# Shutdown monitor/power saving?



## Deleted member 2077 (May 16, 2012)

I have X11 or xdm running on my workstation.  How do I enable it so that the monitor will shutdown or go into "power saving mode" after X minutes of no activity?  Is this something X11 does or powerd or other?


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## ring_zero (May 17, 2012)

You can usually control this via the window manager that you are using.  And you can also enable DPMS via xorg.conf in the Monitor section
	
	



```
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor 0"
VendorName "your vendor name goes here"
ModelName  "Your model name goes here"
Option    "DPMS"
EndSection
```


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## trepanne (May 21, 2012)

As the above poster says, enable DPMS in xorg.conf. Then usually you control this via screensaver settings for whatever environment you're running - I control this from the "Advanced" tab on xscreensaver-demo; and I remember in KDE system settings you look under "Power settings".


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## Deleted member 2077 (May 22, 2012)

trepanne said:
			
		

> As the above poster says, enable DPMS in xorg.conf. Then usually you control this via screensaver settings for whatever environment you're running - I control this from the "Advanced" tab on xscreensaver-demo; and I remember in KDE system settings you look under "Power settings".



Thanks, but how do you call xscreensaver from xdm?


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## trepanne (May 22, 2012)

> Thanks, but how do you call xscreensaver from xdm?



The xscreensaver man page (together with the FAQ on Jamie's website) is one of the jewels of UNIX technical documentation.  You really should read it - here's how it starts:


> GETTING STARTED
> For the impatient, try this:
> 
> xscreensaver &
> ...



I call xscreensaver from .xinitrc/.xsession. If you're running xdm, it may be valuable for you to read up on these (as well as .Xresources etc.)


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## Deleted member 2077 (May 23, 2012)

*O*k, found the problem.  My syngery session kept waking it up.


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