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21

How to disable blank screensaver on Ubuntu Server?

There's no desktop or X, only console (command-line interface).

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up vote 46 down vote accepted

The easiest way is to add the parameter consoleblank=0 to your kernel command-line at boot-time.

  • Open /etc/default/grub in your favorite editor; you will need to use sudo (for vi, nano, etc.) or gksudo (for gedit, etc.).

  • Then add consoleblank=0 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=, parameter.

  • e.g. yours may say:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash consoleblank=0"

Then run sudo update-grub, and reboot.

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Is there a way to do that from Virtualbox? As in passing an option to the kernel command line? – CMCDragonkai Jun 5 '14 at 4:56
    
@CMCDragonkai This answer works for virtualized Ubuntu as well since it boots using grub by default too. – Melebius Jan 21 '15 at 9:42
    
As in, is there a way to pass it externally from Virtual Box, not from within Ubuntu? – CMCDragonkai Jan 22 '15 at 0:28
    
@CMCDragonkai No, there is no Virtual Box option that will pass on this setting. You have to edit the file as specified above. – Rick Chatham Feb 11 '15 at 22:09
1  
Look: I don't want to update the grub files, just to disable the (Blank) ScreenSaver. I'm resorting, to setterm -blank 0, maybe in a file ~/.bashrc. (See also on superuser.com an answer to Change Linux console screen blanking behavior) – metadings Sep 26 '16 at 13:21
up vote 18 down vote

Type setterm -blank 0 on any shell to disable blanking out of tty consoles.

0 disables blanking, any value greater than 0 is the time in minutes. Default is 10.

To permanently enable this you can add this line to your ~/.bashrc config.

A more detailled explaination can be found in this answer at superuser.

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This only worked after I ran TERM=linux (since I override it in my .bashrc). – Wesley Baugh Jun 14 '16 at 4:46
    
Does not unblank the master terminal. – mckenzm Apr 22 '17 at 5:51
up vote 1 down vote

This will "overwrite" whatever is in your current config for "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=", mine was default, so I just use the following One Liner.

sudo sed -i 's/\(^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=\).*/\GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="consoleblank=0"/' /etc/default/grub && sudo update-grub2
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I had to escape the '"' character: sed --in-place 's/(^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=).*/\GRUB_CMDLINE_LI‌​NUX_DEFAULT=\"quiet consoleblank=0\"/' /etc/default/grub – W1M0R Dec 13 '17 at 7:20
up vote 0 down vote

Same situation, the other suggestions seemed a roundabout solution. Came across the GNU tool setvesablank on/off using apropos. It seems the best fit, trying it out to see if it fits the need.

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