Turn off Proxmox primary monitor.

rahulkundu4u

New Member
Jan 9, 2023
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What I am trying to achieve?

I have a laptop with Intel Core i5 2410M processor and 6GB RAM. I have 2 hard disks. I want to keep installing Linux Mint in drive 1 and Proxmox in drive 2. The GRUB is installed in drive 1 (Linux Mint).

What is the problem I am facing?

I want to turn off the primary display when using Proxmox to extend the life of the monitor. But it stays always on.

I tried following things but none of them worked
  1. Added "consoleblank=60" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX in /etc/default/grub. It did not work even though I added to both bootloaders (Linux Mint and Proxmox)
  2. Configured the power settings to HandleLidSwitch=ignore in /etc/systemd/logind.conf
  3. Could not turn off the monitor using “xset dpms force off”
  4. I build a fake VGA plug to emulate an external display. But could not figure out how to make an external monitor the primary display.

Any help is much appreciated.
 
Hi,
you could try force a KMS mode in the kernel command line /etc/default/grub as described here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel_mode_setting#Forcing_modes

So something like GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="<other parameters> video=LVDS-1:d" followed by a update-grub and a reboot.

This shell script from the above link to the ArchLinux Wiki should show you the name of the available outputs and their current state
Bash:
for p in /sys/class/drm/*/status; do con=${p%/status}; echo -n "${con#*/card?-}: "; cat $p; done
 
Last edited:
Hi Chris,

Thank you very much for your response. The above technique works.

However, this works only when we use the grub loader from Proxmox. I was trying to make a dual boot system (Linux Mint on the first hard drive and Proxmox on the second hard drive). The second hard drive is installed in a caddy which unfortunately does not appear in the boot menu. So I had to use a grub loader from Linux Mint and add Proxmox using os-prober. This dual boot works great. But turning off LVDS from Linux Mint grub does not work in both Linux Mint and Proxmox.

So, I was curious if there is any technique that can programmatically turn off LVDS, We can run that after Proxmox completes the boot process. Please let me know if you are aware of such kind of technique.
 
this script turns off the monitor after a minute of inactivity
#!/bin/bash setterm -term linux -blank 1 -powersave powerdown -powerdown 1 </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1
save to /root/down_monitor.sh
set execution permissions
add at startup to cron crontab -e
@reboot /root/down_monitor.sh
 
this script turns off the monitor after a minute of inactivity
#!/bin/bash setterm -term linux -blank 1 -powersave powerdown -powerdown 1 </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1
save to /root/down_monitor.sh
set execution permissions
add at startup to cron crontab -e
@reboot /root/down_monitor.sh

On my Surface Pro 4, this makes my display blank, but it's still on. Am I missing something?
Edit: It may have been due to having nomodeset enabled in grub. I performed the following steps and it now turns my displays off correctly:

  1. Edit the grub bootloader
    1. nano /etc/default/grub
      1. Replace the following:
        1. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet
      2. With
        1. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet consoleblank=60
          1. NOTE: if you have “nomodeset” enabled, be sure to remove this first, otherwise the display may stay on.
    2. Save & Exit
  2. Update grub with the following command:
    1. Update-grub
  3. Reboot
 
Last edited:
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On my Surface Pro 4, this makes my display blank, but it's still on. Am I missing something?
Edit: It may have been due to having nomodeset enabled in grub. I performed the following steps and it now turns my displays off correctly:

  1. Edit the grub bootloader
    1. nano /etc/default/grub
      1. Replace the following:
        1. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet
      2. With
        1. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet consoleblank=60
          1. NOTE: if you have “nomodeset” enabled, be sure to remove this first, otherwise the display may stay on.
    2. Save & Exit
  2. Update grub with the following command:
    1. Update-grub
  3. Reboot
Thank you very much for your
 

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