Screensaver problem (ghosts?)

When I am lazy and do not turn off my computer at night, the screensaver kicks in after 10 minutes and “turn off” the monitor (blackens the screen).

However, often when I wake up in the middle of the night, I can see that the screen has turned on again, so some application must be turning it on again. Either that or I have ghosts in my apartment and they play with the mouse at night. My guess (an hope) is that an application is to blame…

Anyone recognize this “problem”?

If there's something strange
In your neighborhood
Who you gonna call?
Ghostbusters!
Inxi -Fayz
System:
  Kernel: 5.4.80-2-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.4-x86_64 
  root=UUID=fee91cd0-20ad-4ba6-b478-14e2982762a4 rw quiet apparmor=1 
  security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3 
  Desktop: Cinnamon 4.6.7 tk: GTK 3.24.23 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Inet_AB product: N/A v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME B450M-A v: Rev X.0x serial: <filter> 
  UEFI [Legacy]: American Megatrends v: 2006 date: 11/13/2019 
CPU:
  Info: 6-Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 2 
  family: 17 (23) model-id: 71 (113) stepping: N/A microcode: 8701013 
  L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
  bogomips: 86268 
  Speed: 2792 MHz min/max: 2200/3600 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 
  1: 2792 2: 2141 3: 2393 4: 3007 5: 2041 6: 2291 7: 2349 8: 2200 9: 3218 
  10: 2184 11: 2090 12: 2264 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
  Type: mds status: Not affected 
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full AMD retpoline, IBPB: conditional, STIBP: 
  conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds status: Not affected 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590] 
  vendor: Sapphire Limited Nitro+ driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus ID: 08:00.0 
  chip ID: 1002:67df 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: amdgpu,ati unloaded: modesetting 
  alternate: fbdev,vesa display ID: :0 screens: 1 
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 5760x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 1524x285mm (60.0x11.2") 
  s-diag: 1550mm (61") 
  Monitor-1: DisplayPort-0 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 82 
  size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2") diag: 686mm (27") 
  Monitor-2: DisplayPort-1 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 82 
  size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2") diag: 686mm (27") 
  Monitor-3: DVI-D-0 res: 1920x1080 hz: 60 dpi: 82 
  size: 598x336mm (23.5x13.2") diag: 686mm (27") 
  OpenGL: renderer: Radeon RX 580 Series (POLARIS10 DRM 3.35.0 
  5.4.80-2-MANJARO LLVM 11.0.0) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.3 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Ellesmere HDMI Audio [Radeon RX 470/480 / 570/580/590] 
  vendor: Sapphire Limited driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 08:00.1 
  chip ID: 1002:aaf0 
  Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 0a:00.4 chip ID: 1022:1487 
  Device-3: Logitech Logitech BRIO type: USB 
  driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid,uvcvideo bus ID: 4-4:2 
  chip ID: 046d:085e serial: <filter> 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.80-2-MANJARO 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: ASUSTeK driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000 bus ID: 07:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: enp7s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
  IF-ID-1: tun0 state: unknown speed: 10 Mbps duplex: full mac: N/A 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 3.40 TiB used: 1.36 TiB (39.9%) 
  SMART Message: Required tool smartctl not installed. Check --recommends 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: TR200 size: 223.57 GiB block size: 
  physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 15.3 
  scheme: MBR 
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Western Digital model: WD20EZRZ-00Z5HB0 
  size: 1.82 TiB block size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s 
  rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> rev: 0A80 scheme: GPT 
  ID-3: /dev/sdc vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB 
  block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> 
  rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT 
  ID-4: /dev/sdd vendor: Samsung model: SSD 850 EVO 1TB size: 931.51 GiB 
  block size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> 
  rev: 3B6Q scheme: MBR 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw size: 931.51 GiB size: 915.89 GiB (98.32%) 
  used: 201.97 GiB (22.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdd1 
Swap:
  Alert: No Swap data was found. 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 50.8 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 38.0 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 820 
Info:
  Processes: 359 Uptime: 2d 15h 21m Memory: 31.36 GiB used: 9.51 GiB (30.3%) 
  Init: systemd v: 246 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 Packages: 1285 pacman: 1282 
  lib: 366 flatpak: 0 snap: 3 Shell: Bash v: 5.0.18 running in: gnome-terminal 
  inxi: 3.1.08 

It isn’t just ghosts that play with the mouse. Vibrations in the surface that the mouse sits on ─ e.g. from a vehicle passing by on the road nearby, from an airplane flying over, from some remote tectonic activity, or from the UFO that took off again in your backyard after they wiped your memory of the abduction and returned you to your bed ─ can also cause the mouse to register a move and wake up the monitor again. :wink:

That said, certain older Logitech mice also had glitchy optical sensors that would on occasion register a move even if there was none at all, which was sometimes visible during normal use by way of a trembling mouse cursor, or a mouse cursor that would suddenly jump to a different spot on the screen for no intelligible reason. :man_shrugging:

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Glitchy optical sensor might be an even better explanation, I do have a Razer DeathAdder Chroma though. But maybe they can be glitchy too? Oh well, I guess I just have to live with this (ghost?) problem, until the mouse stops working completely, and I have to buy a new one. Then we will know…

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