Screen goes to sleep when told not to

[Pierre Rudloff]

I have told VLC to disable the power manager, but my screen still becomes black every 5 minutes.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: vlc 1.1.9-1ubuntu1.2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Jul 4 11:32:46 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=fr_FR:en
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: vlc
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

I am looking for a clear technical specification as to how VLC is supposed to inhibit the screensaver. Until then, this is not going to get fixed. See the upstream bug for further discussion.

I would argue this is an xdg-screensaver (xdg-utils) bug anyway.

[Pierre Rudloff (rudloff)]

Sorry, I forgot to say that I am using Xfce. (I don't know if that changes anything.)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

Still waiting for clarification as to what is The One Correct API to suspend the screensaver in Ubuntu and its derivatives... Until then, there will be any resolution from upstream.

[James Pursey (jamespursey)]

I encounter this problem in 11.10 using Unity.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

And still waiting for the requested infos in upstream bug. 5 months and counting.

[Th3Pr0ph3t (th3pr0ph3t)]

gnome-screensaver-command --inhibit doesn't work anymore, does VLC depend on this command?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

VLC currently uses xdg-screensaver (from xdg-utils). At some point, it uses X11 screensaver reset also, but it hit a performance bug in a number of Xorg drivers, so it had to be removed.

I don't know any other FreeDesktop/standard way to inhibit the screensaver and the display blanking.

So my guess is that xdg-utils is buggy in Ubuntu.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

vlc appears to use both "xscreensaver-command -deactivate" and "gnome-screensaver-command --poke".
(Source: modules/misc/inhibit/xscreensaver.c).

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

The "--poke" option is unknown to gnome-screensaver-command in Oneiric, and xscreensaver-command is not installed.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

From looking at the "strace -f" output for vlc, it appears that xdg-screensaver is being called, but ends with "xscreensaver-command: no screens".
Then gnome-screensaver-command is used next then.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

"--poke" has been removed in gnome-screensaver 2.91.91: "Remove --poke option from the commandline tool (didn't work anyway)"

I assume it broke during the transition to Gnome 3?!

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

xdg-utils calls "gnome-screensaver-command --poke", via:
   case "$1" in
          suspend)
          screensaver_suspend_loop gnome-screensaver-command --poke
          result=0
          ;;

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

There appears to be a fix upstream in xdg-utils already since March:
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xdg/xdg-utils/commit/?id=666d65cae0f2e66d33ec0dc48c054afbf16c9e3f

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package xdg-utils - 1.1.0~rc1-2ubuntu6

---------------
xdg-utils (1.1.0~rc1-2ubuntu6) oneiric; urgency=low

  * Use D-Bus API for GNOME screensaver
    - debian/patches/xdg-screensaver-dbus.patch
    - LP: #805386
 -- Daniel Hahler <email address hidden> Mon, 03 Oct 2011 16:06:10 +0200

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

It seems like everything that needed sponsoring in this bug was uploaded already, so I'll unsubscribe the sponsors team. Does this still need a separate fix in vlc?

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "xdg-utils_1.1.0~rc1-2ubuntu6.dsc.debdiff" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch in the form of a debdiff. The ubuntu-sponsors team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review and hopefully sponsor the debdiff. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-sponsors please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by Brian Murray. Please contact him regarding any issues with the action taken in this bug report.]

[Didier Roche (didrocks)]

tested and confirmed that the fix was enough, closing the bug.

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

See also bug 497318.

[Forage (forage)]

The issue is also present in my setup:
- Ubuntu 12.10 GNOME remix (x64)
- VLC 2.0.4+git20121117+r431-0~r43~quantal1 (from ppa:videolan/stable-daily)

[Rémi Denis-Courmont (rdenis)]

The issue should be fixed with GNOME 3.10 according to the VLC bug report.