Xscreensaver locks when it should not

[Cavia Porcellus]

I have removed gnome-screensaver and replaced it with xscreensaver, and am trying to prevent it from locking my screen when my laptop's screen turns back on or when it wakes up from being suspended. Even though the "Lock Screen After" box in xscreensaver's setting is unchecked, the lock will still pop up and demand a password when I open my lid. The expected behavior is, of course, to not have that occur.

The system settings have also been set to "Do nothing" when I close it (and indeed, gnome-screensaver obeyed these settings just fine when I was using it). Often after I restart the computer xscreensaver acts as it should for a while, but eventually the problem will crop back up. I've noticed no pattern, save that when it does start doing this I can't seem to make it stop.

I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 (though this also occured in 11.10). I'm also not alone I think, see: http://askubuntu.com/questions/95295/how-to-prevent-screen-locking-when-lid-is-closed

Thanks!

[alon (alon-ben-refael)]

Hey there.

Also affected by this.
Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity and xscreensaver.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Cavia Porcellus (caviaporcellus)]

I managed to figure out a workaround, though I imagine there's a better solution out there. I looked at what was happening when my lid was closed and opened in /etc/acpi/lid.sh and found that xscreensaver was being called upon automatically. I tried to make it simply obey its config file and not lock, but couldn't figure it out, so I ended up simply deleting the lines that involved xscreensaver. Now everything works great: no locking, and if the lid is closed passed the amount of time which you have set for xscreensaver to start, it'll start normally (and not lock).

I'm still not sure why xscreensaver is set up to be called automatically when the lid is closed or why it ignores it's settings and locks when the lid is opened. I also don't get why on one laptop (Thinkpad T60) the problem always occurs, whereas on another (Vaio SZ-450) it happens in spurts (sometimes it locks every time, sometimes not at all), despite them having the same lid.sh file and both using Ubuntu 12.04.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Reassigning to acpi-support, which ships /etc/acpi/lid.sh. xscreensaver is simply doing what it is being told. I think the CheckPolicy() function should have kicked in and it probably needs fixing.

[Chinmaya Karekar (caprikornus)]

I am also facing the same issue. I have xscreensaver installed on Ubuntu 12.04 using gnome.

[Jan Greeff (jan-verslank)]

Same problem here using Ubuntu 14.04 on my desktop