Weird problem with mate-screensaver

[Adam Funk]

On 2021-12-01, MR ZenWiz wrote:

> 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.

Interesting. If I double-check (while using a terminal in the GUI) and
run `mate-screensaver &`, it works, but if I ssh in (while it's locked
up with a black screen) then

export DISPLAY=:0.0
mate-screensaver &

won't make the screensaver appear so I can unlock it.



>
> 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
>