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Re: dpms and X4



on Fri, Jul 06, 2001 at 04:59:12PM -0400, Michael P. Soulier (msoulier@storm.ca) wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 05, 2001 at 07:35:40PM -0400, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> >     Ola. 
> > 
> >     Under XFree86 3.3.6, I could execute the following to turn on dpms. 
> > 
> >     xset +dpms
> >     xset dpms 1200 1800 2400
> > 
> > This worked great. Doing this under XFree86 4.0.3 however, it
> > doesn't seem to work. I can execute the commands, and looking at the
> > output from xset q:
> > 
> >     DPMS (Energy Star):
> >     Standby: 1200    Suspend: 1800    Off: 2400
> >     DPMS is Enabled
> >     Monitor is On
> > 
> > It appears to work. However, when it finally tries to put the
> > monitor into standby, it immediately comes back from standby. 
> > 
> > I should note that if I use KDE's control panel to enable dpms, it
> > works fine. 

> FYI, I found the problem, sort of. 
> 
> I had xscreensaver rotating at 2 minute intervals. Every time a new
> screensaver loaded, it came out of standby mode. 

This is what I consider to be a bug in xscreensaver, and I filed a bug
against the xscreensaver package earlier this year.  At least the
functionality is documented now..... 

With one of the recent updates to xscreensaver (I'm running 3.32), power
management functionality previously resident in xset was incorporated
into xscreensaver.  Moreover, xscreensaver silently overrides the
settings specified via xset's dpms option.  Insult to injury, the
current .xscreensaverrc file format is very sensitive to modifications
(e.g.: breaks if you look at it hard or think of doing same), and can
frustrate attempts to manually fix the problem.

You *can* modify the xscreensaver configuration yourself via the
xscreensaver-demo dialog, on the "Screensaver Options" panel.

Preferred behavior would be for xscreensaver to note and preserver
current dpms settings, *unless* specifically and interactively
overridden by manual configuration, or disable power management by
default.  Better yet, pull dpms functionality *out* of xscreensaver and
leave it in xset where it belongs.

As things stand, you can configure dpms *either* with xset *or* with
xscreensaver, but if you try to use both, xscreensaver clobbers the xset
configurations.  Because xset configuration can be governed from any
number of places, there's little likelihood of coordinating the behavior
of the two programs.

Cheers.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>    http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?       There is no K5 cabal
  http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/         http://www.kuro5hin.org
   Are these opinions my employer's?  Hah!  I don't believe them myself!

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