[mythtv-users] disabling screensavers

[Rich West]

Josh wrote:
> Udo van den Heuvel wrote:
>   
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am in the process of rebuilding my FC6 MythTV box after and upgrade
>> (to EN12000 from SP8000) and HD crash.
>> I have most stuff working. One remaining issue is the screensaver.
>>
>> Disabling the screensaver on the Gnome desktop and setting dpms to off
>> in xorg.conf did not stop a big X from appearing on the screen after a
>> while.
>> Anybody know how I can disable all and any screensavers, power saving, etc?
>> I had this problem nailed on the old SP8000 install...
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Udo
>> _______________________________________________
>> mythtv-users mailing list
>> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
>> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>>
>>
>>
>>   
>>     
> Jarod's tutorial has a shell script that will do this for you 
> automagically at boot time. Even if you don't use the script you can 
> still pick out the commands he uses to accomplish this from 
> (http://wilsonet.com/mythtv/fcmyth.php#auto).

Actually, that shell script still won't help.  I, too, experienced the 
same problem, and, after a bit of digging and posts to the list (they 
should be in the archive somewhere) someone pointed me in the right 
direction which solved the overall problem.

The short story of what I did to get this to go away was:
o Slide the slider all of the way to the right until it reads "Never" 
under the heading "Put display to sleep when computer is inactive for:" 
under the "Running on AC" tab in the "Power Management Preferences":
System->Preferences->More Preferences->Power Management

Essentially, the culprit was the power-management setting within gnome.  
I bet that is the one that is causing your problem.

Now, the long story of what I did is:
o In your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, set:
Section "ServerFlags"
        Option "blank time" "0"
        Option "standby time" "0"
        Option "suspend time" "0"
        Option "off time" "0"
EndSection
o In your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, make sure you have commented out the 
line in the section "Monitor" that reads:
Option   "dpms"
o If you are using GNOME, which is the default windowmanger for FC5 and 
FC6, deselect "Activate screensaver when session is idle" under:
System->Preferences->Screensaver
o Again, if you are using GNOME, slide the slider all of the way to the 
right until it reads "Never" under the heading "Put display to sleep 
when computer is inactive for:" under the "Running on AC" tab in the 
"Power Management Preferences":
System->Preferences->More Preferences->Power Management
o Logout and log back in.  You might want to reboot instead just to make 
sure that everything will work from a clean start up.
o Create yourself a wrapper script for mythfrontend based upon Jarod's 
script.  Let's call it "mythwrapper":
#!/bin/sh

# Load nVidia driver custom settings (uncomment this line if you have an 
nVidia card and are using the nVidia drivers)
/usr/bin/nvidia-settings --load-config-only&
sleep 2
# Disable Dynamic Power Management (screen blanking)
/usr/bin/xset -dpms
# Disable screen saver
/usr/bin/xset s noblank
/usr/bin/xset s off
# Start up the front end
/usr/bin/mythfrontend
o Make the script executable.
o Update your session to always execute that upon startup:
System->Preferences->More Preferences->Sessions

The xset's in the script are redundant because all of that is set in the 
xorg.conf file, but I was at a point where I just wanted to make 
absolutely sure that darned screen blanker/saver would not come up. :) 

-Rich