Re: XFCE power manager no longer turns off the monitor

Saturday, 9 January 2016

Sam Varshavchik writes:

...
> On Tue, 2015-12-29 at 08:19 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > At some point recently, my monitor stopped getting turned off after
> > the  
> > prescribed period of inactivity. I'm using the XFCE power manager,
> > and its  
> > settings remain untouched.
> >
> > Manually executing "xset dpms force off" turns the monitor off
> > normally.  
> > "xset q" shows that everything appears to be in order:
> >
> > DPMS (Energy Star):
> >   Standby: 300    Suspend: 360    Off: 420
> >   DPMS is Enabled
> >   Monitor is On
> >
> > So, what else can I check?
>
> I doubt this is your issue, but just in case...
>
> Does it only fail to do the "Off" part or is it not doing any of the 
> three?

 It wasn't doing anything at all. 
Ok, this problem kept popping up occasionally, and I've been able to do some  
additional digging.

It appears that after a reboot, DPMS is off. After a reboot, "xset dpms q"  
shows:

DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 360    Suspend: 0    Off: 420
  DPMS is Disabled

And after I issue a manual "xset dpms force off", then bring the display  
back up:

DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 360    Suspend: 0    Off: 420
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

So, the issue is that after a reboot, DPMS is off by default.