up vote 1 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

On my Windows 7 32bit machine I'm running a VirtualBox instance of Xubuntu 9.10 32bit and I've noticed that the screen saver on the virtual box instance of Xubuntu never becomes active despite setting the timeout to 1 minute.

I also have a Kubuntu 9.10 instance that I also run on VirtualBox on this machine and this does actually become idle and activate the screen saver, locking the session which is the thing that I am trying to achieve.

I'm wondering if there are any suggestions for things to either check or change to get the system to become idle (it's a very bare installation, pretty much just the bare installation and Google Chrome) or whether there is some other method that I could achieve the same effect (have the system lock after 1 minute of inactivity) without relying on the screen saver?

link|improve this question
feedback

1 Answer

up vote 1 down vote accepted

ps x | grep xscreensaver will tell you if the screensaver is running. Just running xscreensaver in a terminal is enough to start it up, if not. The configuration which sets timeout and locking behavior etc. should be customized in $HOME/.xscreensaver

An alternate locking program is xlock.

Just to be clear: xscreensaver should be constantly running if you want your session to auto-lock - it is the program that detects that you have been idle, locks the screen, and displays the screensaver.

link|improve this answer
Justin, thanks for the response, I have the following running at the moment: "gnome-screensaver". I installed xscreensaver to see what would happen, but as I expected it complained that gnome-screensaver was already running. Presumably I should be able to de-activate the gnome-screensaver and use xscreensaver instead? – Richard Feb 22 '10 at 15:31
Nice one, I noticed that I now have two entries in the "settings" panel, both called screensaver and clicking on the topmost one ran the xscreensaver GUI and prompted me to stop the gnome-screensaver demon. xscreensaver is now locking my screen as I would like. – Richard Feb 22 '10 at 15:47
glad that worked for you - I was not aware that xubuntu came with gnome-screensaver, it should be possible to get gnome-screensaver locking properly as well, but it looks like xscreensaver is working better for you anway :) – Justin Smith Feb 22 '10 at 16:35
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.