Programmatic control of screen-saver

[Malcolm Kay]

I have a machine controlling a tester. Tester control and display is via a 
virtual console terminal. (X is not installed on the machine)

I need to blank the screen (screen saver style) when there is no terminal
activity for some time -- much the same as as normal screen-saver 
operation except that screen output as well as keyboard input should
inhibit the screen-saver taking over or cause the normal terminal display
to be restored if the saver is already in effect.

I would hope that there might be some ioctl call to the terminal which 
could be used from within the tester control software to wake up the 
terminal or prevent the screen saver taking over until a further timeout
has elapsed. I've not been able to find such an ioctl call parameter.


Does anyone have any ideas or a solution please?

(FreeBSD 4.8-Release)

Malcolm Kay