gnome-screensaver rewrites its config when idle

[boga]

Binary package hint: gnome-screensaver

gnome-screensaver rewrites ~/.gconfd/apps/gnome-screensaver/%gconf.xml time to time with no apparent reason when idle. This is a potential problem since it prevents drive containing home directory from spinning down when idle (crucial for notebooks) or increases SSD wear.

Description: Ubuntu jaunty (development branch)
Release: 9.04
gnome-screensaver:
  Installed: 2.24.0-0ubuntu5
  Candidate: 2.24.0-0ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 2.24.0-0ubuntu5 0
        500 http://ru.archive.ubuntu.com jaunty/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?
 * How do you notice it's doing that?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[boga (boga-inbox)]

Yes, it is reproducible. Just start "inotifywait -r -m /home/ | grep screen" and wait for 10 minutes or so. I get something like:
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ CREATE %gconf.xml.new
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ OPEN %gconf.xml.new
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ MODIFY %gconf.xml.new
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ CLOSE_WRITE,CLOSE %gconf.xml.new
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ ATTRIB %gconf.xml.new
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ MOVED_FROM %gconf.xml.new
/home/xxx/.gconf/apps/gnome-screensaver/ MOVED_TO %gconf.xml

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug the to the people writting the software (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME)

[Flávio Etrusco (etrusco)]

boga: what do you mean by "idle"?
Testing on Lucid, I caught such random rewrite only once while the screensaver was not active. While the screensaver is active, there was no rewrite, after more then 30min (screensaver timeout was set to 1min).

[Flávio Etrusco (etrusco)]

Follow up (sorry for the spam): I can't reproduce any random rewrite either while idling (with screen saver inactive) or during normal use. The apparently random rewrite is because gnome waits quite some time to write the file after changing the setting.
Obs. For "inactive" I don't mean "disabled in the configuration", I mean "not launched". This applies for the previous post too.

[boga (boga-inbox)]

Sorry for being ambigous, by "screen saver idle" I meant screen saver not active. The re-writes occur quite regularly around every half an hour. The screen saver settings were not changed since the system was started so this is not the case. I'll try to reproduce in Lucid when I install it.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for gnome-screensaver (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]