Re: Screen blanking/DPMS with Sun Ultra1
(I am seconding your request and forwarding it to the XFree86 list
to add it to my request already there. I am also forwarding it to
the general sparclinux list because it is not debian specific. I hope
this does not cause you a problem.)
On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Moritz Bunkus wrote:
> Hello everyone.
>
> I have a lot of Sun Ultra1 boxes with Sun monitors. Until recently they
> ran under Solaris. With this setup they monitors went into some sort of
> power saving mode after some time of inactivity.
>
> All those boxes now run Woody with XFree 4.1.0.1. Unfortunately
> either the graphics hardware (the suncg6 driver is used) or the monitor
> don't support DPMS (option "DPMS" is given in the monitor section): the
> logfile says
> (WW) SUNCG6(0): Option "DPMS" is not used
> (WW) SUNCG6(0): Option "StandByTime" is not used
> (WW) SUNCG6(0): Option "SuspendTime" is not used
> (WW) SUNCG6(0): Option "OffTime" is not used
>
> Now the boxes all have their monitors on all the time which is
> definitely not what I want. Is there a way to use power saving with
> this setup? Or at least some sort of screen blanking and/or a
> screensaver?
>
I can't help, but I can add my complaint to this list, too (I am
running SuSE mostly, but I have Debian as part of a triple boot
Ultra10 (SuSe/Debian/SPARC) with Sun monitor, Creator3D,
XFree86 4.1.99CVS version).
Solaris does DPMS of some sort. You are right, no Sun frame buffer
driver has DPMS code, they are all built as not-DPMS capable. I don't
know why, and so far no one in the xfree86 group has had time to tell me.
(To be fair, the the sun drivers' authors seem to be tied up right
now with Sparc kernel 2.4.x issues.) I have looked at the sunXXX driver
code enough that I can add DPMS hooks to them, but right now they are
no-ops because I don't know what to put there. I suspect but do
not know that something is needed in the kernel portion of the support for
the Sun devices, and I think I know where. But I am not a kernel
programmer, nor would I know what to do even if I knew how to do it.
For what it's worth, my guess is that XFree86/Sun is not yet complete
because the man pages are pretty much of the form "Someday we'll have
to write man pages." If I am correct, I have no idea what the XFree
schedule for completing Sun support might be.
As to your second point: For me, at least, the 'xscreensaver'
screensaver program can blank the screen (but can't turn the monitor off
because the driver doesn't know how). However, the xset commands
"xset s on; xset s blank" will not blank the screen because the
(creator) driver itself uses an empty procedure for screen blanking
(actually, it contains the comment /* This doesn't seem to be used for
anything */ (or the equivalent)).
> I'm using KDM btw.
>
> Thanx for any help.
>
> --
> ==> Ciao, Mosu
>
>
Probably no help except to confirm what you are seeing is expected
(and, I believe incorrect) behavior.
Regards,
Ferris
--
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <fmccor@inforead.com>
Phone: (703) 392-0303
Fax: (703) 392-0401
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