Screen has stopped blanking...Why?

[No_windows]

Jessie with Xfce, and latest updates. Sometime last week I noticed that the screen has stopped blanking/turning off when I'm away from the computer. I come home from work and I can see the glow of the screen before I even enter the house. The first few times I figured the cats must have bumped the mouse or desk.

I've checked the settings in Powermanager, and did a little research with Google....... apparently Powermanager (as of Xfce 4.8 ) uses DPMS, but I really don't know where to go from here.

I haven't made any major changes........I've uninstalled Midori, and the installed the most recent updates as they've been made available. I use Virtualbox for experimenting, so that I don't mess things up.

I have MX-16 running on a vm, and it blanks it's virtual screen, but I still have the mouse cursor and dock showing brightly since they're part of the Jessie host, and the screen isn't really off as it's still glowing even if it's black.

[Segfault]

So what does xset print?

[No_windows]

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xset q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000002
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    on     02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  20
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  60    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 0    Off: 900
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

I've sent this right before heading off to work.

[bw123]

screensaver is set for 60 sec? does it come on? Suspend is 0, so it's off, but I think standby is what should work here?


here's mine

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$ xset q | grep -A2 -e Screen -e DPMS
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  0    cycle:  600
--
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 900    Off: 1200
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

[golinux]

Every so often my Xfce screensaver does that. Go into the screensaver settings and a dialogue should pop up asking if you want to restart the daemon.

[No_windows]

screensaver is set for 60 sec? does it come on? Suspend is 0, so it's off, but I think standby is what should work here?

I had it at 5 minutes, but changed it to 1 minute for testing purposes....... nothing happens. I'm not really using a screensaver. I haven't had xscreensaver installed since May of 2016 according to the log in Synaptic.

[No_windows]

Every so often my Xfce screensaver does that. Go into the screensaver settings and a dialogue should pop up asking if you want to restart the daemon.

My Xfce installation doesn't have screensaver settings that I can find. I don't have xscreensaver installed. My MX-16 vm does as you say, However.... and it blanks it's screen without the daemon running.

[No_windows]

Just curious - can you try each of these commands in a terminal window and see if any of them work?

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sleep 3 && xset dpms force standby

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sleep 3 && xset dpms force suspend

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sleep 3 && xset dpms force off

They all seemed to work........ screen went black, and came back with mouse movement.

[No_windows]

Okay, then we know DPMS can shut your monitor off. Can you run

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xset -q

and post the output?

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xset -q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000002
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    on     02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  500    repeat rate:  20
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  300    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/X11/misc,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi/:unscaled,/usr/share/fonts/X11/Type1,/usr/share/fonts/X11/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/X11/75dpi,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 0    Off: 900
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

[Segfault]

Funny, just yesterday I noticed my screen didn't go to standby either. I had dosemu running, the window was minimized, but somehow it affected power management. I do not have xscreensaver installed either, using Xorg built-in power feature.

[No_windows]

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DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 0    Off: 900
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

This says monitor should go to standby after ten minutes and power down after 15. We already established that DPMS works, so I guess my next question would be is your power manager overriding these settings? I'd shut off the power manager for a bit and see if the display powers down normally, I guess.

In Powermanager, I have "Blank", "Put to sleep", and "Switch off after" set to 5, 10, and 15 minutes. I guess I can shut the power manager down, and see what happens, but it's the way I thought I had been controlling this......when it worked.

[No_windows]

Apparently not - since DPMS seems to work from a terminal session. I think your power manager is broken and if you shut it off and screen blanks correctly that'd pretty much confirm.

I shut down Powermanager and the screen still does not blank. I also enabled DPMS in my MX16 vm thinking that maybe Virtualbox was trying to keep the screen available to it........Another vm already had it enabled.

[golinux]

Strange non-standard behavior can happen in any virtualization. It is close but not the same as running a system on metal. Some things you just have to live with.

[No_windows]

Strange non-standard behavior can happen in any virtualization. It is close but not the same as running a system on metal. Some things you just have to live with.

I guess I wasn't clear........ This is the host system. It's not a vm. I only mentioned Virtualbox because I thought maybe it was now keeping the host screen active for the vms that I am running. It wasn't an issue before, Though.

Screen blanking used to work with no problems, on this computer, with this install of Debian.

[No_windows]

.....and after a few updates today, and a reboot, it seems all is back to normal. I have no idea the whys and hows.

Thanks to everyone that tried to help.