I (sort of) solved it! I gave up on blocking monitor events and worked from the other end of the cable - leave the screens 'hard-on' all the time and use DPMS signals from cron to soft-power up/down. That approach has a few issues, but it seems to work well enough as far as keeping the monitors off at night (real-time test pending, but tests with dummy times worked fine).
Some interesting effects: - Any mouse or keyboard event will wake all screens up again (which isn't a problem, the HIDs are locked in the closet with the PC.) - I set a bunch of 'off' signals to go off every 2 hours in the night. With the above effect, the screens can be re-awakened for further 2-hour stretches by causing a HID event but will still eventually sleep again (useful for late events, especially ones where I am not there and I can just instruct my manager to wiggle the mouse!) - One 'on' signal each week-day morning for regular re-awakening. Controlling the power from the PC end does have some benefits in flexibility, at the cost of making it harder for casual users to turn on the screens out-of-hours for events (if the power was off from the display LCDs themselves I could just give out a TV remote). I guess I could install a discrete button somewhere that feeds a shift key pad from an old keyboard for this functionality (shift because it will generate a HID event without actually typing anything to whatever window happens to be frontmost!). On the down side, all the screens have to come on and off together, which may become an issue as I add more screens/projectors into the system. Using multiple graphics cards would be an (expensive) way around this. The two main screens will always be present (they are built into the foyer wall) but I am always setting up varied assortments of other displays for transitory exhibits and student works. Regards, Glenn Alexander Technical Officer Digital Media Centre Faculty of Creative Arts 232.G11b Mike Codd Building, Innovation Campus University of Wollongong NSW 2522 T + 61 2 4221 5847 W http://www.uow.edu.au/crearts/digitalmediacentre/ w www.glenalec.net/DMCTO/<http://www.glenalec.net/DMCTO/> Tw twitter.com/DMC_TO<http://twitter.com/DMC_TO> Work Days: M-F 9am-4pm From: Glenn Alexander [mailto:galex...@uow.edu.au] Sent: Friday, 12 April 2013 10:42 AM To: debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: RE: Having troublh working out how to STOP monitor detection. Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to have had any effect. :( Regards, Glenn Alexander Technical Officer Digital Media Centre From: Another Sillyname [mailto:anothersn...@googlemail.com] Sent: Thursday, 11 April 2013 6:05 PM To: Glenn Alexander Subject: Re: Having troublh working out how to STOP monitor detection. Hi You probably need a variation on something like this.... Section "Screen" Identifier "CRT-0" Device "Videocard0" Monitor "Headless" DefaultDepth 24 Option "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT-0" Option "UseEDID" "FALSE" <-------------------- Option "IgnoreEDID" "TRUE" <-------------------- Option "NoDDC" "TRUE" <--------------------- SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "nvidia-auto-select" EndSubSection EndSection I can't remember which one monitors power events of the top of my head and am just heading out to a meeting...... It should give you a starting point though....I run numerous machines headless but sharing a monitor when required using the above xorg.conf settings. On 11 April 2013 04:01, Glenn Alexander <galex...@uow.edu.au<mailto:galex...@uow.edu.au>> wrote: Hi list users, I have a Linux box (AMD-64, Debian Stable, fglrx) set up for digital signage driving 2 full-HD monitors via DisplayPort (and a control screen on an old XGA LCD in the closet). The signage monitors are internally configured to shut themselves down overnight and restart themselves each weekday morning. This plays merry havoc with the content as X11 and/or the window manager (kWin) tries to shuffle things around to fit on remaining monitors. End result is the control monitor (which doesn't shut down) ends up with everything on it the next day. I am having trouble working out how to disable the automatic monitor detection so that X11 just carries on as if the monitors are still there while they are shut down for the night/weekend. Basically I want to completely ignore all monitor power events. Hunting around the 'net has given me tantalising hints that DPMS or udev may be involved but since everyone else in the world seems to want the exact opposite of what I want* (ie, to have automatic P&P) I am having little joy finding a solution :( *...well... plenty of Windows7 users complaining about not being able to change channels on a HDTV being used as a secondary monitor without scrambling their desktops, while MS ignores them, but that is even less help. :) FYI: my xorg.conf presently looks like: Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "amdcccle Layout" Screen 0 "MainScreen" 0 0 EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-DFP1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "" Option "DPMS" "false" Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1080" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "1920 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-DFP2" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "" Option "DPMS" "false" Option "PreferredMode" "1920x1080" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "0 0" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "0-CRT1" Option "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver" Option "ModelName" "" Option "DPMS" "false" Option "PreferredMode" "1024x768" Option "TargetRefresh" "60" Option "Position" "1376 1080" Option "Rotate" "normal" Option "Disable" "false" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "card-0" Driver "fglrx" Option "Monitor-DFP1" "0-DFP1" Option "Monitor-DFP2" "0-DFP2" Option "Monitor-CRT1" "0-CRT1" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" Identifier "MainScreen" Device "card-0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Virtual 3840 1920 Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Regards, Glenn Alexander Technical Officer Digital Media Centre Faculty of Creative Arts 232.G11b Mike Codd Building, Innovation Campus University of Wollongong NSW 2522 T + 61 2 4221 5847<tel:%2B%2061%202%204221%205847> W http://www.uow.edu.au/crearts/digitalmediacentre/<http://www.uow.edu.au/crearts/digitalmediacentre/index.html> w www.glenalec.net/DMCTO/<http://www.glenalec.net/DMCTO/> Tw twitter.com/DMC_TO<http://twitter.com/DMC_TO> Work Days: M-F 9am-4pm Notice: This email is intended for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient please delete it and notify the sender. Please consider the environment before printing this email _______________________________________________ x...@lists.x.org<mailto:x...@lists.x.org>: X.Org support Archives: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg Info: http://lists.x.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg Your subscription address: anothersn...@googlemail.com<mailto:anothersn...@googlemail.com>
