The dpms settings set through xscreensaver (or xset) are obeyed for a while when X is first started, but some time later (minutes or hours), the display never properly gets turned off. The dpms behaviour has had some unpredictability to it for as long as I can remember. The behaviour changed relatively recently (maybe 3-6 months ago in stable releases, sorry I can't be specific about an Xorg version). It used to disobey the dpms settings (sometimes) after viewing movie clips with mplayer. In more recent versions, this doesn't seem to be necessary. When X is started, the dpms settings are obeyed. After a while, the display power is never turned off, the screen is blanked instead, but the lcd backlight stays on - this is a Dell Inspiron 8100 with Nvidia GeForce2Go. My dpms settings are: 0 0 240. Even after the dpms settings are no longer properly followed, the display can still be turned off with: xset dpms force off I am using 1.0.6629-r4 of the nvidia drivers. If I use the nv driver instead, dpms doesn't work at all - and there are all sorts of other display problems. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. emerge info Portage 2.0.51.22-r3 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.4.3-20050110, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.11-gentoo-r11 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.11-gentoo-r11 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Mobile CPU 1000MHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 dev-lang/python: 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r10 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.20 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium3 -O3 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.ccccom.com ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/linux/gentoo http://cudlug.cudenver.edu/gentoo/ ftp://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X alsa apm avi berkdb bitmap-fonts cdr commercial crypt cups curl divx4linux dts dvd eds emacs emboss encode fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gimpprint gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 hal imagemagick imlib java jpeg libg++ libwww lirc mad mikmod mmx mmxext motif mozilla mp3 mpeg ncurses network nls nptl nptlonly ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl plotutils png python quicktime readline real samba sdl slang spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode userlocales vorbis win32codecs xml xml2 xmms xv xvid xvmc zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS
X version is: xorg-x11-6.8.2-r4
look at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5665 ;)
Has this been fixed with newer X and nvidia-legacy-drivers?
Get back to us, please.
I'm using gnome-screensaver and gnome-power-manager now, which I believe blanks the screen somewhat differently from xscreensaver. The blanking still isn't perfect though - maybe one morning a week I'll find that the screen turned on and stayed on at some point during the night. I currently have nvidia-drivers-1.0.8776 and xorg-server-1.1.1-r4
