FOLLOW-UP: SUMMARY: Sun Ray screen savers and blanking

From: Daniel Baldoni <dbaldoni_at_iinet.net.au>
Date: Thu Jul 31 2003 - 17:49:12 EDT
G'day again folks,

A synopsis of my original summary was:

> > I have a server running Solaris 8 2/02 (with very recent Recommended and J2SE
> > patch clusters installed) acting as a Sun Ray 2.0 server.
> >
> > Part of the project was to develop a custom screensaver (which simply
> > displays a couple of lines of text at randomly chosen locations every few
> > minutes - very light CPU load).  The screen-saver works perfectly when run by
> > an ordinary (aka non-root) user on the server console and appears to work
> > when run (by the same user) on a Sun Ray terminal.  But, almost instantly,
> > the terminal's display goes blank - as if it's gone into power-save mode.
> >
> > What I want to know is - does anybody know how to turn off that blanking?
> >
> > Above, I said the screen-saver appears to run - it appears in the process
> > list for the user (and debugging log information is written as expected).  We
> > just don't get the display we expect - or if we do, we only get it for a few
> > seconds before the screen blanks completely.
> 
> Surprisingly, there were no suggestions from the list (and the only reply in
> comp.sys.sun.admin was wrong).  However, I believe I have cracked the problam
> and want this in the archives...
> 
> The solution appears to be the (undocumented) program utdevctl (in
> /opt/SUNWut/lib).  The following command:
>         echo disp_blank 0 | /opt/SUNWut/lib/utdevctl
> given by the user at the start of a session appears to work.
> 
> This has now been working on a terminal (located right behind me as I type
> this) for a couple of hours.  However, remember that utdevctl is undocumented
> (I found it by lookin at what utset does) - to the extent that a search on
> docs.sun.com found nothing.

After a query from a fellow list-member who's still using version 1.3 of the
Sun Ray Server Software, I did a bit more exploring and found what appears to
be a "better" (and documented - albeit only in a single man page) solution:

	/opt/SUNWut/lib/utxset -b 0

This was added to our session starter and has been working as expected for
about 20 minutes.  I expect this will also work with version 1.3 but I don't
currently have access to such a system.

I don't know how I managed to miss that one but it just goes to show you
can indeed "teach an old dog new tricks".  :-)

Ciao.

-- 
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Daniel Baldoni BAppSc, PGradDipCompSci                 |  Technical Director
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"Any time there's something so ridiculous that no rational systems programmer
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 The Murgos" by David Eddings.  (I'm not good, just crazy)
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Received on Thu Jul 31 18:01:30 2003

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