screen does not turn off after x minutes of inactivity

[Olivier]

I've just upgraded from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10. All is apparently working fine except the screen that does not turn off anymore after the time defined in "turn the screen off after xxx minutes". I saw that a similar bug was opened (​#1228939) but is now considered as fixed. Indeed my bug is a little different: the option is correctly saved, but not applied. It seems, I'm not the only one to face this problem. I haven't found this bug in launchpad, except the closed one just mentionned.

I see also this bug described
here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2182779
and here (in French): http://forum.ubuntu-fr.org/viewtopic.php?pid=15456631

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Does it happen in a guest session as well? What software are running in your session? (things like the media players can inhibit screen idle)

[Olivier (olivp2004-ubuntu)]

Bonjour Sébastien,

I've made several trials, about 3 days ago: with or without guest session, then closing some applications , one after the other, but the problem remained. The screen became black, after 1 minute (as defined in settings), but the back light behind didn't turn off. And now, from yesterday, it seems the problem has disappeared: the light is turning off correctly, after the defined time... Strange... I didn't change anything, apart that I let the automatic Ubuntu update install a small change (I don't remember what), yesterday or the day before. No idea if there is a relation.

Only new problem: the luminosity level changing, with the key combination shortcut, works sometimes and sometimes not, in an unpredictable way. Strange... Might be a problem with the LCD screen driver (netbook ACER Aspire One, pilote: VESA : WRESTLER).

In any case, I presume my bug can be considered as closed, even though all that is strange and quite confused to me.

[Olivier (olivp2004-ubuntu)]

Hi All,
Salut à Tous,

This morning, I saw my problem (screen not turning off) again. But now, I understand better the precise context when it occurs. Actually, it seems to be linked with another possible bug. My "energy" parameter is set with a non standard settings that I made with Tweak Tool: the "laptop lid close action on battery/on AC" is set with "Shutdown". But I've realized recently that my upgrade from Ubuntu 13.04 to 13.10 made my laptop sleep (suspend) instead of shutdown, when I close the lid. The wake up is working fine except that the light is not turning off, in this status. Simplly clicking manually on shutdown fixes the issue...

I gave up anyway to use the "suspend" mode for years, because this mode was really too unstable. So I can consider that I don't have anymore my problem of light not turning off. But I just need now to find a way to get the "lid close" correctly shutdown the laptop computer.

So that's not the same bug anymore, but I'm not sure it's even a real bug. It might also be a wrong setup method that I use (Tweak Tool might be not fully compatible with Ubuntu 13.10).

[Yan-hoose (yan-hoose)]

I have the same problem. After upgrading from 13.04 to 13.10 the screen no longer turns off after a certain time of inactivity. I have tested it also without having any applications open. It behaves consistently the same: the screen does not turn off.

Following the advice from the ubuntu forums, when I type "xset s 10" to the terminal, then the screen does turn off after 10 seconds (or whatever parameter I give it).

However the screen does turn off when using the guest account without any tinkering on the command line.

[Olivier (olivp2004-ubuntu)]

Hi Yan-hoose, hi All,

From my side, I went further in my investigations and I've found an acceptable solution for my case. I read recently that the screen driver might cause some issues due to some incompatibility with Ubuntu 13.10. So I went in "System parameters", then "Softwares and updates", then the "additional drivers" tab. I ticked there the first checkbox "Usage of server X X.org..." (I'm trying to translate from French to English the original text) instead of the 2nd one ("Usagve of video driver for... AMD... fglrx-updates..."). I've attached the screenshot of the complete window (in French), in case it can help to understand the details.

In my case, it fixed 2 issues:
- after waking up from a sleeping mode, the computer screen is now able to turn the light off, after a certain time (I found out recently that I encountered this bug only after waking from sleeping mode)
- this screen driver is now able to manage correctly the brightness manual change (only difference with the other driver: the brightness levels are now 4 instead of something like 6 or 8 previously, but it's much better than nothing or very random result).

The only bug that is remaining for me is that when I close the lid of my laptop, it goes to sleeping mode instead of shutting down (setup made previously with "tweak tool").

Important detail: my computer is a netbook laptop ACER ASPIRE ONE 722 C62KK (AMD dual core processor c60).

[Sridhar Dhanapalan (sridhar)]

Same problem here on my Thinkpad X1 Carbon. I have Intel Ivybridge Mobile graphics, using Ubuntu's default driver (which is not proprietary).

[Yan-hoose (yan-hoose)]

It seems that upgrade to 14.04 has fixed the issue for me.

[Ernesto Silva (erniesilva)]

Hi guys, I've installed 14.04 and I have a similar problem. The screensaver delay is fixed in 300 seconds (5 minutes).
I'm doing a sort or desktop lock-down and I've fixed various properties using dconf and it's locks, but I had no luck with the screensaver delay.

The key is: /org/gnome/desktop/session/idle-delay and I can change the value and lock it, from the gui and from a profile in /etc/dcon/...
In any case the session becomes idle in 300 seconds, , it seems to me that the screen saver uses the default value defined in the file:

/usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.gnome.desktop.session.gschema.xml

The parameter definition is:

    <key type="u" name="idle-delay">
      <default>300</default>
      <summary>Time before session is considered idle</summary>
      <description>The number of seconds of inactivity before the session is considered idle.</description>
    </key>

As I understand, when the session become idle the screensaver starts, so actually the delay is not a screensaver's property, it is a property of the session.

Any ideas if this is correct? maybe it is a bug or am I watching the wrong parameter?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[RecceDG (reccedg)]

As of my upgrade to 14.04.1 LTS, this bug affects me.

[Jeremy Roth (78luphr0rnk2nuqimstywepozxn9kl19tqh0tx66b5dki1xxsh5mkz9gl21a5rlwfnr8jn6ln0m3jx-launchpad-a811i2i3ytqlsztthjth0svbccw8inm65tmkqp9sarr553jq53in4xm1m8wn3o4rlwaer06ogwvqwv)]

16.04 and this problem exists on gnome, but not KDE.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The settings application is only writting configs, it's not dealing with the screen so the wrong place for that report. Also that bug is old and components changed since, so closing this bug. It would be better to open a new report if that's still an issue in 18.10