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vbetool: A Special Use

How to turn off your screen regardless of what you do on the keyboard or mouse

Why?

Well, for several reasons:

How?

First you have to install the vbetool package.

Now what?

Now you have to do several things. First, vbetool can only be run as root. So you have to add it to the sudoers file as a password-free command.

How?

Here we learn that:


With that in mind, you now know you need to run on a terminal


And you have to add the following to your newly created sudoer file:


Save the file. If everything is ok, you’re almost done.


What next?


Just add the following 2 commands as 2 separate keyboard shortcuts. You can test the commands right away without key binding them, but once you blank your screen you will feel lost and won't know how to turn it back on. There’s a trick though, don’t worry. Keep on reading.

To add a new keyboard shortcut you have to take into account the Ubuntu flavor you're running on your computer. As an example, you can look here on how to add them on Xubuntu. In case of doubt, please read the documentation associated with your distro of choice.

As for the commands, to turn off add as shortcut:

And to turn on:

You can also try the commands without worry if you know some tricks to get it on. These tricks are important so you are not left out without option to turn the screen back on. They are also important if you make some mistake while adding the shortcuts.

The tricks


There are several ways to revive the screen without issuing vbetool.


CategoryAccessories

vbetool (last edited 2017-09-06 22:08:18 by ckimes)