Comment # 15 on bug 1095700 from Per Jessen

(In reply to Takashi Iwai from comment #14)
> Note that there are a few issues here.
> 
> The original problem, the error from setterm invocation, is likely rather a
> user-space problem, i.e. possibly some incorrect invocation.
> 
> OTOH, another problem, the non-working blank despite of setterm command, is
> a kernel problem, and this strongly depends on the framebuffer driver (and
> KMS driver, too).  This needs to be addressed in the kernel upstream.

Agree - and the former is only an attempt to work around the latter.  So as
soon as the kernel problem is fixed, the user-space issue also goes away :-)