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

gnomescreensaver

I want to turn the screen off when inactive for x minutes using commandline settings on RHEL and Debian distros of Linux. Any help?

I have done this with the following commands on Ubuntu and Centos:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 60
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled true

How to do the same on RHEL & Debian? Any help appreciated.

Best Answer

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

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
...

On lockscreen how can I auto-turn off monitors if they wake up

I think you're looking for Energy Saving → Screen Energy Saving → "Switch off after". You can get to the Energy Saving settings easily by typing that into the run box or into the search box in the menu.