# Need monitor to stay on continuously [SOLVED]

## audiodef

I need my Gentoo box to not ever turn off my monitor. I need it to stay on while I'm recording lengthy audio segments. I can't always move the mouse or hit a key every ten minutes. What do I need to do to accomplish this? Do I disable lowlevel LCD controls and lowlevel backlight controls in the kernel? Or something else?

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## Jaglover

Assuming you run X turn off DPMS. Either with xset utility or in xorg.conf.

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## audiodef

I commented out the DPMS line in my xorg.conf... still shutting off after a while.

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## Hu

Have you exited xscreensaver (or equivalent other X locking utility)?

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## Jaglover

Commenting it out in xorg.conf may be not good enough, it may be turned on by default.

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## audiodef

 *Jaglover wrote:*   

> Commenting it out in xorg.conf may be not good enough, it may be turned on by default.

 

I've rebooted and the monitor still turns off. 

What's turning it on by default, and how do I disable it?

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## audiodef

Found thread:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-853378-start-0.html

Changing my xorg.conf made no difference in what xset -q | grep DPMS returns, but xset -dpms says it turns dpms off. If that works, I'll just put xset -dpms in my .fluxbox/startup file. 

Being unable to affect dpms in xorg.conf tells me that something else is overriding it, but what? Some kind of power setting script somewhere?

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## audiodef

Not even xset -dpms worked. My screen still blanks, but doesn't turn off, so at least I'm onto something. 

I think I'll try xset dpms 0 0 0 in the hopes that while dpms will be on, it will at least disable any actual screen blanking activity.

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## audiodef

Nope. Still not. What can I try next?

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## tomk

Are you running acpid? If so there could be something in /etc/acpi/ that's affecting it (not sure of the exact file as I'm on a different machine now).

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## audiodef

I don't think I'm running acpid. Some info from this page helped me. I think it was the extra xset args. xset s off -dpms s noblank s noexpose s off is what appears to work for me. I noticed that with this line, xset -q shows prefer blanking as "no", whereas a simple xset -dpms does not affect prefer blanking.

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