Preventing Screen Power Saving.

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

Trying to stop the screen going black when there is no activity.

When my machines were operating on Dos, or Win XPe this was not a problem.
Now with Linux Mint Mate, nobody on the Mint site seems to be able to help.
The screen is in a production environment, and operators have to keep moving the touchpad to restore the screen.
Even with Screensaving enabled and set to 2 hours, the blackout happens after about 10 minutes.
It is the same monitor that I used in Dos & XPe.

What I have done sofar:
Disabled Screensaver
Disabled any power saving settings.
Searched and removed anything to do with Screen save.
Scrutinised the BIOS settings and set anything remotely related to safe settings or disabled.

So, now still the problem persists.
Does anyone have any ideas that may help here ?

The next step is to move the mouse pointer 1 pixel left, then 1 pixel right to see if that activity prevents
the black screen. If this is possible with FB, then I would love to see an example on how to do that.

Regards

[dkl]

what I typically had to do on Ubuntu-style systems:

- uninstall xscreensaver
- disable the whole "turn off display" or "automatically lock screen" etc. in the settings dialogs reachable via the desktop's main menu

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

dkl, thanks for the response.
Because my installs are on Compact Flash I can experiment and then simply re-write the disk.
I have un-installed anything that even mentions the word "screen" & or "saver" , including xscreensaver associated libraries etc,etc.

Still the same thing, and this time I timed it, and it is exactly 10 min of no activity.
Writing to the console (hidden from view) doesn't affect it.
The BIOS has nothing left to switch off.
The Power options are all disabled or set to "Never".

Will try to find what else I can uninstall that may affect it.

Regards

[caseih]

You're talking about the text-mode virtual console?

If so, this is probably your answer:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions ... xt-console

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

caseih, thanks for helping me once again.

None of those commands mentioned on that page will stick.
So, I navigated to /sys/module/kernel/parameters
and opened consoleblank. It had the value 600 (10 min) in it.
It wont allow me to save it once I edit it, due to permissions.
Opening it as administrator does not help.

Any idea as to how I can change the permissions on that file ?

Regards

EDIT: Managed to get the value 0 in it, but it still blanks after 10 min, after a reboot checked the value and it is still 0.

[caseih]

Did you try the setterm command to set blank to zero and also to disable power save? Or maybe just setterm -blank?

If all else fails you might have to recompile your kernel with blanking disabled, but surely one of the settings in the stack exchange link would do it.

Ignore anything in the stack exchange page that talks about modifying /etc/issue. The guy that suggested that doesn't understand what he's doing as that will have no affect on it.

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

caseih the setterm also has some oddities.
entering just setterm as admin you get all the possible commands.
One of them is -powersave , <on|vsync|hsync|powerdown|off>

setterm -powersave off
cannot (un)set powersave mode: Inappropriate ioctl for device

setterm -powerdown 0
bin char then [14;0]

Even without rebooting neither worked.
I have an unadulterated copy of the image, so will try with that, as I have uninstalled a lot.

Regards

[caseih]

Googling for that error message, I came across this thread. Dunno if it will help, but here it is:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2172974

Looks like you may just have to pass a boot parameter to the kernel that will disable this.

Add "consoleblank=0" to the kernel parameters in grub.

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

caseih thanks for the link, but I have spent the last 6 hours googling for a solution and found it.
Have a look at my last post here:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=203616

Regards

[caseih]

Ahh okay. I didn't know you were running in an X11 environment. You were talking like you were on the Linux virtual console, not a graphical desktop environment. Sorry for the confusion.

[Dinosaur]

Hi All

caseih, I was the one confused, I didn't know I was running an X11 environment.
Sadly Linux is so widely scattered that is very hard to browse and take for gospel
that the Mint they are talking about, is anything like yours.
I even have to limit my searches to the last 12 months, cause anything before simply doesn't apply.
Maybe I should have stuck with Ubuntu, as most of the advise was from their sites.
From an average user point of view, Windows has nothing to worry about with Linux.
At least with Windows every installation is the same, just different drivers or options.

However the learning will continue, and once again thank you for your assistance.

Regards