Monitor Enter Powersave when using Console?

jagdpanther · l33t Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 729

When X is not running and my Gentoo system only has consoles, how do I have the video card put the monitor to sleep after an inactivity period? Or, where is there documentation?
(I am using an Nvidia card and using nvidia-drivers-440.64 and openrc)

When X is running, this is not an issue and using xscreensaver-demo I can adjust these settings.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2020 6:19 pm Post subject:

setterm (specifically blank)
_________________
PRIME x570-pro, 3700x, 6.1 zen kernel
gcc 13, profile 17.0 (custom bare multilib), openrc, wayland

jagdpanther · l33t Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 729

Thanks Anon-E-moose.

Looking at the man page I see setterm --blank or setterm --powersave which is good if you are logged in. How do I set this up for the displayed console when no one is logged in? (ie. the console is at the "login:" prompt)

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Fri Apr 17, 2020 7:37 pm Post subject:

You could also feed the kernel the consoleblank parm

jagdpanther · l33t Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 729

Anon-E-moose:

Yes, thanks, appending "consoleblank=60" to the end of the linux ... line in grub.cfg does cause a blank screen after 60-seconds of no keyboard activity when using the console (ie. no x11). However, it does not put the monitor in power save mode. Any idea on how to get my monitor to switch to power-save (or "sleep") mode when using the console and no keyboard activity?

I wonder if there is a way to do this in /etc/inittab

jagdpanther · l33t Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 729

I seem to be striking out on getting the console (no x11) to send the monitor into power save mode after a few min. of no key press.

I see no way to do this directly from agetty. (/etc/inittab)
Then I found a little info at the bottom of the following page that shows that I should be able to use something like:

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 8:56 pm Post subject:

Have you checked the monitor menu (I assume it has one) for auto off/sleep mode, that's usually done in the monitor.
_________________
PRIME x570-pro, 3700x, 6.1 zen kernel
gcc 13, profile 17.0 (custom bare multilib), openrc, wayland

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2020 9:03 pm Post subject:

jagdpanther · l33t Joined: 22 Nov 2003 Posts: 729

Good idea on adding the "--powersave powerdown" option to setterm. Unfortunately this did not solve the issue.

Anon-E-moose · Posted: Sun Apr 19, 2020 10:37 am Post subject:

You should play more with the setterm options. That's likely your best bet.

setterm -blank 10 -powerdown 15

The above should work given the explanation in the man page

I assume you also have acpi options set in the kernel.

Note: for playing/testing with it, I'd set the blank for 1 min and powerdown for 2

Edit to add: look at monitor menu and make sure power saving is enabled there (if allowed)
_________________
PRIME x570-pro, 3700x, 6.1 zen kernel
gcc 13, profile 17.0 (custom bare multilib), openrc, wayland

spam · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 10 Location: Nebraska

I was just dealing with this myself. The issue was that the framebuffer driver I was using (efifb) didn't support powersave mode. Once I enabled the DRM framebuffer driver for my GPU (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Framebuffer#DRM_framebuffer_drivers), I could use setterm to enable powersave, and the monitor would actually sleep.

figueroa · Posted: Thu Jul 28, 2022 3:41 am Post subject:

Here is the last line in my /etc/baselayout1.start