SUMMARY: Solaris 7 powerd no longer works with xlock?

From: Chin Fang (fangchin@leland.Stanford.EDU)
Date: Tue Aug 10 1999 - 13:18:57 CDT


Dear fellow Sun Managers,

Two days ago, I asked in this list whether there is a way to get the
powerd working with xlock again in Solaris 7. Two managers, Paul
Collison <pmc@ociw.edu> and Arthur Darren Dunham <add@netcom.com>
responded.

Both pointed out in Solaris 7, the screensaver and the powerd no longer
work with each other. Paul mentioned that if the -enablesaver flag
of xlock is used, the powerd could be tricked into working again like
what it did in Solaris 2.5.1.

I took the hint, and now use xlock -enablesaver -mode hop & in my
.twmrc. It has been working fine ever since. When I read the xlock
man page, I always thought that the +enablesaver should be used! Go
figure. All our desktops run Solaris 7 5/99, BTW.

The remaining issue is that when use any mode other than the "blank"
for xlock, it uses a lot CPU cycles, constantly driving my SS5
110Mhz's load average to 1.0+! I will put a higher nice value in
/usr/openwin/lib/X11/app-defaults/XLock later today and see if it
drops the load average.

Thanks to both Paul and Arthur for their hints.

Regards,

Chin Fang
fangchin@leland.stanford.edu

================================= original question =========================
Dear fellow Sun Managers,

After upgrading most of our desktops from 2.5.1 to Solaris 7 recently,
I have noticed only a few minor glitches, among them the only one
that's still bugging me is the observation that powerd no longer works
with xlock.

Many people here use xlock to lock their console after the end of the day.

BTW, no one here run CDE. We do use Xsun from Sun, but many use twm,
and some use fvwm. CDE is installed but not used on all desktops.

While all our desktops were on 2.5.1, after 30 minutes or so, the powerd
would put the monitors in energy saving mode. Not the one that comes
with Solaris 7 as it seems to me.

/etc/power.conf has the following statements:

# NOTE: The entries below are only used when no windowing environment
# is running. When running windowing environment, monitor power
# management is controlled by the Screen Saver functions.

So, as a test, I invoked xlock using the +enablesaver option, but
still none of the monitors with xlock running get in the energy saving
mode. I really prefer not to go around and ask everyone to turn off
their monitors after taking off at the end of each day. Therefore, I
would be very appreciative for any hints that enable me to get the old
energy saving behavor back.

Regards,

Chin Fang
fangchin@leland.stanford.edu



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:13:24 CDT