Displays never sleep

[brianjmurrell]

Neither of the displays on my dual-display system seem to ever sleep.

In Power Management Preference I have it set to Put display to sleep when inactive for: 10 minutes but they never sleep. The screen saver comes on though, so inactivity must be being noticed. But the displays stayed powered up. Even all night long.

I have mate-power-manager-1.8.0-3.fc20.x86_64 installed.

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[mschulkind]

I'm having similar problems, although this is on Ubuntu 14.10.

xset dpms force off works just fine, and my screensaver comes on and the screen locks through mate-screensaver, but the display never turns off.

I see these errors in .xsession-errors:

$ cat .xsession-errors | grep mate-power
(mate-power-manager:3845): GLib-CRITICAL **: Source ID 664 was not found when attempting to remove it
(mate-power-manager:3845): GLib-CRITICAL **: Source ID 1458 was not found when attempting to remove it
(mate-power-manager:3845): GLib-CRITICAL **: Source ID 1499 was not found when attempting to remove it
(mate-power-manager:3845): GLib-CRITICAL **: Source ID 1576 was not found when attempting to remove it

Package versions:

$ dpkg -l | grep mate-power
ii  mate-power-manager                                   1.8.1+dfsg1-1~trusty2                      amd64        power management tool for the MATE desktop
ii  mate-power-manager-common                            1.8.1+dfsg1-1~trusty2                      all          power management tool for the MATE desktop (common files)

[raveit65]

@brianjmurrell
@mschulkind
Is the problem still exists with latest updates for mate-power-manager and mate-screensaver?

[brianjmurrell]

@NiceandGently Hard to say, but perhaps.

[raveit65]

@brianjmurrell
hmm, does it work or not?
What is hard to find that out?
I never could reproduce the issue on a single monitor system with f20 and higher.

[brianjmurrell]

@NiceandGently There's no need to be rude about it.
It's difficult to determine because other things can influence/prevent the screensaver from coming on, like synergy and not having the mouse pointer focused on the mate screen. Although when I reported the problem I was positive that was not the problem.

So frequently now, I may not have the screensaver come on but it is because of the Synergy issue, not this one.

But that's not to say that this problem is not just masking behind the synergy issue.

[raveit65]

@brianjmurrell

There's no need to be rude about it.

....this is rude....

[brianjmurrell]

@NiceandGently I'm rude? My correspondence here as been in no way rude.

[muff1nman]

I am possibly having the same issue. I cannot use sleep 1; xset dpms force off with mate-power-manager running. It does not work in that the display will go to sleep for an indeterminate amount of time 5 to 30 seconds, but will then wake up. However if I kill that process, then the former command works fine and the display will stay off all night.

[deflexor]

I have the same issue on CentOS 7, MATE 1.10.1 laptop with plugged external display via display port. In power settings "turn off display" option is not working at all. Display remains always on. But if i relogin into cinnamon session, then display is turning off just as configured in cinnamon power settings.

[ghost]

The issue still exists, as of September 2018. However, it seems it may be specific only to laptops with an external monitor.

I have two machines running MATE:

• An all-in-one desktop, where screen blanks as it should
• A laptop, where screen blanks as it should only with no external monitor connected. (Not sure if an additional condition is that the laptop lid is closed, as I don't normally run it open in this case). With an external monitor attached, instead of blanking, the screensaver (which I have disabled) comes on.

This issue appears both in Debian (sid) and Ubuntu (bionic).

[tailcat]

same here, running Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) on a Dell Destop with two montiors.

[rtbaldwin]

Similar issues -

• Dell E6420, w external VGA monitor attached.
• Laptop display is set OFF in Monitor Preferences.
• If laptop lid is closed, external monitor never turns off. The image blanks, but the backlight stays on.
• If laptop lid is open, external monitor blanks as set in Power Management (eg, 'Put display to sleep when inactive for 2 minutes').
  Centos 7.5, Mate_Desktop 1.16, mate-power-manager 1.16

Any ideas are greatly appreciated !

[ghost]

OK, I did find one workaround, albeit non-optimal.

• Install the XFCE4 power manager (on Debian-based systems: apt install xfce4-power-manager). This will now show up as "Power Manager" (as opposed to "Power Management") in the "Look and Feel" section of the MATE Control Center.
• Go to "Startup Applications" to disable "Power Manager", and instead create your own item to launch "xfce4-power-manager" at startup.

YMMV.

[rtbaldwin]

Brilliant ! XFCE4 power mgr works well on my Centos 7.5/Mate system as well.
One quirk - This seems to have turned my pointer into a spinning circle rather than the usual arrow. It only appears that way on the actual desktop itself - it shows as a normal arrow within any window or app. I can certainly live with it, fair trade for a working power manager !
Thanks, @hlorri !

[ghost]

I vaguely remember this issue too, but did not associate it with xfce4-power-manager at the time. In any case you may try to disable the MATE desktop icons. If you have the MATE Tweak tool installed, you can uncheck the first box in the "Desktop" section: "Show Desktop Icons". I did this because I use Compiz, and wanted to use the "Wallpaper" plug into associate a different background image for each workspace. Since around the same time, the spinner icon on the desktop went away.

(Caveat: Clicking on the desktop will no longer unfocus the frontmost window after this. Specifically, if you use mate-panel-appmenu and dependencies to provide a Unity/MacOS X style global app menu on top, clicking on the desktop background will no longer bring up the "Desktop" menu).

[masscream]

I confirm, that the issue is still present, on Debian too. It has to do something probably with the external monitors as others say. I have Dell Latitude E6440 on docking station with two screens. I had never problems with other DEs.

PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="11"
VERSION="11 (bullseye)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye

mate-power-manager-common/stable,now 1.24.2-1 all [installed,automatic]
mate-power-manager/stable,now 1.24.2-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]

update: I was able to temporarily fix the problem using these tools, however, it would be nice to have it working in the DE too....