[GTALUG] Keep X from going to sleep

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Mar 17, 2015 at 07:55:37AM -0400, William Witteman wrote:
> Here's a problem I'm hoping to solve:
> 
> When idle for some amount of time, X shuts down the screen.  When a
> program like VLC is playing a video (or even paused) this does not
> happen.
> 
> How can I tell X to never sleep?  I just want it to send output down
> that cable, constantly, forever.
> 
> I manage screen burn and power wasting by turning off the monitor, but
> when the screen goes to sleep, my inexpensive monitor (an LG)
> sometimes has trouble noticing and won't display anything until X is
> restarted, which is a pain.
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> PS  The system is Debian testing.

As already suggested, xset -dpms and perhaps xset s off, can help, but you
would need to do them after each login, given most window manager/desktop
environments tend to change the values.  I just fixed xfce on one machine
at home yesterday by going into xfce4's power management settings and
turning off putting the display to sleep or off, and no more screen
going to sleep problem.

-- 
Len Sorensen