xscreensaver fails to activate via "Preview" button or via "Blank after" setting

[Celejar]

Hi,

I'm running Debian Sid with XFCE. Xscreensaver used to work, but a
number of months ago, it broke badly: it now fails to fails to activate
via the "Preview" button or (more importantly) via the "Blank after"
setting. It does still work via direct activation via
"xscreensaver-command" (and it is successfully activated by the system upon
suspend-to-ram).

I filed a bug about this, but subsequent to an interesting discussion
of the architecture of the software and its Debian packaging, the
maintainer closed the bug as unreproducible. The issues raised in the
bug discussion do not seem to apply to my system, but xscreensaver
nevertheless remains broken here. Can anyone help me figure this out?

--
Celejar

[Celejar]

Sorry, forgot to cite the bug report:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1014782

--
Celejar

[Mike Kupfer]

Celejar wrote:

> I'm running Debian Sid with XFCE. Xscreensaver used to work, but a
> number of months ago, it broke badly: it now fails to fails to activate
> via the "Preview" button or (more importantly) via the "Blank after"
> setting.

Thank you for bringing this up. I just noticed yesterday that
XScreensaver was not working with Xfce in my Bookworm VM, but I was too
busy to look into it. I could start it by hand after logging in, but
there was an autostart entry for it, so I expected it to already be
running.

Have you verified that the daemon is running? (Does "pgrep
xscreensaver" produce anything?)

Prompted by your email, I added an Xfce autostart command to run
xscreensaver in verbose mode and with logging enabled. The log says

xscreensaver: 09:09:49: running in process 4072
xscreensaver: 09:09:49: "cinnamon-screensaver" is already running on display :0.0 (window 0x1200001)

By the time I could look at the log file, though, cinnamon-screensaver
was no longer running.

The xscreensaver man page does say something about uninstalling other
screensavers. It's in the section "INSTALLING XSCREENSAVER ON GNOME OR
UNITY", but maybe it applies to other DEs? It does seem odd that
cinnamon-screensaver would get started in Xfce. Maybe this is some
side-effect related to using systemd to start screensavers?

Anyway, if you don't have any other screensavers installed in your VM,
try enabling logging and see if it tells you anything interesting.

mike

[Celejar]

On Mon, 13 Feb 2023 09:28:23 -0800
Mike Kupfer <kup...@rawbw.com> wrote:

> Celejar wrote:
>
> > I'm running Debian Sid with XFCE. Xscreensaver used to work, but a
> > number of months ago, it broke badly: it now fails to fails to activate
> > via the "Preview" button or (more importantly) via the "Blank after"
> > setting.
>
> Thank you for bringing this up. I just noticed yesterday that
> XScreensaver was not working with Xfce in my Bookworm VM, but I was too
> busy to look into it. I could start it by hand after logging in, but
> there was an autostart entry for it, so I expected it to already be
> running.
>
> Have you verified that the daemon is running? (Does "pgrep
> xscreensaver" produce anything?)

It's running:

~$ ps ax | grep screensaver
2727 ? S 0:07 xscreensaver -no-splash
2813 ? S 0:00 xscreensaver-systemd
31876 pts/6 S+ 0:00 grep screensaver

> Prompted by your email, I added an Xfce autostart command to run
> xscreensaver in verbose mode and with logging enabled. The log says
>
> xscreensaver: 09:09:49: running in process 4072
> xscreensaver: 09:09:49: "cinnamon-screensaver" is already running on display :0.0 (window 0x1200001)
>
> By the time I could look at the log file, though, cinnamon-screensaver
> was no longer running.
>
> The xscreensaver man page does say something about uninstalling other
> screensavers. It's in the section "INSTALLING XSCREENSAVER ON GNOME OR
> UNITY", but maybe it applies to other DEs? It does seem odd that
> cinnamon-screensaver would get started in Xfce. Maybe this is some

No cinnamon-screensaver here, as per the output shown above.

> side-effect related to using systemd to start screensavers?
>
> Anyway, if you don't have any other screensavers installed in your VM,
> try enabling logging and see if it tells you anything interesting.

Thanks for the suggestion. The logs show regular deactivate events like
the following every 20 seconds:

ClientMessage DEACTIVATE: already inactive, resetting activity time

I saw this:

https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#no-blank

I guess I have to figure out what application is sending these messages?
Firefox? I do tend to keep a lot of tabs open.

Anyway, I've updated the bug log with this information:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1014782#77

Thank you.

--
Celejar

[Mike Kupfer]

Celejar wrote:

> The logs show regular deactivate events like the following every 20
> seconds:
>
> ClientMessage DEACTIVATE: already inactive, resetting activity time
>
> I saw this:
>
> https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html#no-blank
>
> I guess I have to figure out what application is sending these messages?
> Firefox? I do tend to keep a lot of tabs open.

I recall seeing something several months ago about the Xfce power
manager fighting with xscreensaver, though I'm not able to find it right
now. If you have the Xfce power manager configured to manage the
display, you could try disabling that.

mike

[Cindy Sue Causey]

Was it maybe a comment here? As in.. a comment I made? A year ago,
apparently. It looks like I ultimately threw in the towel and opted
for only power managing.

My memory recall is that the conflict kept locking my Debian install
up to the point of requiring a hardware button reboot. That obviously
kills anything you have open and are working on at that moment.

If I get my newest debootstrap booting, I'll play with it, too. I do
like those screensavers as well as the artistic talent it takes to
create them. :)

Cindy :)
--
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA
* N.B. elbrus 5 minutes after I posted yesterday: "bookworm freeze"
(as in.. not trixie). CHECK! *

[Celejar]

Bingo - the problem was that Xfce Power Manager's Presentation Mode was
on. I'm not sure I was even aware of that mode's existence, but
it apparently has a long history of becoming turned on without the
conscious intention or awareness of the user :)

https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14210

I turned Presentation Mode off, and xscreensaver seems to be working
correctly now. Thank you very much!

--
Celejar