13.10 screen won't turn off after inactive for X amount of time.

**waitingroomsnap** · October 22nd, 2013

Hello,

Since upgrading to 13.10 I'm having an issue with the display no longer turning off after inactive for x amount of time. I can set the time in the Brightness and Lock settings to anything, even as small as 1 minute, and the screen will not blank after that amount of time.

I can get the screen to blank via

Code:

xset s 10

and the screen will turn off after 10 seconds, but after a few minutes, checking the xset settings shows that the timeout is changed to 0. I remember previously when I had upgraded to 13.04 that the screen was blanking after 10 minutes, regardless that I had set the Brightness and Lock to longer than 10 minutes, because the xset timeout defaulted to 600, so I had added a startup application containing just

Code:

xset s off

And things worked as they should using the brightness and lock setting. So now I've tried disabling that script and adding a

Code:

xset s 3600

to get it to turn off after an hour, and if I check the settings immediately upon logging in, the timeout is 3600, but it doesn't stick, and after a few minutes, something changes it to 0.

So basically that's the extent of my knowledge on the issue and I don't know what else to check or do.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

**rgo2** · October 26th, 2013

I have the same problem. If I find something I will tell you.

Have you got gnome-screensaver installed?

Regards

**bcsepany** · October 26th, 2013

I had the same issue, but it seems i have found a solution:

Code:

xset +dpms
xset dpms 300

It turns off the display after 5 mins.

While searching I found the gnome screen saver which has a nice animation, but wont turn off the screen. If you want the animation just set its delay 10 seconds less than xset.

Code:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver idle-activation-enabled true
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 290

**rgo2** · October 26th, 2013

Thanks bcsepany, as a workaround works (enough to me).

If I'm not wrong xset works at xorg levels, below than brigthness and lock settings(unity/gnome-shell level), then it just turn off the screen (i.e. doesn't lock it).

**bcsepany** · October 26th, 2013

I didn't notice the difference, but gnome screensaver has an option to lock your screen. Its another workaround but it works for me, and it seems to turn off the screen too (when lock is enabled):

Code:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled true
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay [seconds]

You can set the timeout from my previous port, the delay just adds more time before lock.

**rgo2** · October 26th, 2013

I think the culprit is "org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay". It's being ignored for me.

**mike-morrison** · December 6th, 2013

i had this same problem. i seem to have fixed it by switching the display manager from lightdm to gdm.

Code:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

**keithspg** · December 18th, 2013

This was not a 'fix' for me. This is a BUG. Typing this in the command line is not a 'fix. Someone that cares should report it and it may get fixed in the next few releases. Oh, yeah, related to this is the fact that there is no way to configure lightDM to timeout... My users log out and this leaves the monitor fully powered on and bright...

I am DONE with Ubuntu. It is the nagging stuff that used to work that gets broken that is so annoying. How can something this simple not get caught before the release. Especially with no work around. Need to find another distro...