Are Power Management Settings NOT Even Being Used?

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1

Hello All,

OS: OpenSuSE 12.1 (i586) — *Using KDE4 too

Ok, so awhile back I installed OpenSuSE 12.1 on an OS-Free “Zotac ZBox” PC *(i.e. No native OS installed when purchased). Not sure it matters but I thought I’d mention who made the PC…

So this PC is being used like a Kiosk which is displaying ONLY on a big LCD Flat-Screen TV. It’s only video output is an HDMI port, so that’s how it’s currently connected to the TV.

The problem I’m having is that, no matter what I set the *“Power Management” *settings to, after about 10 mins the TV is showing "No Signal" because I’m assuming the PC is stopping the signal being sent to the TV due to Power Settings…

I’ve tried creating a new Power Profile and in it unchecking all the options that tell it to do stuff after x minutes.
**
For example, I’ve Un-checked all of the following Options:
**- Dim Display
- Screen Energy Saving
- Suspend Session
- Button Events Handling

Then I’ve set that profile to be used inside the "Global Power* Management Settings"*.

I’m not quite sure what I’m missing here, but does anyone have any idea what could be going on here? Is that Power Profiles thing actually used or could something else be controlling my Power settings? I was also reading the README doc for the pm-profiler but wasn’t sure if that would change anything.

Any thoughts and/or suggestion would be greatly appreciated… My goal is to never have the monitor go blank and to never let the PC go to sleep *(*unless specifically selected by a user to do so)**…

*Thanks in Advance,
Matt

2

There’s a couple of things I can think of:

  • Open a terminal window, and do
xset s noblank -dpms

and see if this improves things.

  • Check /var/log/messages for logmessages
  • Disable screensaving entirely in KDE
3

Hey Knurpht, thanks for the reply!

I’m not in the office at the moment to give this a try, but I’ll give it a shot first thing tomorrow and I’ll let you know what happens…

Thanks Again,
Matt

4

If you are using KDE, make sure to check your screen saver settings in menu / Configure Desktop / Display & Monitor / Screen Locker / The default is to start after 10 minutes.

1’ve had good luck adding the following:

DPMS-dependent=false

to your kscreensaverrc file in “/home/user/.kde4/share/config” under the “[ScreenSaver]” section, still assuming you’re running KDE. On two of my machines running Kubuntu, the screensavers failed. After adding the above code and restarting, they started working again.

Thank You,

5

Cheers, James, I knew there was something else. On my server/workstation I added this some years ago, same reason, couldn’t remember yesterday

6

Hey jdmcdaniel, thanks for the reply!

Thanks for the info, I couldn’t figure out where that screensaver setting was, the one for configuring the display when I was trying to work this out a few days ago. Because I remember changing those settings in there when I was trying to disable the screensaver but it looks like it was on the 2nd PC we have for the same purpose just in a different location. But I went into the “Personal Settings” which is what its called when you search it in the “Start” like Menu from the taskbar and adjusted the settings for the “System/Personal Settings > Display and Monitor > Screen Saver”. In there it was set to “4 min” which is weird because it never followed that anyway…

But I’ve disabled the screensaver all together so we’ll see what happens.

As far as the DPMS setting in the config file, I already added that “DPMS-dependent=false” line when I was working at this a few days ago. I had found it in another post I think on this site…

So my kscreensaverrc file contains:


[ScreenSaver]
Enabled=false
PlasmaEnabled=false
Saver=kblank.desktop
Timeout=60000
DPMS-dependent=false

Hopefully disabling the Screen Saver setting for* “Start **automatically after: x mins” *will completely disable it…

I also found this setting below in the "powerdevilrc"file, but I don’t know if that does anything currently…


[General]
configLockScreen=false

[Profiles]
ACProfile=Performance

I’m kinda curious why it would have the* “Performance” *profile set in there when I created a new Power Profile and set that as the default in the Global Power Settings…?

Anyway, thanks again guys for the replies, much appreciated!

Thanks Again,
Matt

7

Hey again…

So this is strange, I’m SSH’ed into that PC I’m trying to disable the Monitor for and I ran the “systemsettings” command in order to get that window open that has the “System Settings” in it (you can run it just like you can run YaST2 through the commnand Line and open a GUI window for it remotely.). *But anyway after I applied the Screensaver settings I went back to the listing of all the setting categories and opened the “Power Management” section and when I did I got an error saying:

Power Management configuration module could not be loaded. The Power Management Service appears not to be running. This can be solved by starting or scheduling it inside “Startup and Shutdown.”

In there it gives the same message for both options inside the Power Management section, which are “Global Settings” and “Power Profiles”. I don’t know if it’s just a coincidence or not but you can sort of see passed this message that is displayed over the settigns area and inside the Power Profiles page I can see that pretty much every option is checked off. Like Dim Display, Screen Energy Saving, Suspend Session, etc…

How do I start the Power Management Service that they are talking about in that error message so I can check what these settings really are?

EDIT:
Nevermind I found how to start it. But when I did I went back to the Power Management settings and nothing that I set those settings to is there anymore… Everything looks like it was reset back to defaults. Will this happen all the time? Or is there a way to make sure these settings stick on reboots?

Thanks Again,
Matt

8

If this command helps:

xset s noblank -dpms

It would need to be run on each new openSUSE session. System Configurations like screen saver and file edits would stay after each reboot. If the above command needs to be root, have a look here:

systemd and using the after.local script in openSUSE 12.1 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

It seems to be my most popular Blog Post of all times.

Thank You,

9

Hey jdmcdaniel, thanks again for the reply!

Sorry, totally forgot to run that command yesterday…
I just ran it now though on that PC as just a regular user and it seemed to execute successfully. So I don’t think it will be a problem executing this during/after boot time.

Thanks again for the info… Is there any other command that is part of the XServer like the xset command, but instead of setting things we can just view what’s already set? Or is there a config file for this somewhere, where I can view these settings? I tried checking the xorg.conf file but didn’t notice anything different…

Again, thanks for the help. Much appreciated!

Thanks Again,
Matt

10

You can use xset q for status info, but other utils can be used as well:

xset q

For more hardware detail, look at my bash script here that loads inxi: H.I. Hardware Information - A Bash script to install and run inxi with default options! - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

Thank You.

11

jdmcdaniel,

Ok awesome, I’ll try that… Thanks!

Thanks Again,
Matt

12

Hey guys, sorry meant to get back to this sooner…

Since then, it seems that the settings have fixed the issue. But we haven’t rebooted that PC since I made the changes so I guess we’ll see whenever I get around to doing that.

If it’s that xset command that fixes it, or at least helps with this, will I need to put that command in cron so it runs after boot? Or does the setting stick once you set it?

Thanks Again,
Matt

13

Are the power settings usually only changed through Yast2 on OpenSuSe 12.3 ?
Or do I need the KDE or Gnome control panel installed?

I got a weird error message trying to use power management through Gnome control panel on 64 bit Gnome OpenSuSe 12.3
It said that it wasn’t supported on this distribution, and the power management settings could not be changed at all.
Even using Yast2 power management, the settings would not stay after reboot.

14

Ok, so recently the last week or so the screen has begun doing the same thing AGAIN. I don’t think it has to do with the screensaver though and I’m pretty sure its the Power Settings that is causing the problems.

After about 5 minutes the TV that the PC is hooked up to shows “No Signal” or something along those lines, so I’m assuming something is stopping the signal from going to the TV from the PC. I’ve set the Power Management Profiles to NOT turn off at all and yet it is still happening. Just to be safe I’ve set the same settings for any/all profiles which were present. I also checked the BIOS of the PC and could not find any settings for “Power” management or anything like that…

If I check /var/log/messages and grep for “power” I can see the following. Does anything get written to this log when say the power settings decides its time to turn off the signal to the monitor/TV, or is there another log file where stuff like that gets written to?
B.T.W.* The only “monitor” device connected to the PC is a LCD TV connected through HDMI, which is the only display port on the PC…
*


# cat /var/log/messages | grep -i power
Sep  9 16:19:50 wallboard-pc dbus[790]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Sep  9 16:19:50 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[790]: dbus[790]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Sep  9 16:19:50 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[790]: dbus[790]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Sep  9 16:19:50 wallboard-pc dbus[790]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:     0.000000] ACPI: SSDT 6e806d40 003DE (v01 AMD    POWERNOW 00000001 AMD  00000001)
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:     2.600163] [drm] radeon: power management initialized
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    13.502201] input: Power Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/device:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input2
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    13.502305] ACPI: Power Button [PWRB]
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    13.502423] input: Power Button as /devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input3
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    13.502481] ACPI: Power Button [PWRF]
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    16.669350] powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD E-450 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics (2 cpu cores) (version 2.20.00)
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    16.669436] powernow-k8:    0 : pstate 0 (1650 MHz)
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    16.669440] powernow-k8:    1 : pstate 1 (1320 MHz)
Sep 11 22:15:58 wallboard-pc kernel:    16.669444] powernow-k8:    2 : pstate 2 (825 MHz)
Sep 11 22:16:04 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: dbus[768]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.UPower' (using servicehelper)
Sep 11 22:16:04 wallboard-pc dbus[768]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.UPower' (using servicehelper)
Sep 11 22:16:04 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: dbus[768]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.UPower'
Sep 11 22:16:04 wallboard-pc dbus[768]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.UPower'
Sep 11 22:16:05 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: (upowerd:1655): UPower-Linux-WARNING **: failed to open /etc/crypttab: Failed to open file '/etc/crypttab': No such file or directory
Sep 11 22:16:05 wallboard-pc dbus[768]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Sep 11 22:16:05 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: dbus[768]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Sep 11 22:16:06 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: dbus[768]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Sep 11 22:16:06 wallboard-pc dbus[768]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Sep 11 22:21:49 wallboard-pc dbus[768]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Sep 11 22:21:49 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: dbus[768]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper)
Sep 11 22:21:49 wallboard-pc dbus[768]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'
Sep 11 22:21:49 wallboard-pc dbus-daemon[768]: dbus[768]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'

Can’t seem to figure out why these settings are not being used when everything in terms of “Power Saving” has been disabled completely. Is there anything I should uninstall on the PC and then install another program to control the Power/Energy Saving stuff…?

I’ve also disabled DPMS using the xset command as well and it’s still turing off output to the TV after 5 minutes.

Is threre anything else you guys can think of?

Thanks in Advance,
Matt

15

I can say that gnome uses its own power settings and the example for KDE will not help. The YaST power setting should still work, same for the xset command as should my CFU bash script. If you elect to compile your own kernel, the default power setting as can be set by CFU can be made the default in the kernel if you want. A monitor going to no signal just means the PC has turned off any signal output.

Thank You,

16

@mmartin0926: I noticed you mentioned in your opening post that you’re using openSUSE 12.1 which is EOL. IIRC, it used KDE 4.7.2 by default and there were bugs causing issues like this which have subsequently been resolved. I would there recommend that you consider upgrading to 12.3 if at all practical.

17

In the GUI: Click the lizard:

Open “Configure Desktop” & look at the “Hardware” row

Click “Display and Monitor”

Click “Screen Locker” & Uncheck “Start automatically after…”

Return to “Overview” (top-left corner of dialog)

Click “Power Management”

Click “Energy Saving” & Uncheck everything in that pane

Click “Activity Settings”

Click “Act like” & select “PC running on AC power”

Worked for me, maybe for you too.