backlight off w/o suspend

[Remy Indebetouw <remy@astro.wisc.edu>]

I'd like to turn off the backlight when I'm away for the day, but leave
unsuspended so I can connect back from work via the cable modem.

There was a similar question last summer and the suggestion to switch to
CRT; something like that would be fine with me, except that the fn-f8 that
would appear to accomplish this on my Dell I7K doesn't do anything.

Also, the Battery-Operated mini-HOWTO seems dated and not always
applicable to debian (e.g. no update call in /etc/inittab), so any
suggestions for better advice on reducing syncing and flushing intervals
w/o a full suspend would also be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

PS please CC - lists.debian seems to be ignoreing my requests to
re-subscribe after my recent move.

If it matters, I'm running mostly potato with a little woody for flavor
(but still Xfree3.6 and the steveh IIRC patched Mach64 server)