GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 130605
If the screensaver is turned off the "lock the screen" action doesn't do anything
Last modified: 2020-11-06 20:25:43 UTC
Description of Problem: f the screensaver is turned off the "lock the screen"æction doesn't do anything and don't give any clue to the user about was is going on. Steps to reproduce the problem: 1. Go to desktop prefrences->advanced->screensaver and desactivate it 2. press actions->lock screen Actual Results: Nothing Expected Results: The screen should be locked with the screensaver How often does this happen? Always Additional Information: If you look the founction panel_lock_screen in panel-util.c you should see that the lock screen function is provided calling the command xscreensaver-command -lock. Well, if you desactivate the screen saver and type the command in the shell you wiill get: "xscreensaver-command: screen blanking is currently disabled. ". So it is a xscreensaver problem, and we must do a workaround. If we can't make the lock work at least we must show a dialog telling the user what is going no. If nothing happens, the user would believe that the soft is broken; i believe it until, for another reaso, turn the screensaver on.
I forgot one last thing: it seems that the bug #85605 is related to this one.
Created attachment 29878 [details] [review] Proposed patch
Mark, did you have a look at this patch? It adds a string, but looks generally ok to me at least.
Does xscreensaver run on a specific screen or on all screens? By not using a _on_screen function, we might add a bug...
i will work on this defect.
Comment on attachment 29878 [details] [review] Proposed patch In principle, I think its a good idea to pop up an error dialog in this case although I think it would probably be more correct to de-sensitive the "Lock Screen" menu item. However, there are problems with this patch: - We need to be sure that launching xscreensaver-command -lock on any screen will work - we shouldn't be spawning synchronously - this will cause the panel to lock up if the command blocks
*** Bug 154596 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I suggest locking screen without xscreensaver made possible in the way like it is done with Typing Break, because sometimes I really don't need screensaver, just locking desktop. Just a idea, thought.
Peteris: and how do you unlock the screen? This is why we need xscreensaver or gnome-screensaver too, I guess :-)
Is this still valid? IIRC gnome-screensaver can't be disabled.
bugzilla.gnome.org is being replaced by gitlab.gnome.org. We are closing all old bug reports in Bugzilla which have not seen updates for many years. If you can still reproduce this issue in a currently supported version of GNOME (currently that would be 3.38), then please feel free to report it at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-panel/-/issues/ Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry it could not be fixed.