Screensaver does not activate when it should

[Huecuva]

Hi, I've looked all over the Internet and I cannot find anything about this particular issue. I am using 17.3 Cinnamon and my screen saver is set to activate and lock the computer after 10 minutes of inactivity. It does not. Nor does the screen turn off after half an hour as it is set to. Case in point: I literally just got onto this rig after letting it sit idle all night and when I turned the monitor on, it did not require me to enter my password. I would be happy to take a screencap to show you all how it is configured to do exactly what I want it to do but does not do but for some reason GIMP keeps telling me there's no image data in the clipboard to paste when I use Alt-PRTSCR to cap the screensaver settings window.

Can anyone shed some light on why the screensaver is not activating or locking the computer when it should be?

[karlchen]

Hello, Huecuva.

Pressing the keyboad shortcut <Alt><PrtScr> will have made gnome-screenshot take a screenshot of the active application window and save it in your Pictures subfolder silently, i.e. without any popup telling you so.
If you sort the pictures in ~/Pictures by date descending the file in question should be at the top of the filelist or pretty close to it.

Provided you locate the filea and provided it illustrates the settings which you want to show to us, you can upload the image file to a free filehoster like e.g. imgur.com and post the link to the uploaded file here in your next reply.

Cheers,
Karl

[Huecuva]

Figured out the screen shot thing after I'd already posted my OP. Here are the screen shots of both my power management and screen saver settings windows, configured exactly as I want them. The only setting here that works is that it never suspends, but I don't know if that's because it's actually working or because it just wouldn't suppend even if I wanted it to. The screen does not turn off after 30 minutes as set in the power options and the computer does not lock after 10 minutes as set in the screen saver settings.

If it helps at all, my motherboard is an Asus P5K-VM with an intel E8400 Core 2 Duo and 8GB of RAM and an nVidia GeForce 210.

[Moem]

Interestingly, my problem is 'same-same but different': mine does not lock, but the screensaver gets activated. I'll be following this thread with interest.

[not_Daniel]

In Xfce, in order to "activate the screen saver," you need to "blank" the screen after 'x' minutes...OR..."lock" the screen immediately by either clicking the menu lock button or ctrl+alt+l (L not I.) Sounds pretty unintuitive right? I don't see how the word "blank" -- can be equated to, "activate a screen saver." And btw, why can't the lock screen be the "login window" when pressing winkey+l like in windows? (ctrl+alt+l is fine though.)

@OP, try setting the delay to 0 seconds and "lock the computer when inactive after" 1 minute and see what happens. Also check in your BIOS settings, particularly the power ACPI settings to make sure they're enabled (newer boards might not display ACPI options, you're only looking for this...leave the APM configuration alone.) Also note that some applications, particularly video ones like VLC, will disable inactivity in a bid to automatically disable the screen saver while you're watching a video. It's convenient, but other apps think they're also important and "activate" you with unnecessary notifications.

[Cosmo.]

The settings look perfectly, so they do not give the problem. But it is possible, that a running application overwrites the settings; multimedia player belong to those applications.

Right click the panel on an empty place and select to add an applet. Look for the inhibit applet (does is installed by default, but not added to the panel). Add it to the panel. This applet can also overwrite the settings for power saving and screensaver start, but it also has the function to indicate with a red overlay icon, if another program overwrites the settings. Do you see this red overlay icon? (If not and you want to get an idea, how it looks like, left click the applet in the panel and switch the power management function.)

[Huecuva]

The only multimedia software running during all of this is Kodi, but not playing anything. I've never had Kodi inhibit the screensaver in Windows unless I actually had something playing. The same goes for VLC and I'm sure pretty much any other multimedia software. Is that different in Mint? Could it be that Kodi is inhibiting the screensaver even when not actively playing anything back? That would be silly. I also have HexChat, Opera and Transmission open. Surely none of those would inhibit the screensaver. I suppose I should also mention that this rig is plugged into my room mate's smart TV as well as my monitor, though I'm sure that doesn't make any difference.

Setting the delay to immediately and the lock to 1 minute did not change anything. It still didn't lock.

I will check BIOS and get back to you.

[Cosmo.]

Use the inhibit applet. Instead of guessing, what any software might do this will show it to you.

[Huecuva]

ACPI APIC support is enabled but ACPI version is not. Does it need to be?

There is no red overlay on the Inhibit applet icon.

[Huecuva]

Ok, here's an interesting update. Somehow my desktop settings all get changed so that my wallpaper was default and the screen saver was the starfield. Might have had something to do with when I unplugged the smart TV so I could boot into BIOS (because the POST and BIOS is all on secondary monitor for some reason). Anyway, I noticed that the screen saver did in fact activate (though it didn't lock because it wasn't set to screen locker, just the starfield). I'm not sure if it activated because it was just a screen saver and not the screen locker or if it worked because my room mate's smart TV was no longer connected.

[not_Daniel]

ACPI APIC support is enabled but ACPI version is not. Does it need to be?

There is no red overlay on the Inhibit applet icon.

If you're using an HDMI cable to your monitor, try a DVI or DP connection instead. Back when I had windiz, the HDMI monitor went to sleep at post. It still uses a HDMI connector, but it's a converter cable to DVI at the gpu end and that solved it from going to sleep. I have other minor problems now in Xfce -- both monitors sleep at the crypt pw screen before Mint boots but both will wake up after the correct pw is entered. The login window still looks funny -- it's a larger resolution and mirrored on both screens but will return to normal after I login.

Enable APIC support (and ACPI 2.0 Support, if applicable), boot into Mint, connect the TV, go into display settings and select your monitor as your primary display, go into the "login window" settings -> options -> primary monitor -> select the connection type that's on the gpu end of your monitor. I would also keep the gpu drivers set on "open source", apparently amd's open source drivers have severe trouble with the later versions of ubuntu.

Then test out locking by ctrl+alt+l. Try unchecking "lock the computer when the screen turns off" -- that setting seems redundant if you manually lock the screen or have "lock the computer when inactive for 'x' minutes" set.

If you're still having trouble, convert to Xfce. I did, and it has better dual-monitor support and better window managers that get rid of tearing. It still has very strange quirks, like randomly not being allowed to have desktop icons past the first half of the primary desktop monitor.

[Huecuva]

It's not that the secondary monitor is going to sleep. My room mate was using his TV. Playing PS4 on it, in fact. And since for some reason POST and BIOS always show up on secondary monitor (it did when I had my previous HTPC with Windows 7 and the same video card, as well) I had to unplug it to force it onto the main monitor so I could get into BIOS and see what I was doing. I'm not too concerned about it, though setting the primary monitor in the login window helps. Thanks for that.

The cable I'm using to connect the PC to the TV is already a DVI-HDMI cable. I couldn't get straight HDMI to work on my last rig for some reason so I used this instead and just used the same cable for the new rig.

I can lock the computer with ctrl-alt-l. I have disabled locking when the screen turns off to see if that will make a difference.

I have used xfce. I have it installed on my netbook and plan to put it on a laptop I recently acquired. I like it for the laptops because it's more lightweight than Cinnamon. For this HTPC rig, though, I wanted something a little fancier. I will consider switching though, if I am unable to find a solution and find myself sufficiently bothered by it. Although that's kind of a lot of work to redo.

[Huecuva]

Nobody else has any suggestions? Is my motherboard simply not supported by Mint, or what?

[karlchen]

Is my motherboard simply not supported by Mint, or what?

Have you told us which motherboard it is? I have not spotted any such detail. Without knowing much about your hardware trying to give an answer to your question would be somewhat speculative.
Would you mind posting the screen output of the terminal command

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

please. Note: the option is hyphen capital F lowercase xz.

[Huecuva]

Is my motherboard simply not supported by Mint, or what?

Have you told us which motherboard it is? I have not spotted any such detail. Without knowing much about your hardware trying to give an answer to your question would be somewhat speculative.
Would you mind posting the screen output of the terminal command

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

please. Note: the option is hyphen capital F lowercase xz.

I have, in fact, told you what my motherboard is. As well as the rest of my hardware that matters. In my very second post in this thread. The same post in which I posted the other screen shots. Directly after your first post in this thread.

But here's a screenshot anyway:

[karlchen]

Hello, Huecuva.

Hm. Yes. As you stated you had posted it, I spotted it now, too:

my motherboard is an Asus P5K-VM with an intel E8400 Core 2 Duo and 8GB of RAM and an nVidia GeForce 210

Still I think that the screen ouput of inxi -Fxz adds a few more technically relevant details to this one-liner.

(Click image to enlarge. Press <Alt><Cursor_left> to return here.)

Your machine is old enough - BIOS from 2008 - to assume safely that the Linux Mint kernel does know and support your hardware.
You may have been on the right track when telling that your problem might be related to the smart TV which had been attached for a while (Cf. your post here).

Picking up one of Cosmo.'s preferred analytic strategies when troubleshooting, I suggest: create a second user account on your Mint system. Log in as this user. Do not attach the smart TV. Configure the screensaver to your liking. Find out whether it works as you expect.

Regards,
Karl