Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.setup, comp.os.linux.misc
Date: 1996/06/16

> I'm running Slackware 3.0 on an AST P-90. My PC has power saving (green)
> features built-in to BIOS, such that I can set it power off the monitor and
> the hard drive after N minutes of inactivity. This works great under
> DOS/Win. However, under Linux the Linux screen blanker activates but my hard
> drive and monitor don't ever power down. I don't understand -- since its
> part of my BIOS, shouldn't it be independent of the OS I'm running. Perhaps

The monitor is no problem, just add a line to your bootup files:

[user@ravel user]$ more /etc/profile
# /etc/profile

# System wide environment and startup programs
# Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc

# 4/30/96 Change path to include /usr/sbin; powersave on

/usr/bin/setterm -powersave on  <---------this one

You can also do powersave under X, a bit more tricky, depends on your video card/chipset.

Hard drive powerdown is effected by hdparm [read the man page]. However, I have not been able to successful configure it yet, because on my system various processes (cron?) write to disk every once in a while and "spoil" the hard disk idle period countdown…

If you or anyone figure out how to do this latter trick, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Cheers, Bob L.

Robert Lynch-Berkeley