greeter session puts the host to sleep after 30 minutes idle

[Martin-Éric Racine]

Since version 3.x, on a fresh install, GDM uses the gnome-power-manager defaults as-is for its greeter session. This has the unfortunate consequence of putting the host to sleep after 30 minutes, which is not desirable in a situation when the same host is meant to provide network services.

This wouldn't be such a problem if there was an easy way for the user to change this, but this is not the case since GNOME 3 and its big migration to dconf. There isn't any dedicated tool to adjust GDM defaults available yet and 'gksu -u gdm gnome-control-center' won't work either because it tries to access display :0.

ProblemType: BugDistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gdm 3.0.4-0ubuntu11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.19-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic i586
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu1
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Sep 27 06:25:14 2011
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=fi:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=fi_FI.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bashSourcePackage: gdm
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2009-02-07 (961 days ago)

[Martin-Éric Racine (q-funk)]

Recursive parsing of the settings suggests that sleep-inactive is disabled, but this is apparently ignored, for some reason:

$ sudo -u gdm gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power active true
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-hibernate 'hibernate'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-power 'interactive'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-sleep 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power button-suspend 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power critical-battery-action 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-brightness 30
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-ac false
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-battery true
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power idle-dim-time 10
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-ac-action 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power lid-close-battery-action 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power notify-perhaps-recall true
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-action 2
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-critical 3
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power percentage-low 10
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power priority 1
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-ac 600
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-display-battery 600
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac false
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 1800
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery true
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout 1800
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-type 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-action 120
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-critical 300
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power time-low 1200
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power use-time-for-policy true
---
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[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[ironstorm (ironstorm-gmail)]

This bug appears to be related to #862813 "Power Managment settings are being ignored", though I'm not sure it's a straight-up duplicate because it would appear to be a default settings issue.

[Martin-Éric Racine (q-funk)]

As a workaround, I've done the following:

sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac false
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 0
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery false
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout 1800

Which gives me:

$ sudo -u gdm gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power | grep inactive

org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac false
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 0
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type 'suspend'
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery false
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-timeout 1800
org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-battery-type 'suspend'

That works well in a pinch, but it's definitely not user-friendly.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you had "org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 1800", you probably changed that settings at a time where the ui and default were buggy and it stayed on a wrong value, it should work fine with the current version for upgraders or new installs or those using the ui

[Martin-Éric Racine (q-funk)]

There is no UI tool for changing the defaults used by the new GDM.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the default are set to "never" now so there should be no need to change it