Screen turns on automatically (xset dpms force off)

Question

I am using xset dpms force off to manually turn my screen off to save power. However, it turns back on after some time (20 - 40 seconds).

Distro: Ubuntu-Lucid

Graphics: Intel 4500 MHD

Trying steps in this solution (Turning off screensaver or wireless) did not work. Can it be due to any other reasons like network (magic packet) or usb devices?

Result of xset -q:

Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000000
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    off    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:  30
  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:  0    cycle:  0
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0    WhitePixel:  16777215
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,/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 0    Suspend: 0    Off: 0
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

Answer 1

This seems to be a known bug and you can read more detail on launchpad as well as on ubuntuforums. The issue is that somehow gnome-power-manager and the xset commands conflict with each other.

The solution is to run xset dpms force off in a loop, a python script pretty much works for most of us.

Give it a try, and see how it goes.

Answer 2

Try adding a sleep:

$ sleep 1; xset dpms force off

Answer 3

Don't know if this is still an issue in Gnome in 2022, but I noticed I had this exact problem when I have my Dell monitor plugged in through HDMI but not when I am just using the laptop by itself.

For me it was actually the Input Source Auto-select function on my Dell monitor that caused the monitor to wake back up again 5 seconds after sleep. I simply disabled this on the monitor's OSD and it was fine after that.

You can test whether it is specific to your laptop display or your monitor by seeing whether it works fine with one or the other disabled/disconnected.

Answer 4

I've tried many solutions but in the end, this worked:

bash -c 'sleep 0.1 && xset dpms force off'

It's short and precise, also there are no loops.

How this works

In my case releasing the key after the shortcut triggered the screen to wake up again. sleep 0.1 delays the execution of xset dpms force off by 0.1 second (bash -c allows to run both commands together). So if you release the buttons faster than 0.1 seconds after you pressed them it works. If you are slower replace 0.1 by a larger number, e.g. 0.5.

Answer 5

I've had that problem before, basically my mouse was causing it, flip the side on it's back when you aren't using it.

Answer 6

I assume that loop has a sleep otherwise I wouldn't use it. I used cron with this set to run every 5 mins (enter crontab -e from the command-line as your X11 logged in user):

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/env DISPLAY=:0.0 xset -dpms

Answer 7

For me, i was playing a video in the background, causing screen to always re-turn on after 5 seconds ... I added sleep before command and stopped video and it worked.

Answer 8

Had this problem on AMD/HP laptop. Also running 10.04.3/32, same problem. Got this solution from another forum:

#!/bin/sh  
perl -e 'select(undef,undef,undef,.1)' && xset dpms force off

I put that in a sh file, set it executable, and linked that to the panel shortcut. Worked like a charm, monitor stays off. I've got no idea what the hell that weird perl script does.

Answer 9

If non of the above worked for you. I had the same problem on a 64bit linux mint machine. The only thing that worked for me was this python script :

import sys, select, subprocess
while True:
    p = subprocess.Popen(['xset', 'dpms', 'force', 'off'], 
        stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
    if sys.stdin in select.select([sys.stdin], [], [], 0)[0]:
        break

Answer 10

I tried all the solutions above; the only thing that worked for me was to kill kscreen_backend_launcher process and disable it. See here

Answer 11

I think that the sleep thing will solve it for me too, however, generally, I use xscreensaver and it's been configured to turn off the display after 30 minutes. I've had it set like that for years and it worked. But now it stopped working. My displays remain on.

I have a script called lightsout.sh which turns off the monitors and I can use that but this is a manual thing where xscreensaver used to handle this automatically.