19.10 on Ryzen -- Cannot Find the "Lock Screen" option

**neltnerb** · February 13th, 2020

I recently upgraded both my OS from 19.04 to 19.10 and also switched to a Ryzen based computer.

I can no longer lock my screen with ctrl+alt+L and the lock screen option has vanished from the area where "Log Out" and "Account Settings" are in the top right toolbar button, and going to settings->privacy->screen lock just says "off" and clicking on "off" gives me a dialog with a bunch of greyed out buttons I cannot push. I tried installing gnome-screensaver but that wasn't it.

I seem to recall this working fine when I upgraded to 19.10, as best I can tell upgrading the processor exactly coincided with the lock screen option disappearing.

This is mystifying to me, I thought the lock screen was 100% at the level of the window manager, so I cannot think of a logical reason some particular CPU support would impact anything.

I just want is to be able to leave the computer on but locked when I leave my desk or go to bed so that my backup programs like crashplan or Dropbox continue syncing overnight.

Can anyone direct me to where the lock screen option is? Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong place. Or maybe anyone else has the same issue? I'm using a Ryzen 3900X and was previously using an 5th generation mobile i5.

**deadflowr** · February 13th, 2020

Lock screen shortcut is super + L.

But for your issue it seems the setting is disabled.
It's usually a dconf/gsettings setting so look at what this tells you

Code:

gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen

should be set to false.

You can try a reset of that line

Code:

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen

which should put it back to the system defaults for the lock screen.

If the defaults just rests it back to true then try manually doig it

Code:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen false

Alternatively, this can be done graphically in dconf-editor which needs to be installed.
(Just follow the same path as shown > org > gnome > desktop > lockdown > profit)

**neltnerb** · February 14th, 2020

:~$gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.lockdown disable-lock-screen
GLib-GIO-Message: 18:18:30.722: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend. Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications.
false

This seems like the first method you suggested is giving the correct value of false, and at least immediately it did not change the lock screen and the configuration settings in privacy are still greyed out. I did reboot first just in case. Seems to be in the same state of locking the screen just not being an option somehow.

**him610** · February 14th, 2020

FWIW - screen lock is activated by ctrl+alt+L in Xubuntu 20.04; it is probably the same for 19.10 (I'll check it tomorrow and post if it is different.

**neltnerb** · February 14th, 2020

Yes, I've been using Ubuntu for long enough that I got used to ctl-alt-L and am sure I changed my keyboard shortcuts since it was already in muscle memory.

In either case, the keyboard shortcut doesn't work and the option disappeared after I switched to a Ryzen processor. This is mystifying, not really sure how to debug. I assume I'm somehow missing a gnome package that implements it, but I'm confused how it isn't part of gnome-shell (running the Ubuntu version of it).

**deadflowr** · February 14th, 2020

I don't like this line at all:

GLib-GIO-Message: 18:18:30.722: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend. Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications.

I've only ever seen something like this when there are misconfigurations somewhere.
Sometimes it alludes to python and sometimes not, so not sure what to do about that.
It is troubling, though.

But besides that
Something to try is to create a secondary user and try logging into that user and see if that user also has the same issue.
That way you can see if it's a user issue or a system issue.

**neltnerb** · February 14th, 2020

Thanks! Great idea!

I created a test account and indeed super+L worked to lock the screen.

My usual account does not work with super+L or ctl+alt+L. I changed the keyboard shortcut back to super+L just in case but that didn't fix it.

So somehow my individual user account isn't letting the lock screen work. Mystified still.

I suppose I can start deleting gnome configuration files... I'd rather not have to reconfigure everything from scratch to make it work though!

**neltnerb** · February 16th, 2020

Does anyone have any clues on where I might look for how this got misconfigured? I haven't had to look under the hood of gnome 3 so I'm kind of clueless on where to get started trying to figure this out.

So locking the screen worked on a test account. It used to work on my main account until I upgraded to 19.10 and upgraded my processor to a Ryzen.

I had changed the keyboard shortcut from super+L to ctl+alt+L since that was the old behavior, but otherwise didn't intentionally modify any settings. I changed it back and tried both super+L and ctl+alt+L and even though super+L works on my test account it doesn't work on my real account (even after creating the test account).

So the functionality exists, but for some reason my user account cannot use it either with keyboard shortcuts or trying to find the lock screen option manually in the dropdown at the top right.

I can kind of work around this by using switch user as a substitute to lock screen since they kind of do the same thing. I'd rather it actually work as designed though, having an entire user account that's just there for a workaround seems like a bad solution.

**neltnerb** · March 26th, 2020

Fix identified.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...l/+bug/1715435 reports the bug I am seeing.

The solution was provided by chris-18 and is:

"Disabling the key "/org/gnome/desktop/lockdown/disable-lock-screen" in dconf-editor solved the problem."