How to disable the X Windows screen blanker

Problem: The monitor seems to want to blank itself under X Windows, even though DPMS and its friends are disabled in the BIOS, there's no magic power management service running, etc.

Solution:

The X Windows settings are in a configuration file that varies by window manager. Typical values are ~/.Xclients and ~/.xinitrc, among others.

In whichever file this turns out to be, add:

  xset s off

  xset dpms off   #leave me entirely alone
  #  or
  xset dpms X Y Z  # X Y Z are number of seconds to standby suspend powerdown

Related note:

For text consoles, see "setterm -blank 0" to stop the screen from magically clearing itself.

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