Weird problem with mate-screensaver

[MR ZenWiz]

On Wed, Dec 1, 2021 at 8:03 AM Adam Funk <a24061 at ducksburg.com> wrote:
>
> Occasionally I come back to my computer to find a black screen that
> cannot be unlocked because mate-screensaver had died before something
> decided the computer was idle. The virtual consoles don't work, and
> the only way I can get back in is ssh + `sudo service lightdm restart`
> + log in again --- obviously I lose whatever was running in the GUI.
>
I use xscreensaver on Xubuntu 20.04 and 21.10.  Occasionally, for
reasons that escape me as well, the screensaver disappears.

I solved this by writing a shell script that runs ps to determine if
xscreensaver is running and, if not, it restarts it.

I put this into my crontab to run every hour and so far it seems to
have eliminated the problem entirely.

I did this before I upgraded the CPU et al and, recently, since the
upgrade as I a) forgot all about this and just assumed it was still
there (why I assumed that, I don't know, except we all know what
"assume" means) and b) it took a while before the problem recurred and
it is now "fixed."

My grub linux boot command line contains this: "noquiet nosplash
processor.max_cstate=5 rcu_nocbs=0-11"  The last part of that I need
to re-test since I got the latest graphics card - I added it to see if
that solved the earlier problems i had with the older cards (that
never fully worked right).  I'm not entirely sure how to test for ACPI
problems, though I have not seen any in dmesg or sthe system error
log.

Hope some of that helps.

Mark