Screen Won't Lock

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ajgringo619

Screen Won't Lock

Post by ajgringo619 »

Setting up a new Mint 19 VM. Everything is going great...except for some odd reason I can't get the screen to lock anymore, either by the plugin or command line. I'm sure during my infinite tweaking that I accidentally disabled something - any ideas on what?
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rene
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Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by rene »

Plugin? On Cinnamon Ctrl-Alt-L locks the screen, on XFCE I believe it's Ctrl-Alt-Del; if not, you'll be able to tell by looking at the keyboard shortcuts in the XFCE settings. That is: you may want to disable that plugin...
ajgringo619

Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by ajgringo619 »

rene wrote: Thu Aug 16, 2018 7:33 pm Plugin? On Cinnamon Ctrl-Alt-L locks the screen, on XFCE I believe it's Ctrl-Alt-Del; if not, you'll be able to tell by looking at the keyboard shortcuts in the XFCE settings. That is: you may want to disable that plugin...
Ctrl-Alt-Del does nothing; already removed the plugin. I just don't understand why it has stopped working. I've been running XFCE for 2 months now with no issues.
rene
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Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by rene »

I checked Mint 19 Xfce 64-bit in a VirtualBox VM; indeed Ctrl-Alt-Del is the standard screen-lock shortcut (note, in a VirtualBox VM Ctrl-Alt == "Host Key", by default Right-Ctrl).

But... if you check Settings -> Keyboard -> "Application shortcuts" you find it invokes xflock4 which is supposedly the "command line" you spoke of. If indeed that does nothing neither then will Ctrl-Alt-Del / Host-Del. Xflock4 is a simple shell script: less $(which xflock4). xscreensaver-command nor gnome-screensaver-command is installed by default on 19 Xfce but light-locker-command is. Did you happen to uninstall light-locker? Does a direct light-locker-command --lock report anything usable?

After you install xfconf, does xfconf-query -c xfce4-session -p /general/LockCommand report anything other than 'Property "/general/LockCommand" does not exist on channel "xfce4-session"'? It should not by default so if you have anything set there try and reset it with xfconf-query -c xfce4-session -p /general/LockCommand -r.

Hope this helps: need to be off to bed for now.
ajgringo619

Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by ajgringo619 »

I appreciate all the help; didn't see this right away. Somehow, during a flurry of reboots (issues with SMB and VirtualBox mounts in /etc/fstab), it works again. Sounds like a promo for a Microsoft support call, right? :lol:
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mint4all
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Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by mint4all »

ajgringo619 wrote: Thu Aug 16, 2018 6:57 pm Setting a new Mint 19 VM. Everything is going great...except for some odd reason I can't get the screen to lock anymore, either by the plugin or command line. I'm sure during my infinite tweaking that I accidentally disabled something - any ideas on what?
Greetings!

Afaict, the permissions to execute the "xflock4" shell script are set to "Root", exclusively. However, even when trying to execute it with sudo, xflock4 still does nothing -- your very own experience; obviously, there's a bug in there somewhere ... This finding applies to both LM19-xfce & LM18.3-xfce. Even activating the "Lock Screen" option in Xfce's whisker-menu (Whisker-button > right click > Properties > Commands Tab > Lock Screen Option), configured to execute "xflock4", does nothing. However, i've successfully tried from a terminal screen xfce's native "xfce4-session-logout --logout" command. It works just fine ... saves my session, presents the login screen, and upon my login restores the state of my open apps. Can you try...

Code: Select all

xfce4-session-logout --logout
and see if it works on your system?

PS: on my LM19-xfce test system, i edited whisker's "Lock Screen" command using the foregoing (new) syntax, and it works just as well as when run from the terminal. As a temp workaround, its easy to add a button to your panel Iif that's what you want). Good luck!
rene
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Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by rene »

mint4all wrote: Thu Aug 16, 2018 9:41 pm This finding applies to both LM19-xfce & LM18.3-xfce.
Works fine here on a just installed 19 Xfce as well seemingly again for OP. Logging out is of course different from screen locking .
ajgringo619

Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by ajgringo619 »

I just wish I knew what caused the dysfunction in the first place. To me, having a glitch self-correct is almost as frustrating as the glitch itself.
rene
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Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by rene »

Not near my 19 Xfce VM to look at details currently but probably light-locker itself was being kept from running, possibly as a result of you experimenting with different screensavers. If the situation doesn't repeat I wouldn't worry about it; it it does randomly, you are probably looking at a systemd startup race.
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mint4all
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Re: Screen Won't Lock

Post by mint4all »

rene wrote: Fri Aug 17, 2018 1:26 pm Not near my 19 Xfce VM to look at details currently but probably light-locker itself was being kept from running, possibly as a result of you experimenting with different screensavers. If the situation doesn't repeat I wouldn't worry about it; it it does randomly, you are probably looking at a systemd startup race.
On my laptop with LM19-xfce (mint-updated from beta to final release), i looked around a bit more. What i found is that the "Screen Locker" background service was not being started in the system's "Session and Startup" application auto-start list. Once i checked that and rebooted, the system's screen-locking function (executing the /usr/bin/xflock4 script) worked again, both from the whisker-menu, and from the terminal. It would be helpful for someone else to check this out -- i must admit that i've done quite a bit of tweaking since the initial build and could have unknowingly messed up this function (ie tweaks of the screen-saver and/or power-manager, among others) somewhere along the way ...
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