trinity-devel@lists.pearsoncomputing.net

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Month: January 2019

Re: [trinity-devel] peculiar power save in 14.1pre on 18.04.1 LTS

From: Felix Miata <mrmazda@...>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2019 03:08:24 -0500
David C. Rankin composed on 2019-01-22 00:27 (UTC-0600):

> Felix Miata wrote:

>> TCC -> System Administration -> Monitor & Display has nothing enabled. Thus I would
>> expect no attempt from TDE to save power. Is this not the case? After 10 minutes, the
>> screen blanks for several seconds, after which the desktop wallpaper reappears, but
>> not the panel or open Windows. This happens whether the session is started from TDM
>> or with startx. I see nothing in /etc/X11 to account for this, though I'm not sure
>> what I would be looking for other than an Option "DPMS" statement in xorg.conf*. Is
>> this to be expected? Should I file a TDE bug?

> Hard to tell, will have to let Slavek and folks chime in, but recall several
> distros removed default console blanking (which shouldn't be implicated with
> TDM running, but may), but with startx, you may have DPMS configured. You can
> check with

>  $ xset q

> I don't know what 18.04 does, but you may poke around and determine just what
> is set and what isn't. Handy reference:

> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Display_Power_Management_Signaling

Turns out I had a serious brain fart. One cannot expect TDE to exert control over
screen power without checking the first box. For years I've been setting power
management here to 120 minutes for all three save modes and not having to think
about the screen going blank while I'm looking at it while otherwise occupied. I
first tried xset q on the PC with the schizoid greeter window, and got:

Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  no
  timeout:  0    cycle:  600
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 7200    Suspend: 7200    Off: 7200
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

Then I tried it on the subject of this thread, and matched the archlinux page:

Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600  cycle:  600
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby:  600    Suspend:  600    Off:  600
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

After logging out and back in and puzzling briefly over why only the timeout increased
after my KControl change, I realized I must have failed to do the other thing I've been
doing for many moons, copying a config file into /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ containing:

	  Option	"BlankTime"	"120"

I found I did, made the copy, logged out, logged back in, but xset q did not change,
which is my new puzzle, because the problem persists. The KControl blank time of 120
is not preventing the several second blanking after 600 seconds, or allowing the panel
and open windows to reappear afterward.

> (on your last post, TDM should always put your login on Display 1. I've had a
> 1920x1200 + 1680x1152 setup for years with an ancient nvida card and never had
> an issue -- setup through nview. ATI should have a similar setup through
> catalyst control panel. Now on monitor sleep/suspend, depending where the
> focus is when the monitors go to sleep, I've had kscreensaver put the password
> prompt on different monitors)

I do all my display other than power save/screen saver via either xrandr startup
script, or xorg.conf*. I stick to FOSS, so wouldn't know what NVidia's or AMD's
screen controllers look like or can do. When I want the screen to sleep, I turn
off the screen power. There's no suspending either, since everything here is multiboot.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools is religion, not science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/