PC suspends after 20 minutes at the login screen

[Graham Inggs]

Same as LP: #1759325 in Bionic, but this time affecting Focal.

After some update in the last month, my desktop PC now suspends after 20 minutes at the login screen.

I was able to override the setting for my user account by adjusting the power settings in gnome-control-center. I see no obvious way of overriding the default for the system.

Asking on IRC, I was pointed at LP: #1868260, but got no response there.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

If your user account is configured to not suspend, you could copy the settings over to GDM like this:

IFS=$'\n'; for x in $(sudo -u username gsettings list-recursively org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power); do eval "sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set $x"; done; unset IFS

where 'username' is your username.

(You can ignore the "No protocol specified" errors)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report but that's not a bug, just modern industry energy standards. gdm isn't respecting your user settings since it's not a process owned by your user, it would be nice if it provided a configuration tools but that's not a bug in gnome-control-center

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Surely it is a bug in gnome-control-center if it's something people would like to configure? Or a wishlist enhancement?

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

@marcustomlinson: Thanks, that seemed to copy over the settings, but that didn't help.
I guess then this is not quite the same as LP: #1759325, although the behaviour is similar.

I've also tried the following, to no avail:

sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled 'false'
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-delay 0
sudo -u gdm dbus-launch gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.session idle-delay 0

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

@seb128: As you wrote in LP: #1868260, having autosuspend on AC by default is not a great user experience.

It's frustrating for those who want to leave their workstations running and access them remotely during lockdown.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I don't experience this problem on my server, which is always running. Perhaps because I am always logged in and the screen is locked when I'm away. Is that a suitable workaround?

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

@vanvugt: Enabling automatic login might do the trick, thanks.
Ideally, I'd like to figure out exactly which setting needs to be changed. I'll poke some more.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

A better workaround might be to turn off the graphical login screen (and GNOME everything) while you're working remotely:

  sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target

Then later to turn it back on run:

  sudo systemctl isolate graphical.target

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

@vanvugt: Thanks, 'sudo systemctl isolate multi-user.target' does prevent the autosuspend.

Although it doesn't survive a reboot, so maybe if one needs something more persistent:

  sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target

[Graham Inggs (ginggs)]

I've just set up a brand new workstation with Ubuntu Desktop 20.04, and it does not seem to be affected. It has been sitting at the login screen for 8 hours and has not suspended.

Is it possible that only upgrades could be affected by this?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes I was thinking that... My development desktop (which is always a fresh install) does not experience this bug.