[SOLVED] unwanted desktop activity

[joeclem111]

After an upgrade from Mageia 2 to Mageia 3 I have finally resolved a few issues and all is good except every two minutes I get a bar appearing on my screen for a few seconds then it disappears. It has an icon of a screen and a white bar to thr right of the icon and at the other end it shows "100%". I think this is appearing instead of the screensaver so I thought I would try changing that but I cannot find anywhere a screensaver capability. It is usually found by right click on the wallpaper and click on "folder view settings" but it is just not there and that is a real problem. Can you help please? Thank you.

[doktor5000]

Screensaver can be configured in systemsettings -> Display and Monitor -> Screensaver.
For screen locking, also have a look at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6512

For the bar that you see, does it look something like this?

Bildschirmfoto2_38.png (4.41 KiB) Viewed 3641 times

[joeclem111]

Yes that is it but the grey bars between the screen icon and the 100% are just a white band. Thank you, I now have a slide show screen saver, in theory, just as it was in Mageia 2. It is set up and tests OK but it does not start up after the designated 5 minutes. I believe that screen icon, 100% bar is taking precedence over the screen saver.

[doktor5000]

That bar is the OSD (on screen display) which is normally triggered when you change the screen brightness, and normally has nothing to do with the screensaver. As you're probably using the default theme, the bar may be white/light grey, but that doesn't matter.

System settings can be found in the K-menu -> Tools -> System tools -> System settings or via Alt+F2 and enter systemsettings (or you can also start it from a terminal)
May be named a bit different, as I'm using a german desktop and have to guess the translations.
You may also want to have a look at http://userbase.kde.org/System_Settings

[joeclem111]

OK, I am familiar with the KDE system settings, I have found that, when the screensaver fails to launch, when I go back to KDE system settings, I find that the screensaver is showing "setup", which I have already done. If I click setup the little monitor shows me the slide show. If I click test I get a full screen version of the slide show. There is then the "apply" button. When I click this the small screen shows a blank blue screen. KDE is failing to accept the apply button as, if I go out of there and then come back it is as it was before, set to slide show but the button says "setup". Also there is no change of brightness on my screen. I have tested the timing and the on screen display is appearing at just the moment that I would expect the slide show to start so I think there is some connection.

[doktor5000]

Could you please create a new user and try with that one if the issue persists? http://doc.mageia.org/mcc/3/en/content/userdrake.html
This is probably caused by some conflicting KDE configuration files.

[joeclem111]

Just did that with a new user and with no difference. KDE will not allow the slideshow screensaver to be applied either by me or the other user. I do think that the on screen display is blocking the application of the screensaver as it appears right at the time the slideshow should start, ie. after exactly 5 minutes of inactivity. If we could determine what is making the on screen display appear that should do it. This is obviously a bug or a conflict as it did not happen with Mageia 2. If the on screen display could be stopped I am sure the screensaver would be able to work.

[doktor5000]

How did you select the slide show screensaver? Under banners & pictures -> slide show or above that box via applets -> configure -> settings -> type -> slideshow?
Anyways, unfortunately cannot reproduce here, slide show screensaver starts successfully and OSD does not appear.

What graphics card and what driver do you use?

Code: Select all

lspcidrake -v | grep VGA

should show that.
You could try the following: systemsettings -> startup & shutdown -> service manager -> power management and click on stop button. That should disable the OSD.
Then test again.

Also, what happens if you run the following commands?

Code: Select all

qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver Lock
/usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/kscreenlocker_greet

[doktor5000]

video card is as follows:

Code: Select all

Card:ATI Radeon HD 6400 and later (radeon/fglrx): Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]|Trinity [Radeon HD 7520G] [DISPLAY_VGA] (vendor:1002 device:9990 subv:144d subd:c0dd).

second command returned:

Code: Select all

Could not connect to D-Bus server: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
[root@localhost joe]# /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/kscreenlocker_greet
kscreenlocker_greet(6743)/kdeui (kdelibs): Session bus not found
To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)
KCrash: Application 'kscreenlocker_greet' crashing...
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/drkonqi from kdeinit
sock_file=/root/.kde4/socket-localhost.localdomain/kdeinit4__0
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/drkonqi directly
drkonqi(6744)/kdeui (kdelibs): Session bus not found
To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)

Will try the systemsettings now but disabling power management is not favoured as I am on a laptop.
Using systemsettings I unchecked the "dim screen after 5 minutes (the time of inactivity when the slide show starts) and then tried to set up the slide show, same result and when I went back into power management I found the "dim screen" button was still checked.

[doktor5000]

second command returned:

Could not connect to D-Bus server: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
[root@localhost joe]
kscreenlocker_greet(6743)/kdeui (kdelibs): Session bus not found
To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)
KCrash: Application 'kscreenlocker_greet' crashing...
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/lib64/kde4/libexec/drkonqi from kdeinit
sock_file=/root/.kde4/socket-localhost.localdomain/kdeinit4__0
[...]
drkonqi(6744)/kdeui (kdelibs): Session bus not found
To circumvent this problem try the following command (with Linux and bash)
export $(dbus-launch)

Why did you run that command as root? You have to run it as your normal user.

Please try again with both commands run as normal user, also what happened when you run the first command?

[joeclem111]

Just for now I will monitor the situation as I have just seen a slide show. I will report back if all seems to be OK.
Right, last time I had turned off power management, then turned it back on again but that had stopped the osd so, when there had been 5 minutes of inactivity, the slide show started. To see if this was a permanent fix, I rebooted and waited the 5 minutes and I got the OSD but no slide show. After another 5 minutes I got the OSD again· It is clear the OSD is inhibiting the start of the slide show as the screensaver is seeing the appearance of the OSD as action. If we could turn off the OSD (or fail to start it) at boot up, the system should work as normal with a slide show screensaver at the 5 minute time. Can this be done?

[joeclem111]

As a further test I disabled the display management change monitor and re-booted. This did not have the desired effect. I am sure that if the OSD is NOT started at boot, all will bve well. I tried running the commands as me but the screen locked out (showing me one of the pictures from the slide show on the way to the session locked screen) and it would not let me unlock it or enter my password. I had to hard reboot from the power off button. I have noticed the Telepathy Integration module is running and that is new from Mag2 to Mag3, could it be anything to do with this?

[doktor5000]

You cannot disable the OSD without also disabling power management completely, as mentioned: http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=102145

Telepathy is the Instant Messenger framework and completely unrelated. http://userbase.kde.org/Telepathy

Related question, how do you start the display manager, or how do you start KDE? Do you maybe login as root?

[joeclem111]

No, there is no provision to log in as root, the system only has 1 user, me. All that runs on this system is started with the boot up.
I have also done a further test, setting a random screensaver. This did allow me to apply it but on test, after the 5 minutes of inactivity, I got the OSD and not the screensaver. It is clear that the action of calling the screen saver is invoking the OSD instead.

And now absolute proof that this phenomenon is a bug in KDE/Mageia 3. This morning I booted up at 06.30. The first thing I did was to go into services manager and stop power management (to turn off the OSD). waited a few seconds and turned power management back on. The system then went straight into the slide show after 5 minutes of inactivity. I even went back into system settings and varied the way the slide show worked and it still went into the slide show on time. This is a work around to override the bug but we should be looking at how and why the OSD is invoked instead of the screensaver and how the OSD can override the slide show, then we can find the bug fix so it can be dealt with by an update in the normal way. This bug is NOT in Mageia 2 so if KDE has not changed from Mageia 2 to Mageia 3 then the bug is in Mageia 3 but if KDE has changed for the fit with Mageia 3, then the bug is likely to be in KDE. For the mean time, the manual stop/start is a working answer, although not as good as a full fix.

[yankee495]

How did you upgrade?

If you upgraded with an installation DVD you need to run urpmi --auto-update in a terminal as root to finish the upgrade process.

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_3_Release_Notes#Using_the_Mageia_3_DVD_to_Upgrade

[joeclem111]

Just did that and got the reply "No package named auto-upgrade

[yankee495]

Code: Select all

urpmi --auto-update

urpmi --auto-update

NOT

urpmi --auto-upgrade

The good news is that you have not done it...It will fix a lot of stuff!!!

Did you use the DVD to upgrade?

[joeclem111]

Yes I did. Downloaded the iso, burned it and used it. It did not give me an upgrade option so I had to do a full install. Fortunately I laid my HD out with the first partition as an 8GB swap file, the next partition is a 50GB block which is /, and the next block, 160GB is /home. This meant that I allowed a format on swap and / but not on /home so when it was done, all my data was in place. Hope that methodology is correct.

[yankee495]

If you did a clean install make sure your update and other media are enabled and do all of the updates. I'm not sure how many there are but there was a lot to KDE alone.

[joeclem111]

Done it, it took 35 minutes to download and install 587 programs. I have just rebooted but have not done the work around so, after this I will sit 5 minutes and see if the slide show starts. If it does and there is no sign of the OSD I will mark this as resolved and you will have done the one thing needed to give me a full running system so I am extremely grateful. Will be back in 10.

OK, after reboot and no work around the bug was still there, I got the on screen display (OSD), an icon of a screen on the left, a bar about 3" long and on the right of this a legend which read "100% after 5 minutes instead of the slide show. I did the work around and all is good now. When the system goes to screen saver it shows the lock screen with the password input box for about 1 second then it kicks into the slide show and this never happened in Mageia 2. I do believe that the OSD appearing is fooling the screen saver into thinking there is screen activity, thus the screen saver fails to invoke. The OSD should only appear when there is a variation in screen brightness and there is none so it suggests the bug is in the power management program. When this is fixed, I will mark this thread as resolved. I am going to post a very favourable review of Mageia 3 on my web site within the next hour and you can see this on http://www.caustic-bytes.co.uk/gov/news.html. .

[yankee495]

You say the screen saver shows a lock and then goes to the slide show. This was an update in KDE 4.10 to clear the screen before the screen saver for security. Some screen savers took a snap shot of the screen and displayed it. KDE considered this a security risk.

If I work in a billing department and go to the bathroom your credit card number could float around on my screen for a few minutes.

This is why they now call it a Screen Locker instead of a screen saver.

I don't know why your screen brightness OSD is showing up.

[yankee495]

Go to System Settings and then Power Management.

There are settings to dim the display after a set amount of time. There are also per activity settings so check all of those and do not have the display dim.

If those are off then I don't know.

[joeclem111]

Yankee495, you are the ultimate star, this is now resolved. The methodology is to do as you say in power management. There are 3 parts to it, AC power on, low battery and emergency. If you uncheck the "dim screen" button on all 3 and, also as a failsafe, there is a "screen brightness" button which allows you to vary the brightness. If you also uncheck that (leaving the sliders on the pre set levels) and then click apply it works. After the 5 minutes wait, my system went straight into the slide show, just as it should. Thank you so much and be assured, when I have done the post to my web site, you will get a great write up, you are my hero. Might it be a good idea to incorporate the "urpmi auto-update" information onto the end of the install process, it might save you and your colleagues much time wasted.

[yankee495]

Good deal. There are lock screen settings in power too and people used to get confused as to why it locked.

I did the upgrade from the DVD, 2>3, and still have a couple of small bugs but nothing major. I've been using Mageia since way back to the Mandrake days so I had to stop and think what confused me in the past. The timing was what gave it away!!!

[joeclem111]

Nice one Yankee, my system is now excellent. I have given you a top write up on my web site. Tell me your bugs as I might know them and their fixes.