cannot disable screen dim and screensaver

[darkduck]

Hi,
I have Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pi 1505 laptop.
VLC does not want to understand configuration checkboxes "Inhibit the power management daemon during playback" and "Disable screensaver".
Whatever is the status of these checkboxes, screen is dimming and then screensaver is switched on during video playback.
Same situation on Debian Squeeze GNOME (VLC 1.1.3) and Mageia 1 KDE (version of VLC can tell later if required).
Different video types were tested.

Any suggestion how to solve he issue?

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Did you install xdg-utils?

[darkduck]

Did you install xdg-utils?

Yes, Debian has xdg-utils 1.0.2 + cvs20100307-2 installed

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Then I'm guessing that xdg-screensaver from xdg-utils is not working on your OS.

[darkduck]

Then I'm guessing that xdg-screensaver from xdg-utils is not working on your OS.

It would be OK, if I was running only Mageia. But even this is very unlikely because Mageia is fork of Mandriva.
But same issue is with Debian Squeeze. Stable and very respectable distro. Freshly installed.
It is even more suspicious that both OSs have same issue.
Just to test, I re-installed xdg-utils in Debian from Synaptic. Problem remains.

Is there any way to test/diagnose if xdg-utils and xdg-screensaver at all work?

And... by the way...

Code: Select all

darkduck@darkduck-laptop:~$ xdg-screensaver status enabled darkduck@darkduck-laptop:~$ xdg-screensaver --version xdg-screensaver 1.0.2

Edit: Debian-standard Totem Movie Player 2.30 works fine! It means the issue is somewhere in VLC and its link to xdg-utils.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I don't really know, and I don't understand what API is supposed to be used to inhibit the screensaver on KDE+GNOME.

[darkduck]

I'm not having KDE+GNOME.
I am having 2 (actually 4) systems on same laptop. Mageia 1 KDE and Debian Squeeze GNOME.
In both cases xdg-utils is not working from VLC.

If you need, I can give you logs... just tell me what to run.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I mean I don't know a method common to KDE and GNOME, other than xdg-utils.

[darkduck]

After another test looks like VLC on Mageia 1 KDE now works fine.
It is VLC 1.1.11

Code: Select all

sh-4.2$ xdg-screensaver status disabled sh-4.2$ xdg-screensaver --version xdg-screensaver 1.0.2

Configuration of VLC:
Inhibit the power management... - not ticked
Disable screensaver - ticked.

I have no idea why same configuration dimmed screen before.
Will now reboot to check in Debian.

[darkduck]

OK, tested.
Debian test is negative.
VLC configuration is the same.
VLC version is different (1.1.3 in Debian vs 1.1.11 in Mageia)
xdg-screensaver status is enabled in Debian vs disabled in Mageia.

I think the last bit is important.
I found a bug report about this for Debian (and there is a link to VLC bug report).
There is an advice to run 'gnome-screensaver --poke' once in the terminal while vlc is playing the movie, but gnome-screensaver --poke told me that --poke is wrong option.

Any further thoughts?

[leopardb]

Same problem here, the screensaver activates while watching a video fullscreen. Interestingly, at the peek of action if it's such a movie

user@debiancomp:~$ vlc --version
VLC media player 1.1.3 The Luggage (revision exported)
VLC version 1.1.3 The Luggage (exported)
Compiled by build-squeeze on coredump.lan (Jun 8 2011 21:40:59)
Compiler: gcc version 4.4.5 (Debian 4.4.5-8)

user@debiancomp:~$ cat /etc/issue
Debian GNU/Linux 6.0 \n \l

user@debiancomp:~$ ps x | grep xdg
7245 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/xdg-screensaver suspend 0x04c00236
7253 ? S 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/xdg-screensaver suspend 0x04c00236
7481 pts/2 S+ 0:00 grep xdg

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

This is a bug in your xdg-screensaver. We cannot help you.

[darkduck]

This is a bug in your xdg-screensaver. We cannot help you.

I can't believe that there's a bug in Debian's code. It would be noticed by many other people and sorted out faster than I write this message...
Maybe the issue is in the way how xdg-screensaver is called from VLC?
If this is a bug... how to determine it? I am happy to submit new bug report for Debian, if it makes sense.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

If xdg-screensaver is running, as ps x shows, and yet the screensaver still fires, it is definitely a problem between xdg-utils and your screensaver. It might simply be that your xdg-utils version is too old.

xdg-screensaver is not very good, but there is no other standard "interface" to the screensaver across desktops.

[darkduck]

xdg-utils has version 1.0.2.
It is from standard main repository.