I've been searching for a way to shut off my laptops display (Dell Lattitude D600) when it is docked. I'm running FC3, BTW. I've done some Googling on the subject and discovered three possible ways to do this. #1 My radeon video driver has a "PanelOff" option, which shuts off the display. I've been searching for a way to set this option on-the-fly, i.e. while X is running rather than in the xorg.conf file. Is this even possible through X or directly to the driver? #2 using xset dpms force off - this does shut off the display, but it comes right back on when the mouse of keyboard is used ;'< , I've not found a way around this either. #3 Using the radeon tool here http://www.loria.fr/~thome/d600/ I have this installed anyhow to get the video card to wake up properly after suspending with S3. It works, but even the author admits it's a crude and improper way of doing things. The good part is it's a simple command line such as '# /etc/acpi/radeontool light off' to kill the display but you must be root to do so ;'( (Newbie question) Can I write a script that has sudo permissions which calls the radeontool, that can be called by any user? I can figure out the scripting, I think, not sure how to set the permissions though. I would love to be able to figure out how to use option #1 as I think this might eliminate the need for the radeontool in the first place (as I could tell the driver to wake the display up after resuming). I think option #2 is a dead end as dpms is doing what it is supposed to do. Option #3 will work if the permissions are right? Any help appreciated. Jeff Birt Electronics Engineer Integrated Systems Facility University of Missouri - Rolla 573.341.6058
