C7: Screensaver Locks Screen

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CentOS 8 Comments

Strange thing just began happening this past weekend with my CentOS-7
netbook (using the MATE desktop, which may mean it’s an EPEL problem…).

the lock screen checkbox in the screensaver’s UI is NOT checked.

I’ve even used the dconf editor to uncheck ALL the boxes in the screensaver section that relate to locking the screen.

nada. no such luck.

even after rebooting, it still locks the screen.

I’m open to further suggestions, thanks in advance!

Fred

8 thoughts on - C7: Screensaver Locks Screen

  • A) What entry do you have under lock: in ~/.xscreensaver?

    B) Perhaps you could try deleting ~/.xscreensaver and allowing xscreensaver-demo to recreate it.

  • thanks Frank.

    I just realized that it’s not the screensaver. I find the lock screen is up whenever it comes up from standby (and I think a fresh boot, though I’ve not tried to reproduce that yet.) Since I put it in standby a lot rather than shutting it down, I see it a lot. and it just started.

    I’ve looked at the power settings and don’t see anything there that look as if they would account for it.

  • I seem to recall that gnome-screensaver no longer exists in the version of Gnome3 in CentOS7. I think maybe GDM starts the lock screen, not the user session.

    I think you need to set /org/gnome/desktop/session/idle-delay=0 in dconf to turn it off.

    When I use something other than Gnome3, I switch my DM to lightdm
    (available in EPEL), and I’ve found it tends to run the non-gnome3
    environments along expectations.

  • unfortunately, that setting is already set to zero.

    Can you remind me how to switch from one DM to another? I know I
    used to know, but right now cannot recall the proper incantations.

    Thanks!

  • systemctl disable gdm.service systemctl enable lightdm.service
    (reboot or stop gdm and start lightdm from a VT)

  • Thanks for the reminder!

    unfortunately, the problem still exists: after standby, when waking up I still get a prompt for my password.

  • Surely that’s desired behaviour. I always want my machine to wake up locked – who knows who is in front of the screen – password check ensures I get to choose. The alternative (say a public facing machine kiosk) would be to make sure there is no password set.

  • while that is true, it hasn’t done it until this past week, and I cannot find any setting to control it.

    Good practice or not, I’d like to know why it is doing it and how to control it.

    Fred