Fix Screen Turning On Automatically with xset dpms Force Off

monitorspower-managementUbuntuxorg

I am using xset dpms force off to manually turn my screen off to save power.
However, it turns back on after some time (20 – 40 seconds).

Distro: Ubuntu-Lucid

Graphics: Intel 4500 MHD

Trying steps in this solution (Turning off screensaver or wireless) did not work. Can it be due to any other reasons like network (magic packet) or usb devices?

Result of xset -p:

Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    off    02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  30
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0    WhitePixel:  16777215
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

Best Answer

This seems to be a known bug and you can read more detail on launchpad as well as on ubuntuforums. The issue is that somehow gnome-power-manager and the xset commands conflict with each other.

The solution is to run xset dpms force off in a loop, a python script pretty much works for most of us.

Give it a try, and see how it goes.

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