Turn off just the display (Laptop)? NO XORG

Hi everybody!

I have FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE in an old laptop (Dell Inspiron 710m). It works well.
Thread 51456

I don't have a desktop PC now. So I'm using that Laptop to running some programs in C and some others scripts in PHP and shellscript (Always working in something).

There is a way to turn off just display?

The laptop have some extra coolers but the display is always on, and its getting hotter.

I dont have X system now, just the base system, I found some messages in a mail list but they are oldest, about twelve years:

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2005-April/084923.html

They taking about screen saver that doesn't turn it off the display.

So, Twelve years after there is way to turn off the display of a laptop without shutdown the system?

Regards!
 
The screen on every one of my laptops times out after 10 minutes and goes blank without every having to do anything with a screensaver or any make adjustments,

I use x11-wm/fluxbox and it's that way from the first time I boot to a desktop. If you don't have X installed it will, however, stay on indefinitely and why I prefer to work with ports from the login terminal.
 
I would try loading acpi_video module:
Code:
# kldload acpi_video
and then list available parameters:
Code:
$ sysctl hw.acpi
IMHO, the best candidate to adjust is
Code:
# sysctl hw.acpi.video.lcd0.brightness=0
hw.acpi.video.lcd0.brightness: 100 -> 0
If it works, a screensaver script can be written.
 
Hi

I do sysctl hw.acpi | grep video


This is the output:

Code:
hw.acpi.video.out1.active: 0
hw.acpi.video.out0.active: 0
hw.acpi.video.lcd0.levels: 10 8 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
hw.acpi.video.lcd0.economy: 8
hw.acpi.video.lcd0.fullpower: 10
hw.acpi.video.lcd0.brightness: 10
hw.acpi.video.lcd0.active: 1
hw.acpi.video.ext0.active: 0
hw.acpi.video.tv0.active: 0
hw.acpi.video.crt0.active: 0
hw.acpi.reset_video: 0

When I set the brightness parameter always get Invalid

Code:
sysctl: hw.acpi.video.lcd0.brightness=0: Invalid argument

Btw the laptop have hardware button for Brightness in keyboard

I found other thread here Thread 53631 but they no post any solution

I found some other thread in another Forum (FreeNAS) where anyway they dont found solution
https://www.nas4free.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=9964



The screen on every one of my laptops times out after 10 minutes and goes blank without every having to do anything with a screensaver or any make adjustments,

I use x11-wm/fluxbox and it's that way from the first time I boot to a desktop. If you don't have X installed it will, however, stay on indefinitely and why I prefer to work with ports from the login terminal.

Hi, Your laptops all of then do that with X system or some o then do that without X?
 
Hi, Your laptops all of then do that with X system or some o then do that without X?

They only time out at 10 minutes at the desktop when X has been invoked, but will do so every time.

That is not always advantageous for me. When I work with ports I like to do so from the login terminal, before ever invoking X, so I can see how things progress without having to move the mouse to bring back the display.
 
the values are valid, but I probe 2 for brightness, economy and fullpower. But does not happen anything.
In my ThinkPad T430 brightness perfectly works, but not others...
Unfortunately, I don't see any Dell specific acpi module:
Code:
$ find /boot/kernel/ -name "*acpi*"
/boot/kernel/acpi_video.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_asus_wmi.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_dock.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_wmi.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_sony.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_panasonic.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_fujitsu.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_hp.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_ibm.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_toshiba.ko
/boot/kernel/acpi_asus.ko
 
Is there nothing in the BIOS? I think there often is, and that's OS independent.
 
I check the bios, there is nothing related with the display behavior.

The laptop comes with keyboard button to increase and decrease brightness and that is SO indepedent. But dont have any button to turn it off.
 
How many FreeBSD terminals waste energy without a screensaver?
I have a fairly low-tech solution, I actually switch the screen off when I don't need it ;)

Seriously, servers are mostly managed remotely. In the rare occasion I need to be at the console I switch on the screen, do my thing, log off and turn off the screen.
 
They only time out at 10 minutes at the desktop when X has been invoked, but will do so every time.

That is not always advantageous for me.
When having a xorg.conf file was the way to do things, you could add the right option to disable DPMS. Now you use xset(1) instead.

As you can see with xset q, it defaults on 600 seconds for everything:
Screen Saver:
[...]
timeout: 0 cycle: 600
[...]
DPMS (Energy Star):
Standby: 600 Suspend: 600 Off: 600

As I've always been a fan of "low-tech solutions" myself (ahem!), I turn off the monitor and don't rely on anything like that. I disable it right in my ~/.xinitrc file, first thing before loading the window manager:
Code:
xset -dpms
xset s off
xset s noblank
[...]
 
I'm going to have a look tonight, I have one machine I switched back to sc(4) just so I could run the beastie_saver :D

But I can't remember if it switches off the monitor, it's difficult enough to get the screensaver to activate when my cats think that keyboard is nice place to sleep on. (I have plenty of "login" failures for 'bmbbmvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv' for example).
 
albertobsd , correct me if I'm wrong, I believe your laptop is equipped with Intel Extreme Graphics 855 GM graphic card.
I've experimented with mine and found that the acpi_* module is not enough to control the backlight in console. You should also load Intel KMS driver:
Code:
# kldload i915kms
In my case (Thinkpad T430) the keyboard brightness keys work after that. Maybe that's why your hw.acpi.video.lcd0.brightness values don't work.
 
Yes, the laptop have the "Intel 82855GME (855GME GMCH) SVGA controller"


dmesg | grep vga

Code:
VT(vga): resolution 640x480
vtvga0: <VT VGA driver> on motherboard
vgapci0: <VGA-compatible display> port 0x1800-0x1807 mem 0xe8000000-0xefffffff,0xe0000000-0xe007ffff irq 11 at device 2.0 on pci0
agp0: <Intel 82855GME (855GME GMCH) SVGA controller> on vgapci0
vgapci0: Boot video device
vgapci1: <VGA-compatible display> mem 0xf0000000-0xf7ffffff,0xe0080000-0xe00fffff at device 2.1 on pci0

The laptop have keyboard buttons for brightness and works well, those buttons work even in the BIOS screen.

I've been seriously considering disconnecting the display from the wire.
 
Although I'm almost five years late, I just wanted to share that
Code:
xset dpms force off
which I found here in a post from 17 years ago worked for me an a Lenovo c440 with FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE-p6.

I have it bound to a key combination in my i3 config file. The screen turns off immediately and wakes up on a keystroke or mouse movement.

This is additional background to mention that I am still in transition from Linux and have just discovered that I had been using this command in linux, but in a bash script named "blank":
Bash:
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
sleep 1; xset dpms force off
I had been running that script from my i3 config on Linux. I also have bash installed on freeBSD and the script shown was edited to adjust the bash location to that on freeBSD. So, one can either use the xset command above directly or use it in a script.
 
Thanks, aragats ! Not a big deal, but I didn't install bash just for that, but because of the many scripts I'd been using in Linux before taking a leap into freeBSD!

I also see your point about "OP", although being new, it took me time to figure out what (or who) "OP" referred to. I am learning!
 
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