Re: gnome & xscreensaver

[Jamie Zawinski <jwz netscape com>]

[[ Wow, the Gnome mailing list server really sucks!
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So, as I understand it, Gnome is configuring things like so:

  * the xscreensaver daemon is launched at startup;
  * the xscreensaver daemon is configured to run exactly one hack,
    and that is xlock, in locking-mode (rather than draw-but-don't-
    lock mode)
  * the "lock" button on the panel is configured to run xlock.

I don't know the exact pathology of what's going wrong for cls,
but basically, it does not work to attempt to lock the screen by
running xlock *in locking mode* from xscreensaver.

xscreensaver can run xlock as one of its graphics demos -- but not
to lock the screen.

That's why xscreensaver has locking support built in.

You seem to be trying to use xscreensaver as a replacement for
xautolock, but that's not what it is -- it is (if you want to think 
of it that way) a replacement for both xautolock *and* xlock.

In my opinion, what you should be doing is:

  * launch xscreensaver at startup, without overriding the *programs
    resource;

  * make the panel "lock" button run "xscreensaver-command -lock"
    to tell the background xscreensaver daemon to lock the screen.

If there are particular graphics modes that xlock has that xscreensaver
doesn't, and you want to run those as your screensaver, then you can do
that by adding xlock to xscreensaver's list of hacks -- but in that
case, you have to start xlock with the arguments that tell it "draw on
the root window" and "don't lock the screen."  

The xscreensaver manual explains how all this works; for the latest
version of the manual (which I rewrote much of recently) see
http://people.netscape.com/jwz/xscreensaver/man.html and
http://people.netscape.com/jwz/xscreensaver/man2.html

http://people.netscape.com/jwz/xscreensaver/man.html#9 (the section on
configuring CDE to work with xscreensaver) is probably particularly
relevant to Gnome.)

By the way, I understand that you're also using xscreensaver version
2.16; there was a bug in that version that made Demo Mode not work
properly with certain window managers (Miguel, this is the bug Nat
showed me at Linux Expo.)  I fixed this in version 2.20 (version 2.21 
is out now.)

-- 
Jamie Zawinski         http://people.netscape.com/jwz/      about:jwz