Screen turns off after 10 minutes and I can’t find out why

desktop-environmentmate-desktopscreen-lockscreensaver

I'm running Arch Linux with Mate Desktop version 1.16.0 on Linux kernel 4.8.13. I have a weird problem. My screen turns black after around 5 or 10 minutes and I can not find out why. Here is my mate configuration:

As you can see, the power-management is completely disabled and set to never go to sleep or turn off the display. And the screensaver is set to 2 hours minimum and also disabled.

I have no idea what else I could check. I went through the whole mate control panel to find any hidden settings. Does anyone have any idea why my screen turns black after approximately 10 minutes idle time?

Best Answer

XServer has its own settings for power management and screen saving functions. From the man page:

Option "BlankTime" "time"

sets the inactivity timeout for the blank phase of the screensaver. time is in minutes. This is equivalent to the Xorg server’s −s flag, and the value can be changed at run−time with xset(1). Default: 10 minutes.

Try these commands to completely disable the power management setting for X. Open a terminal and run the following:

xset -dpms # Disables Energy Star features
xset s off # Disables screen saver

If this works for you, to make these settings permanent in one of the files for .xorg.conf configuration files. Use man xorg.conf and pick one of the config file location files.

Example xorg.conf settings for these values:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier  "Monitor1"
    Option "DPMS" "false"

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "BlankTime" "0" # Not sure if a value of 0 here will disable this

Alternately you can use a .xinitrc file if you are using xinit to start your X session and just insert the xset commands from above (my preference).

Background

There are 2 solutions that were determined for this particular problem. The 1st involved launching xscreensaver, and disabling it so that no screensaver is configured.

The 2nd method involved completely disabling the screensaver in X altogether, through the use of the xset command.

Solution #1

A solution with a narrow scope (by cipricus) is that of adding a fourth step to those included in the answer.

Install xscreensaver
Remove gnome-screensaver
Set Xscreensaver NOT to use any screensaver ('Disable screensaver')
Add xscreensaver in the startup programs list. The command to add is:
```
xscreensaver -no-splash
```

This solution was suggested by the fact that this message appeared when starting xscreensaver before adding the fourth step:

enter image description here

Further instructions came from this source.

NOTE: To add a program to startup list in eOS, go to System Settings > Stertup Applications > Add

Solution #2

A solution with a wider scope by slm:

xset

Check to see what the xset setting is for screen blanking as well. You can check using this command:

$ xset q

We're specifically interested in this section of the output from the above command:

$ xset q
...
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600    cycle:  600
...

Disabling screensaver

You can change these settings like this:

$ xset s off
$ xset s noblank

Confirm by running xset q again:

$ xset q
...
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  no    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  600
...

DPMS

You might also need to disable power management as well, that's the DPMS settings in the xset q output:

$ xset q
...
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
...

Disable it like so:

$ xset -dpms

Confirm:

$ xset q
...
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Disabled
...

Re-enabling features

You can re-enable these features at any time with these commands

$ xset s blank       # blanking screensaver
$ xset s 600 600     # five minute interval
$ xset +dpms         # enable power management

Confirming changes:

$ xset q
...
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600    cycle:  600
...
...
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
...

Turn screen off when inactive for time period in RHEL and Debian

Turning off screen after a specified period of inactivity can be achieved by at least 2 methods: either using xset DPMS features or a screensaver such as xscreensaver or gnome-screensaver.

Xset:

First, check whether your hardware supports DPMS:

$ xset dpms force standby

Your display should go blank. Apart from standby you can also try suspend and off. If you know that your HW supports DPMS you can tell xset to activate DPMS after a number of seconds (from man xset):

When numerical values are given, they set the inactivity period (in units of seconds) before the three modes are activated. The first value given is for the standby' mode, the second is for thesuspend' mode, and the third is for the `off' mode.

So, doing that will make your display go blank after 3 seconds of inactivity:

$ xset dpms 3 3 3

Run this command and wait for 3 seconds. This setting is not retained across reboots so if it works, you can add this line to your X startup script such as ~/.xinitrc or your window manager startup script. Notice that turning off a display with DPMS will not lock the screen, you need to use an external screensaver for that.

screensaver

There are many screensavers to choose from and most of them has their own config file that is independent of xset DPMS settings and can lock screens so that you need to know the password to unlock it. Some screensavers, however, may influence DPMS settings. For example, xscreensaver can override xset settings.

Unfortunately, I don't use gnome-screensaver and I have no idea what screensavers are installed by default on RHEL or Debian so I can't help you here but if you're looking for a nice screensaver give xscreensaver a try. If you also want to run some nice pictures it has a number of screensaver themes to choose from, it can display video files and is highly customizable. Modify lock setting in ~/.xscreensaver by hand or run xscreensaver-demo to set a period of inactivity after which a screensaver will lock the screen. After making this modification, run xscreensaver daemon command and wait to see if xscreensaver works correctly.

X screen saver

There is also an X in-built screensaver that can be activated with x set activate. Type xset q and see how long you will have to wait for it to start under Screen Saver section:

Screen Saver: prefer blanking: yes allow exposures: yes
timeout: 600 cycle: 600

In this case, you would have to wait for 600 seconds. Run it now:

$ xset s activate

If you set it with noblank flag, it will display a pattern set with xsetroot when activated:

$ xset s noblank
$ /usr/bin/xsetroot -solid Green
$ xset s activate

Disable it altogether:

$ xset s off