Auto-darkening of SUN screen

[Ray Lubinsky]

In article <957 at pttesac.UUCP>, rgrodrig at pttesac.UUCP (Robert Rodriguez) writes:
> In article <17746 at adm.BRL.MIL> et>@adm.BRL.MIL writes:
> >Does anyone have a program (a modified getty?) which darkens
> >the screen of a SUN workstation after some minutes of
> >displaying "<host> login:"? We do not want to switch on and off
> >the screens several times a day and we also do not want to stay
> >them in the state described above for several hours.
> >After touching some key on the keyboard, the screen has to be
> >"switched on" of course.
> >Michael.
> 
> See screenblank(1).  We have the following line in our /etc/rc.local file:
> 
> /usr/bin/screenblank -d 600
> 
> Works like a charm.

Screenblank may be fine for private offices where the user is aware of how
his/her machine behaves, but it's less than beneficial for public workstations.
You invariably have people thinking that the screen is off and turning off
power to the monitor only to find that it was on in the first place.  I have no
idea why the original poster would not want the screen to be white-on-black for
an extended period of time.

I set up all my Suns with a modified gettytab for the console:

	# Special Sun console for automatically blackening the screen:
	S|Sun|Sun-console:\
		:sp#9600:lm=\E[q\14%h login\72 :

and then modify the console entry in /etc/ttys (for earlier releases) to be:

	1Sconsole

or the console entry in /etc/ttytab (for later releases) to be:

	console	"/usr/etc/getty Sun-console"	sun		on

Hence, the user will also get a white-on-black screen for login sessions as
well.  For those who prefer dealing with a black-on-white screen, I have a
simple program called "white" which echos the proper sequence ("\033[p") to
change the screen (first making sure that it is really being run from the
console).  In case the user decides that the default way is preferable, I have
a program called "black" to reverse the process.  At any rate, when the user
logs out, the screen is cleared and turned to white-on-black mode with the
login message at the top of the screen.

I've never had any complaints about the set up.  Many people prefer their non-
suntools sessions to be white-on-black; I get the satisfaction of knowing that
the phosphor is less likely to burn away.

-- 
| Ray Lubinsky,                    UUCP:      ...!uunet!virginia!uvacs!rwl    |
| Department of                    BITNET:    rwl8y at virginia                  |
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