Feature changed by: locilka Feature #304395, revision 14 Title: Disabling (or handling) screensaver during installation openSUSE-11.1: Done Priority Requester: Desirable Projectmanager: Important Requested by: locilka@novell.com Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: We currently have screen-saver active during installation/upgrade. This is a bit problematic when some exception occurs and opens a pop-up window requesting some user-decision (Abort/Retry/Ignore/...). On slower networks, installation can take tens of minutes, even a few hours. It would be nice to disable the screen-saver (easy) or at least handle all the exceptions by disabling the screen-saver. References: Bug 393890 - How to disable screen blank during installation https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=393890 Black monitor (thread): "The screen suudenly went black" http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2008-05/msg00675.html Use Case: Installation on slower computer and/or via slower network Discussion: #1: aschnell@novell.com (2008-05-27 15:10:07) On slow computers people might actually want the screensaver. Suppose you start the installation and go home or sleeping: I would expect that the monitor powers off after some time. We could add a call "xset dpms force on" to popups. But I doubt that this is worth the effort. #2: locilka@novell.com (2008-05-27 15:43:16) (reply to #1) Bug 393890 says exactly: During installation the screen will blank when for some period no keyboard and mouse activity is recognized. The drawback is, that you will not notice error messages that pop up. So one has to move the mouse every 5 minutes or so and is bound to the installation. It would be cool, if we could either do not blank the screen at all, or "deblank" it, when a error message pops up. ... and Stefan Hundhammer adds: The screen saver should be off during installation. Why would there be any exception to this rule? (It's not even that screen savers serve their real purpose these days - it was an issue with old (very old) CRT monitors that could "burn in" images that would be displayed for a long, long time - and then, we are talking about months, not about hours). #3: sh@novell.com (2008-05-27 16:10:19) (reply to #1) aschnell wrote: On slow computers people might actually want the screensaver. Suppose you start the installation and go home or sleeping: I would expect that the monitor powers off after some time. When I go home during such a lengthy operation, what's wrong with simply turning the monitor off? This is the most natural and the simplest thing to do. #4: sh@novell.com (2008-05-27 16:18:21) See also Bug #393890 (https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=393890) Changing screen saver settings in a widget toolkit (!) such as the YaST2 Qt UI would affect ALL applications written with that toolkit. Right now, that's all YaST2 modules, but since this UI is now available as a general toolkit, you'll never know what other applications this might affect in the future. An X11 application is not to change the user's screen saver settings (unless it is a dedicated application to configure screen saver settings, of course), much less silently in the background. We'd get a lot of surprised and very angry users, and they would have every right to be angry with us. You wouldn't even be able to find out why your screen saver doesn't work any more. #5: locilka@novell.com (2008-05-27 16:27:02) (reply to #4) The feature request is about installation, not about running system. But it's a good point that we should not change that in general... (the whole toolkit). Thanks. #6: flucifredi@novell.com (2008-06-13 17:42:27) ...and we should look at powersave behavior too during these operations. #7: visnov@novell.com (2008-07-07 09:29:27) Let's see what can be done. I suggest to: 1) having a installation parameter to switch the screen saver off 2) error messages to stop screensaver if running #8: jsrain@novell.com (2008-07-11 10:08:35) The first part is easily possible and we can do it. Tracking all error pop-ups is not easy. I suggest to disable screensaver at the beginning of installation. Who is doing installation overnight usually switches off the display anyway. #9: locilka@novell.com (2008-07-14 17:09:48) (reply to #8) Adjusting DPMS 'off' (xset -dpms) when installation starts, DPMS 'on' (xset +dpms) when finishes (FATE #304395). Feature done in yast2-installation- 2.17.1 #10: jsuchome@novell.com (2008-07-15 07:51:02) (reply to #9) Ah, this means that xset call could be disabled from timezone client... + #11: locilka@novell.com (2008-07-15 10:08:30) (reply to #9) + Also screensaver had to be turned off/on to make it work. yast2- + installation- 2.17.2 + Disabling: + /usr/bin/xset dpms 0 0 0; /usr/bin/xset -dpms; /usr/bin/xset s 0 0 + Re-enabling: + /usr/bin/xset dpms 1200 1800 2400; /usr/bin/xset +dpms; + /usr/bin/xset s default -- SUSE Feature Tool: http://partnerfate.suse.de/?rm=feature_show&id=304395