[vox-tech] DPMS Problem?

[Rob Rogers]

On Wed, Jan 12, 2005 at 07:56:14AM -0800, John Wojnaroski wrote:
> I've been trying to disable the power down feature of my monitor with zero
> success...
> 
> Went over the BIOS (shuttle MO), disabled the power saving options,
> XF86Config file contains the "Options DPMS" line (Nvidia card), added the
> line 'xset s noblank' to a shell script that starts the program. After about
> 15 minutes of zero activity the screen blanks
> 
> What did a miss or forget to add?

There are two things that control whether the screen goes dark, both of
which you mentioned. First is the screensaver, which doesn't by default
power down the monitor, but will make the screen go black. I don't think
setting "xset s noblank" does anything for you, because I believe the
default is to not blank the screen when the screensaver kicks in.  The
other thing controlling screen blanking is DPMS. The "Options DPMS" line
is turning DPMS on. Removing that line should fix your problem.

But before you change that and restart X, you might want to just double
check that the following fixes it for you. Try running

xset -dpms

which should turn DPMS off until X is restarted again.

Also, even if the screensaver is set to noblank, it will still kick in
and display whatever it's set pattern is (all black screen is default),
without turning the monitor off, unless you turn the screensaver off.
The way to do that is to run

xset s off

HTH,
Rob