Monitors no longer automatically suspend/sleep after timeout

Jbni · 2022-09-20 14:53:23

My monitors no longer go to sleep after a timeout. It used to work fine, but stopped randomly a couple months ago with an update. I’m not quite sure which.

I have tried using both xfce Power Manager and XScreensaver to configure the setting. (I have tried them individually and both together.)

The monitors do not sleep and then wake up; they never sleep.

I can manually put them to sleep with

sleep 2;xset dpms force standby

And they sleep just fine and remain asleep, but I cannot get them to turn off automatically.

I have no idea where to even begin looking to troubleshoot this.

Help?

ToZ · 2022-09-20 19:33:47

Hello and welcome.

Is it just the monitors that are not sleeping? Is system sleep affected as well?

Do you have presentation mode enabled?

xfconf-query -c xfce4-power-manager -p /xfce4-power-manager/presentation-mode

Or any other inhibitors in place:

bus-send --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.PowerManagement /org/freedesktop/PowerManagement/Inhibit org.freedesktop.PowerManagement.Inhibit.GetInhibitors

Jbni · 2022-09-21 13:01:56

I don't use system sleep, so I've not checked that.

Xscreensaver does start the screensaver at the proper time, if configured. xfce power manager did not blank the screen when set to 1 minute.

The first command gets me

Property "/xfce4-power-manager/presentation-mode" does not exist on channel "xfce4-power-manager".

And the second - assuming that's dbus-send, since I don't appear to have bus-send - gets me

 method return time=1663764989.018598 sender=:1.37 -> destination=:1.84 serial=73 reply_serial=2
   array [
   ]

I've been dealing with this for a couple months and it's persisted through reboots, updates, etc. I finally got the bright idea to try a different environment, so I booted into Window Maker and set Xscreensaver to screensave at one minute and power down at two, and it worked.

And then I booted back into xfce and it kicked the screensaver in at one minute and powered them off at two.

So apparently it was just waiting for me to ask for help to start working again.

(Problems that mysteriously fix themselves are almost as annoying as problems I can't fix. But I would like to know places I could look for info on things like this.)

Last edited by Jbni (2022-09-21 13:02:10)

ToZ · 2022-09-21 15:31:56

My initial though was that something was inhibiting the monitor dim/sleep cycle. Next time it happens, run the dbus command again (sorry it should be dbus) to see if anything is inhibiting it.

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#1 2022-09-20 14:53:23

Monitors no longer automatically suspend/sleep after timeout

#2 2022-09-20 19:33:47

Re: Monitors no longer automatically suspend/sleep after timeout

#3 2022-09-21 13:01:56

Re: Monitors no longer automatically suspend/sleep after timeout

#4 2022-09-21 15:31:56

Re: Monitors no longer automatically suspend/sleep after timeout

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