[ale] console blank screen

[brock at quantifier.org]

Hello, Ale'rs

I'm running an old ibook with Debian Squeeze, and I prefer to leave x
uninstalled.  I can google well enough with w3m, ssh just fine to email, 
and play the radio with mplayer.

I can't get the console to blank out after a few minutes, though, and the 
display just stays on (i.e., I'd like a "screensaver" without running x).

I edited /etc/rc.local with:

setterm -2 blank

which, according to the man page, should blank the screen after 2 minutes. 
I'm pretty sure this is all I've ever done in the past, but since I 
upgraded to squeeze last week, it doesn't blank, and I have to shut the 
thing down at nite to get the screen to shut off.

Help?

Thanks,

Robert