I hope I've not asked this here before. I've looked all over the net and
have not been able to find the answer. I've asked everywhere and no one
knows, so as last resort I turn to the Slack gurus (who know everything!)

My wife's Toshiba Sat. A45/S151 runs Slackware 9.1 and KDE.

Every 20 minutes or so the screen goes blank (even if you are using mouse)
and you MUST hit any key to return it. Major PITA.

So far, the best docs I can find say that Fn+F2 should 'rotate' the machine
through various power-stages. But it does not work no matter how many times
I've tried it.

I've checked all the power/energy settings to 'off" in KDE but maybe Slack
is still set to ACPI or APM or something? Personally I think its a hardware
thing that can only be reset in Windows via the Toshiba "console." I've
checked the BIOS and don't see anything there that would cause this.

If anyone has an idea, let me know. It's been driving me bats for the past
year!

Al

Al. C wrote:

> I hope I've not asked this here before. I've looked all over the net and
> have not been able to find the answer. I've asked everywhere and no one
> knows, so as last resort I turn to the Slack gurus (who know everything!)
>
> My wife's Toshiba Sat. A45/S151 runs Slackware 9.1 and KDE.
>
> Every 20 minutes or so the screen goes blank (even if you are using mouse)
> and you MUST hit any key to return it. Major PITA.
>
> So far, the best docs I can find say that Fn+F2 should 'rotate' the machine
> through various power-stages. But it does not work no matter how many times
> I've tried it.
>
> I've checked all the power/energy settings to 'off" in KDE but maybe Slack
> is still set to ACPI or APM or something? Personally I think its a hardware
> thing that can only be reset in Windows via the Toshiba "console." I've
> checked the BIOS and don't see anything there that would cause this.
>
> If anyone has an idea, let me know. It's been driving me bats for the past
> year!
>
> Al
>

Is your wife using an external USB mouse?
I had this before, when I was using an external USB mouse with my laptop.
XFree86 does not see signals generated by the USB subsystem as
"activity" in (at least) older releases, and as a result the
screensaver kicks in when you're just using the mouse and not typing.
I'm not using USB mice at the moment and so, I would not know if the
problem has been solved for latest Slackware.

Cheers, Eric

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Al. C wrote:
> I hope I've not asked this here before. I've looked all over the net and
> have not been able to find the answer. I've asked everywhere and no one
> knows, so as last resort I turn to the Slack gurus (who know everything!)
>
> My wife's Toshiba Sat. A45/S151 runs Slackware 9.1 and KDE.
>
> Every 20 minutes or so the screen goes blank (even if you are using mouse)
> and you MUST hit any key to return it. Major PITA.

Could it be the "/bin/setterm -blank" command in /etc/rc.d/rc.M?

On my Slackware 10.0 (running on a Toshiba Satellite 1110), the
/etc/rc.d/rc.M script says...
# Screen blanks after 15 minutes idle time, and powers down in one hr
# if the kernel supports APM or ACPI power management:
/bin/setterm -blank 15 -powersave powerdown -powerdown 60

This /could/ blank the screen in the way your wife sees.

- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Specialist, Enterprise Data Systems
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFCJM0kagVFX4UWr64RAr5DAJ0WbGMGpS5CDRrjYJ0Ps7 ma0aN9hgCgoZ6e
KQS6BbvNJmSO/UDpFqgydMg=
=/S83
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 19:09:03 GMT, Al. C wrote:
> I hope I've not asked this here before. I've looked all over the net and
> have not been able to find the answer. I've asked everywhere and no one
> knows, so as last resort I turn to the Slack gurus (who know everything!)
>

Actually you have asked this before back on 28 Aug 2004. Sorry to
hear none of the potential solutions offered then worked for you.

> If anyone has an idea, let me know. It's been driving me bats for the past
> year!
>

Things to check...

Near the top of /etc/rc.d/rc.M

# Screen blanks after 15 minutes idle time, and powers down in one
# hour if the kernel supports APM or ACPI power management:
/bin/setterm -blank 15 -powersave powerdown -powerdown 60

======================================
In /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# Set the basic blanking screen saver timeout.

# Option "blank time" "10" # 10 minutes

# Set the DPMS timeouts. These are set here because they are global
# rather than screen-specific. These settings alone don't enable
# DPMS.
# It is enabled per-screen (or per-monitor), and even then only when
# the driver supports it.

# Option "standby time" "20"
# Option "suspend time" "30"
# Option "off time" "60"
========================================
A BIOS setting on the laptop reachable at boot time?

========================================
Perhaps you could put

xset s noblank
xset s off
xset -dpms

in $HOME/.xprofile or $HOME/.session or somewhere
man xset in any case
========================================

In the previous thread you said:
There is a discussion about this on comp.sys.laptops where Peter
Breuer has gotten involved. Some of you might know that name as he
has a reputation on several NGs for being a 'world class' Linux
expert.... and also sort of a 'character.' I'm surprised he's not a
Slack user as he personifies the concept of "don't give the guy the
fish, teach him how to fish" which is sort of the unwritten charter
around here. He thinks it might be an X thing having to do with
"SendCoreEvents" and has led me to learn more about X...but I have
that in the xconfig file.

Do you still have those settings?

===========================================

What kernel are you using? Perhaps the one you are using has a quirk
with your system that was fixed in a newer kernel? Wild guess here.

Same with X, perhaps it is time to try a newer version of x11?

Hope there is something to try here.

Brad




-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

iD8DBQFCJOkXkDp4KjYna1ARAnu6AJ9bj054TiOwk1VA9f8ho/IPAMY3hwCfUpAy
LHuaPXHKJMQ0SZSgz6Yo/Fc=
=bLtE
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Al. C wrote:
> I hope I've not asked this here before. I've looked all over the net and
> have not been able to find the answer. I've asked everywhere and no one
> knows, so as last resort I turn to the Slack gurus (who know everything!)
>
> My wife's Toshiba Sat. A45/S151 runs Slackware 9.1 and KDE.
>
> Every 20 minutes or so the screen goes blank (even if you are using mouse)
> and you MUST hit any key to return it. Major PITA.
>
> So far, the best docs I can find say that Fn+F2 should 'rotate' the machine
> through various power-stages. But it does not work no matter how many times
> I've tried it.
>
> I've checked all the power/energy settings to 'off" in KDE but maybe Slack
> is still set to ACPI or APM or something? Personally I think its a hardware
> thing that can only be reset in Windows via the Toshiba "console." I've
> checked the BIOS and don't see anything there that would cause this.
>
> If anyone has an idea, let me know. It's been driving me bats for the past
> year!
>
> Al
>

The first thing you have to do is to check the output of xset -q and see
if there are information about DPMS. If DPMS is enabled then is the
responsible. DPMS ²can be set in /etc/X11/xorg.conf or in KDE (look an
option related to Energy star). Maybe you must have a ACPI aware kernel
to enabled that. In my Toshiba sattelite A40-261 there are an option in
the bios there are default value related to DPMS (but the linux setting
should override this). You can access the bios (of the A40-261) by
pressing <ESC> then <F1> just after having powered on the laptop.

Olive