Stopping your terminal from blanking

To stop a virtual terminal from blanking you will need to issue the following command when logged in:

setterm -blank

This will need to be done on each virtual terminal as requiried.

For servers it is a good idea to put the above line in a startup script such as the following:

/etc/init.d/boot.local (SuSE)
/etc/rc.d/rc.local (Slackware)

This will mean that the first terminal with the boot up messages on it will not blank at all, so if your machine hangs you will be able to see the error/kernel message when you plug a monitor in.

Last updated: 18/05/2005