Q4OS Forum

rrmosslack

Member

From: Seymour, Indiana

Registered: 2026-06-05

Posts: 1

No Sleep Please!

Afternoon everyone,

This post concerns a problem I have been having running Q4OS (Trinity) 3.1 on a Dell-Wyse 5070 thin client, which is my shop computer. The computer (or display) goes to sleep and I am unable to wake it up without just pressing and holding the power button until it reboots. This happens even though I have the screen saver off and any related power options  set to NO SLEEP.

I use MX Linux (XFCE) on main computer system and in years past I had a similar problem where this would happen and found the problem to be the xscreensaver which I had no control over using any of the normal desktop controls. Through a lot of research I found if I entered a command into their version of autostart the problem went away. This was the command: xset s 0 -dpms.

So using the terminal in Trinity I typed in that same command. The computer came back to life as nothing had happened once I turned the monitor back on after being off for 2 days. Obviously this was the same problem. Apparently this problem had been addressed in subsequent versions of MX Linux as I no longer have to put that command in. I do have the screen saver set and the computer comes back to life when I use the mouse or keyboard just as I left it.

So to address this problem I first did some searching to see what the recommended place was to add in this command and I got back xinitrc in most cases so that is what I did. Not too long after that I found autostart and put it there also just for good measure. So far it seems to be working. I figure one or the other is doing the job and if both are then the redundancy is not a problem.

So I guess my question is does anyone else have this problem and how did you solve it?

Thanks for listening

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 6,221

Website

Re: No Sleep Please!

Welcome to the forum

We post the AI assesment, what we reviewed and consider quite plausible.

AI response:
What you describe sounds less like a screensaver issue and more like a DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling) or power-management problem that Trinity isn't fully exposing through its GUI settings.

The command you found:

```bash
xset s 0 -dpms
```

does two things:

* `xset s 0` disables the X server screen saver.
* `-dpms` disables monitor power-management functions.

If entering that command immediately fixes the problem, that's a strong indication that X11/DPMS is putting either the monitor or graphics subsystem into a state from which the Wyse 5070 isn't recovering properly.

A few observations:

1. **Putting it in both `~/.xinitrc` and Autostart is probably unnecessary.**

   * If the command is running from Autostart after the desktop loads, that's usually sufficient.
   * Having it in both places generally won't hurt anything, but it makes troubleshooting harder because you won't know which one is actually applying the setting.

2. **You can verify the current state with:**

   ```bash
   xset q
   ```

   Look for the sections labeled "Screen Saver" and "DPMS". If DPMS is disabled, you should see:

   ```text
   DPMS is Disabled
   ```

3. **The Wyse 5070 hardware may be contributing.**

   * Some thin clients and embedded graphics chipsets have quirks with monitor wake-up, especially when using older desktop environments or X11 configurations.
   * The fact that the machine itself remains running but requires a hard reboot suggests the display subsystem is failing to wake rather than the entire system suspending.

4. **I'd check whether any other power-management service is running.**
   For example:

   ```bash
   ps aux | grep -E "xfce4-power-manager|powerdevil|kscreenlocker|xscreensaver"
   ```

   and

   ```bash
   systemctl list-unit-files | grep -i sleep
   ```

   Sometimes a background power manager overrides desktop settings.

5. **A more permanent X11 configuration method** is creating an X startup script that always executes:

   ```bash
   xset s off
   xset -dpms
   xset s noblank
   ```

   Many people use all three commands together to prevent blanking and monitor power-down.

Given that the monitor woke normally after being left alone for two days once you issued the `xset` command, I'd say you've already identified the root cause pretty convincingly. The remaining question is simply where to place the command so it runs automatically. In Trinity, the Autostart mechanism is usually the cleaner solution than modifying `.xinitrc`.

Out of curiosity, when the problem occurs, does the monitor report **"No Signal"**, or does it remain powered on with a black screen? That distinction can help determine whether the failure is DPMS-related or a graphics driver issue.