I have been running BOINC on Linux Mint 13 for several months now and the screen will not turn off. The screen saver turns on normally. Is there an option or setting to change the processor computing so the screen will turn off?

I have asked this question on Linux forums but never received a response. I have run BOINC on Windows and MAC OSX previously and never had this occur.

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Dell Latitude D630 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 / 3GB RAM/ Linux Mint 13 XFCE
Dell Latitude E6400 Intel Centrino 2 2.53 / 6GB RAM / Windows 7 Pro
Participating with CPDN since 2004, World Community Grid and Einstein.

For me there's an (extra) MagicEco Power Saving Timer On/Off option on my Samsung monitor. If there's nothing in the Energy Saving options in Mint, you may want to check on the monitor itself.

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Which desktop environment? What screensaver and power saving settings you have set?

And while you are checking the settings, could you tell us what settings are available? I really can't remember what settings there were at that time.

I am running LM13 LTS with XFCE desktop. The Power Settings are:

Monitor - Put display asleep when computer is inactive for: 4 minutes
Switch off display when compute is inactive for: 8 minutes

The Screen Saver is the default settings with Linux Mint 13, using the Fiberlamp setting.

However, the the display never turns off. There are no other settings for the display that I am aware of on the laptop of in the OS. I am still somewhat a novice to Linux, but am learning progressively fast.

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Dell Latitude D630 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 / 3GB RAM/ Linux Mint 13 XFCE
Dell Latitude E6400 Intel Centrino 2 2.53 / 6GB RAM / Windows 7 Pro
Participating with CPDN since 2004, World Community Grid and Einstein.

Ok, on a quick glance those settings look good.

However, since I had Mint 16 XFCE ISO at hand I took a look myself.

In Power Manager->On AC->Monitor I have the same settings you listed.

But there's more settings:

In Power Manager->General there is:

[x] Monitor power management control
with the following help text: Disable Display Power Management Signaling (DPMS), e.g don't attempt to switch off the display or put it in sleep mode.

I can't tell if checking the box enables or disables power management...

In Power Manager->Extended there is:

Set monitor to sleep mode: (o) Standby () Suspend

No idea what standby and suspend means here.

Then there's Screensaver Preferences->Advanced where I have:

Display Power Management:

[ ] Power Management Enabled
Standby After x minutes
Suspend After y minutes
Off After z minutes
[ ] Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode


XFCE has been around for quite long time and XScreenSaver since about forever. I would expect that you have at least some of the other settings available. Did you try any of them?

It might be that XScreenSaver prevents other power management from stepping in.

You didn't say if you think this is caused by BOINC? As in, if you stop BOINC does the display then turn off?

And this computer is a laptop? It's not unheard of that Linux has problems with laptop hardware. If tweaking the other settings doesn't help you may want try downloading newest Live CD and see if that works any better.

By the way, with which BOINC version is this? 7.0.27 or 7.2.32 by chance?
Both of those have the Linux idle detection broken. The idle detection method for BOINC running under linux is done through use of xprintidle, that queries the X-server for the user's idle
time.

Juha: Does x-server also take care of things like monitor power saving?

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Juha: Does x-server also take care of things like monitor power saving?

I suppose it depends on the point of view.

X server, or it's drivers, talks to the hardware. (These days there's also some driver stuff in kernel. I don't know what they do, but judging by the functions called kernel-mode setting I'd guess they have something to do with setting video modes.)

But I think the request to turn off monitor comes from applications. In this case that would be the screensaver, but it might also be the session manager.

I don't think BOINC's idle detection should matter here. Just some settings that's off or X/drivers being a bit incompatible with hardware.

I changed a few of the settings now and will see how that goes. I unchecked the DPMS and changed the Low Power Management setting to 90%.

Today, I installed the latest version on a Win 7 Pro computer and noticed a glitch in the screen saver with that one. I resolved it by just turning off the screen saver.

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Dell Latitude D630 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 / 3GB RAM/ Linux Mint 13 XFCE
Dell Latitude E6400 Intel Centrino 2 2.53 / 6GB RAM / Windows 7 Pro
Participating with CPDN since 2004, World Community Grid and Einstein.

I am using BOINC version 7.0.27 for Linux Mint. I have not attempted to install the latest version yet.

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Dell Latitude D630 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 / 3GB RAM/ Linux Mint 13 XFCE
Dell Latitude E6400 Intel Centrino 2 2.53 / 6GB RAM / Windows 7 Pro
Participating with CPDN since 2004, World Community Grid and Einstein.