2020-11-07
Turning on console blanking on a Linux machine when logged in remotely
When my office workstation is running my X session, I lock the screen if it's idle, which blanks the display. However, if the machine winds up idle in text mode, the current Linux kernel defaults keep the display unblanked. Normally this never happens, because I log in and start X immediately after I reboot the machine and then leave it sitting there. However, ongoing world and local events have me working from home and remotely rebooting my office workstation for kernel upgrades and even Fedora version upgrades. When my office workstation reboots, it winds up in the text console and then just sits there, unblanked and displaying boot messages and a text mode login prompt. Even when I come into the office and use it, I now log out afterward (because I know I'm going to remotely reboot it later).
(Before I started writing this entry I thought I had set my machine to deliberately never blank the text mode display, for reasons covered here, but this turned out not to be the case; it's just the current kernel default.)
Leaving modern LCD panels active with more or less static text being displayed is probably not harmful (although maybe not). Still, I feel happier if the machine's LCD panels are actually blanked out in text mode. Fortunately you can do this while logged in remotely, although it is slightly tricky.
As I mentioned yesterday, the kernel's console blanking timeout is
reported in /sys/module/kernel/parameters/consoleblank. Unfortunately
this sysfs parameter is read-only, and you can't just change the
blanking time by writing to it (which would be the most convenient
way). Instead you have to use the setterm program, but
there are two tricks because of how the setterm program works.
If you just log in remotely and run, say, 'setterm -blank 5', you
will get an error message:
# setterm -blank 5 setterm: terminal xterm does not support --blank
The problem is that setterm works not by making kernel calls, but by writing out a character string that will make the kernel's console driver change things appropriately. This means that it needs to be writing to the console and also it needs to be told the correct terminal type so that it can generate the correct escape sequences. To do this we need to run:
TERM=linux setterm -blank 5 >/dev/tty1
The terminal type 'linux' is the type of text consoles. The other
type for this is apparently 'con', according to a check that is
hard-coded in setterm.c's init_terminal().
(And I lied a bit up there. Setterm actually hard codes the escape
sequence for setting the blanking time, so the only thing it uses
$TERM for is to decide if it's willing to generate the escape
sequence or if it will print an error. See set_blanking()
for the escape code generation.)
The process for seeing if blanking is on (or forcing blanking and
unblanking) is a bit different, because here setterm actually makes
Linux specific ioctl() calls but it does them on its standard
input, not its standard output. So we have to do:
TERM=linux setterm -blank </dev/tty1
This will print 0 or 1 depending on if the console isn't currently
blanked or is currently blanked. I believe you can substitute any
console tty for /dev/tty1 here.