1

Can the Ubuntu Linux nvidia xserver powermizer feature use DPMS to trigger "Power Saving Mode" in my Acer LCD?

I switched this display from my Windows 8 HP machine to my Ubuntu Quantal Compaq machine. Power save on the Windows 8 machine worked fine - monitor powered off and woke up as defined in the configuration app.

In Ubuntu, only the display card shuts off - monitor is still lit and displays the "no input connected" floating box. That means it's drawing wattage. The Ubuntu box has an NVidia card with "Powermizer" which I assume speaks DPMS to tell the display to shut off. The display is an Acwer s201 and it features a "Power Saving Mode" that worked on Win 8, assume that's DPMS. Xserver driver from Nvidia is 304.116.

Unfortunately, 99% of tech board topics on this seem to be folks who want to -Disable- power saving features. Not me, I would like to save energy.

Is this an Ubuntu or an Nvidia defect?

Hennes
  • 65,804
  • 7
  • 115
  • 169
charles ross
  • 111

1 Answers1

0

The root of this problem seems to vary, from research I've done so far. In my case, on Ubuntu 16.04 with 367.57 drivers, xset q reports that "DPMS is Disabled". If I manually run xset dpms, DPMS becomes enabled.

I haven't yet found a good way to automate this, though. I found a report that adding Option "DPMS" to the Device section of xorg.conf might help, but it didn't help me.

I added that command to my .bashrc, because I start xterms a lot:

    case "$TERM" in
    xterm*|rxvt*)
        xset dpms
        ;;
    *)
        ;;
    esac

But there has to be a better way.

Ken_g6
  • 11