This is a stupid question but how do I prevent the x screen from going blank after the system sits idle for a while. I tried a bunch of things and none of them worked. Is this a power save feature or just a screen saver? Could it being on a KVM switch screw things up?

It's most likely a power management feature. Additionally, check your screen saver settings to see if there's a timeout feature that will make your screen go blank after so many minutes. I know there's a setting for Gnome screensavers that you can set to make it go blank.

Yea is maybe a screensaver, mines is setup to go blank in 60 minutes, so maybe thats your problem.. KDE Menu --- Preferences--- Look & feel --- Screensaver.. I hope this solves your problem.

i personally use xscreensaver for my .... uh screensaver. if you don't know how to run it go to terminal and type <xscreensaver> and a GUI will pop up. click on settings and go to advanced tab. there will be a setting to shut off the energy settings.
if you ever want to get this back then type <xscreensaver-command -demo> and this will bring back the GUI.
hope this helps

care of Slapnut from JL:

--------------------
Do this as root to disable the sleep mode... etc.
/sbin/chkconfig --level 123456 apmd off
<edit> Either reboot to make changes or:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/apmd stop </edit>
If it doesn't help then turn it back on with:
chkconfig --level 345 apmd on.
<edit> Either reboot to make changes or:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/apmd start </edit>
--------------------

Possibly the setterm command is what your looking for.

man setterm for more details.

Also you should check the BIOS. Often the BIOS has an option for power saving which overrides software settings.

I had a problem with this when installing Gentoo - system would never come back from the blank screen. Had to put a weight on the shift key while compiling everything to keep the screen up

BIOS settings had no effect, and this is deffinately not a screensaver, etc...

I'll have to note some of the solutions above.

I believe trickykid has a better solution for this one, setterm.

in the man page: -powersave off

Some versions of Slackware, others may or may not do this, have a command in
/etc.rc.d/rc.M
in the form
/bin/setterm -blank 15

The most recent version of X I installed (4.2.1) does not over-ride this, so if I don't use it for a while, the screen blanks. FInd the equivalent file in your system boot chain and either adjust it or block it from executing, as suits your purpose.

I use a utility called xset to disable the dpms screen saver and to change the mouse tracking speed.

Realize that my RH8 installation is a little unconventional for a workstation in that (a) I boot to the console and start X using the startx script and (b) I use IceWM rather than Gnome or KDE desktop.

Here's the relevant excerpt from the ~/.Xclients script (called by startx).

# Change the mouse tracking speed.
xset m 4 2
# Disable the screensaver.
xset s off
# Disable Energy Star.
xset -dpms
# Start the window manager.
exec /usr/bin/icewm || exec xterm -fg red

I don't know how you'd go about using this with XDM.