HOWTO: Replace gnome-screensaver with xscreensaver

[lordawesome]

Giggity... Works like a charm on my ancient p4!!!

[JaradT]

I got it working.
Hopefully I don't screw anything up.

[bmo92663]

Thanks man, worked like a charm.

[cpaul]

If you want System->Quit->Lock Screen to work, just do this:

$ sudo ln -f /usr/bin/xscreensaver-command /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver-command

after following the rest of that guide. The query, throttle, and unthrottle flags from gnome-screensaver-command won't work, though.

This won't work at least in Gnome 2.22.3.

The 'Lock Screen' actually only send a dbus request to invoke the lock method of the dbus object org.gnome.ScreenSaver.

Since you have disabled the gnome-screensaver, the dbus object org.gnome.ScreenSaver is not created while the Gnome starts.

We need to create the dbus object org.gnome.ScreenSaver and implement the Lock method.

I use the below python script to create the org.gnome.ScreenSaver.

----------- myscreen-dbus.py --------

#!/usr/bin/python

import dbus
import dbus.service
import dbus.glib
import gobject
import os

class ScreenDbusObj(dbus.service.Object):
    def __init__(self):
        session_bus = dbus.SessionBus()
        bus_name=dbus.service.BusName("org.gnome.ScreenSaver",bus=session_bus)
        dbus.service.Object.__init__(self,bus_name, '/org/gnome/ScreenSaver')

    @dbus.service.method("org.gnome.ScreenSaver")
    def Lock(self):
        os.system( "xscreensaver-command -lock" )


if __name__ == '__main__':
    object=ScreenDbusObj()
    gobject.MainLoop().run()

You should keep this script running on the background. The 'Lock Screen' button will call the method Lock and the method Lock will execute the xscreensaver-command -lock.

To automatically start this script, you need to add the command, i.e. /path-to-the-script/myscreen-dbus.py & in the System/Preferences/Sessions.

Furthermore, the options is used by xscreensaver-command and gnome-screensaver-command for lock is different. For xscreensaver-command, the option is -lock. But for gnome-screensaver-command, the option is --lock ( there are two hyphen before the 'lock').

[tracyjames]

didnt work for me im using ubuntu 10.04 dual booted with win7,

intel i5, 4gb RAM, 500GB SATA, Nvidia 9600gt

did i go wrong somewhere ? or its unavaible in 10.04 ?

[Bob63]

didnt work for me im using ubuntu 10.04 dual booted with win7,

intel i5, 4gb RAM, 500GB SATA, Nvidia 9600gt

did i go wrong somewhere ? or its unavaible in 10.04 ?

what didn't work? xscreensaver in general or the lockscreen function.

[l300lvl]

i was just curious if anyone's been able to get the dpms working properly after switching to xscreensaver, it seems that no matter what i try, removing gnome-screensaver or just disabling it and/or certain power management settings in gconf, when the display is suspended/goes to sleep, via dpms, i get hard locks. so my only choice was to remove xscreensaver altogether and revert to gnome screensaver.

[ba0bab]

Excellent, worked like a charm. This is Ubuntu and it's helpful community at it's best!

[jhansonxi]

Has anyone been able to use myscreen-dbus.py (comment #94) on Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)? When it's running it doesn't seem to exist on dbus:
qdbus org.gnome.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver org.gnome.ScreenSaver.Lock

Error: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod
Method "Lock" with signature "" on interface "org.gnome.ScreenSaver" doesn't exist

[rareish]

very cool thanks for this little, how to