Display blanking under KMS

Community Tutorials
1

I recently switched from Raspbian buster to DietPi bookworm on an RPi connected to TV

Under buster, the following was my go to command for display blanking

vcgencmd display_power 0

In bookworm, the above command works only if I use the fkms driver (vc4-fkms-v3d)
If I switch to kms driver(vc4-kms-v3d), the command no longer works. (might be the same case with bullseye too from what I have read)

I have come across a few options while searching for alternatives to vcgencmd. I am listing them below in case anyone finds it useful. (specifically systems with no desktop environment)

  1. Using kmsblank command

    kmsblank command blanks the display and waits for to be pressed. Once is pressed, the command quits, and the display comes back on

    kmsblank is part of kms+±utils package and can be installed as:

    sudo apt install kms++-utils

  2. If you are using kodi, there are a couple of ways to blank the screen

    • Under Settings → System → Power Saving → Put display to sleep when idle, specify the idle minutes, after which the display is blanked

    • Alternatively, using the kodi-send command:

    kodi-send -a toggledpms

    kodi-send is not part of kodi installation, and can be installed separately as:

    sudo apt install kodi-eventclients-kodi-send

  3. Using consoleblank setting in the kernel command line as described here

2

did you tried using dietpi-config to set headless mode?

3

Thank you for sharing the additional option. Seems like the option permanently disables HDMI display, not just during idle time.

The options I listed above target use case where the display needs to be turned off temporarily to save power and turned back on when required without a reboot

4

Well you where talking about headless system and usually these systems don’t have a screen attached :wink:

5

ok, updated the post to accurately reflect the system