dpms shut off for good

[AnotherUser]

well, xset -dpms works for me but only until the next boot ...

I think this is understandable. There is something in power up, power down, power plug-in, power unplug which resets the setting back to DPMS=on. One thing you can do is create a simple shell script with "xset -dpms" and place it in the autostart directory.

[Just17]

Make a backup of the /home/user/.kde4/Autostart/noblank.sh  file

Edit it to have the following as contents

Code: [Select]

#!/bin/sh

xset s noexpose
xset s noblank
xset s 0 0

xset s off
xset dpms 0 0 0
xset -dpms
See if that helps.

[Texstar]

well, xset -dpms works for me but only until the next boot, then has to be reset too on this desktop.  I checked and do not have kde4-noblank installed.  Can try it but would would also like to  find a way to have dpms shut off for good

The xset -dpms was just to test if that was the reason for the original posters problem. To turn it off for good, try to edit as root /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the DPMS line to false and reboot.

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName "ATI Radeon HD 2000 and later (radeon/fglrx)"
    Driver "fglrx"
    Option "DPMS" "false"
EndSection

[sling-shot]

Created a wiki page at http://www.pclinuxoshelp.com/index.php/Screen_blanks_after_sometime

[Nish]

well, xset -dpms works for me but only until the next boot, then has to be reset too on this desktop.  I checked and do not have kde4-noblank installed.  Can try it but would would also like to  find a way to have dpms shut off for good

The xset -dpms was just to test if that was the reason for the original posters problem. To turn it off for good, try to edit as root /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the DPMS line to false and reboot.

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc"
    BoardName "ATI Radeon HD 2000 and later (radeon/fglrx)"
    Driver "fglrx"
    Option "DPMS" "false"
EndSection

Thank you, Texstar - mine was a little different but I got the idea.

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 6100 to GeForce 360"
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "DPMS" "false"
    Option "DynamicTwinView" "false"
    Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals"
EndSection

PS - I will perhaps shortly be asking a really stupid question about updating nowadays.  Please be gentle - I had a bad accident and was very hurt and now unemployed (IOW I am a pathetic Train Wreck, take pity on me if I have not been following the latest in PCLinuxOS and my forum searching skills suck moose).  Perhaps OP will come to my damsel in distressness I was intently watching for his return 

Thanks again

[DeBaas]

To find another (for me) working solution as on:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,112662.msg961812.html#msg961812

my /home/[user]/.kde4/Autostart/noblank.sh

#!/bin/sh
xset s 0 0
xset dpms 0 0 0

Just for you to check and possible add to the WiKi