Hey there...

Let me explain my issue for you..

I'm running BOINC (and S@H Classic, but that's about to stop) on a laptop, Dell Inspiron, which runs Gentoo Linux. I've managed to make X turn the backlight off after a couple of minutes when I'm away from the laptop, but, as you will imagine, X is not very 'cycle-cheap' to run. Is there a way to turn the backlight in console mode only? I know that after some time the console will 'blank', but the backlight in the monitor is still on, which I don't enjoy too much...

Does anyone know if this is even possible?

Thanks in advance...


PS: And no, shutting the lid down WON'T do the trick.. backlight stays on.

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Is there a way to turn the backlight in console mode only? I know that after some time the console will 'blank', but the backlight in the monitor is still on

I don't know if this will help you, but it's worked for us on laptops with ATI Radeon chipsets.

radeonlcd

Is there a way to turn the backlight in console mode only? I know that after some time the console will 'blank', but the backlight in the monitor is still on

I don't know if this will help you, but it's worked for us on laptops with ATI Radeon chipsets.

radeonlcd

Thanks for your reply.. I need exactly that, but for nVidia GeForce 5200 Go...

I'll just keep dreaming.

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Have you looked here?
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Battery-Powered/

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David Stites
Pullman, WA USA

I'll just keep dreaming.

This may be just a dream, but I mentioned this to one of the other penguin huggers here and he tells me that on an Inspiron the display, including backlight, can be manually toggled off with FN+D. It will turn back on with any keystroke. I don't have a Dell laptop here to play with at the moment so I don't know if this works or if it would accomplish what you're after. He *thinks* this was what we ended up doing on a couple non-Radeon Dell laptops that needed the backlight off and no drivers or modules were available for whatever video they had.

Have you looked here?
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Battery-Powered/

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out tomorrow (aka when I've got some free time)...

@Scarecrow:

Fn+D doesn't work either... I'm using a Inspiron 5150.. I have even tried to turn it off cycling through the CRT/LVD video modes, doesn't work either, and even if it did, I would much rather preferred it to be automatic.

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it! :)

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