Xscreensaver locking gone bad

Support Software & Applications
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This morning Xscreensaver refused to unlock. I had to login on a virtual terminal and kill the daemon. Additionall, the settings panel now has the “lock” checkbox checked, and I can’t uncheck it. The lock time (4 mins) also cannot be changed. Re-installing didn’t help.

I’d replace it with xfce4-screensaver, but then I’d lose the many entertaining screensavers that Xscreensaver features.

2

It’s a known bug with Version 6.13-1

1 Like
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There was another topic with a similar issue, only recently… Removing xscreensaver apparently solved the issue at hand plus a few others.

Sacrificing flying toasters for the xfce4-screensaver that works, doesn’t seem too unreasonable. :wink:

4

I recently had the same dilemma…and decided to stay with the blank or the flying mice. This isn’t actually anything i am looking at…since i am away.

A small note though: when changing screensavers/lockers, be sure to open the xfce settings editor and in the group xfce4-session change the LockCommand accordingly (for example from lightlocker-command --lock to xfce4-screensaver-command --lock)

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Thanks for the tip.

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Addition by Teo: by the way, many of the Xscreensaver savers are compatible with xfce4-screensaver. Problematic is the locking service.

So one can just download Xscreensaver from some mirror and extract the binaries, then paste them in /usr/lib/xfce4-screensaver/. For the ones that do not need configuring/settings, one just have to create a desktop file, for example /home/teo/.local/share/applications/screensavers/molecule.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=molecule
Comment=molecule
Exec=/usr/lib/xfce4-screensaver/molecule -root
TryExec=/usr/lib/xfce4-screensaver/molecule
StartupNotify=false
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Screensaver;
OnlyShowIn=XFCE;
Hidden=true

The ones that need setting options - like text or photo path - need an extra step configuring .Xscreensaver file. I did not bother.

Source:

Mass creation of .desktop files thx to reddit (i did not test this one-liner !)

for f in $(ls /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/*); do echo -e \[Desktop Entry\]\\nType=Application\\nName=$(basename \ $f)\\nExec=$f -root\\nTryExec=$f\\nCategories=Screensaver\; > /usr/share/applications/screensavers/$(basename \ $f).desktop; done