How to disable the GNOME screensaver?

[aaron aardvark]

I'm running the SageTV Linux client on a Dell Mini 9 with Ubuntu 8.04. It makes a nice very portable media player. My biggest problem is that the SageTV client doesn't disable the screensaver, so I have to move the mouse every 15 min to keep the screen from going blank. Very anoying. I've seen this issue discussed about MythTV and other video applications, but haven't found a good solution. Even a simple panel applet to temporarily disable the screensaver would help, but I haven't found one.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[gplasky]

Turn off the Ubuntu screensaver and use the one built into Sage. I don't know for sure if the Linux client for Sage has this feature. I'm on Windows.

Gerry

[stuckless]

System -> Preferences -> Screensaver
Then uncheck "Activate when computer is idle"

[aaron aardvark]

Originally Posted by gplasky

Turn off the Ubuntu screensaver and use the one built into Sage. I don't know for sure if the Linux client for Sage has this feature. I'm on Windows.

Gerry

Yes, the Linux version of SageTV has a screensaver. It's just that I'm annoyed by the need to bring up the GNOME screensaver window, uncheck the "Activate when computer is idle" box, and close the window. Then when I'm finished running SageTV I have to do the same thing again to turn the GNOME screensaver back on. I't just kind of stupid. Either SageTV should automatically disable the screensave as it does under windows, or there should be a simple one-click method for temporarily disabling the screensaver.

[aaron aardvark]

Originally Posted by stuckless

System -> Preferences -> Screensaver
Then uncheck "Activate when computer is idle"

Yea, I know. It's just kind of annoying to have to go through this process every time I run SageTV (or Miro or VLC player).

[agitate]

You can use the gnome-screensaver-command to inhibit the screensaver with the --inhibit switch. Modify your sageclient.sh script so that it includes this (around the java command):

# Inhibit the screensaver
gnome-screensaver-command --inhibit \
--application-name="sageclient.sh" \
--reason="Using Sage" &
# Record the PID of the blocking inhibit command
gssid=$!
java -cp MiniClient.jar:jogl.jar:gluegen-rt.jar:. sage.miniclient.MiniClient $1 $2 > miniclient.log 2>&1
# Kill the gnome-screensaver-command which is inhibiting
kill $gssid

Note that if you ^C out of the script or something terminates it before it reaches the final kill command then the inhibit will keep running, so be careful. You could add a trap command to make sure the kill gets called, but I'll leave that addition to you, if required.

[aaron aardvark]

[QUOTE=agitate;332052]You can use the gnome-screensaver-command to inhibit the screensaver with the --inhibit switch. Modify your sageclient.sh script so that it includes this (around the java command) ...

Thanks, agitate, your're a hero! That's just what I was looking for.

[schmots]

I tried the sagetv deb on my mini 9 and it loads but never shows any video... did you do anything special?

[aaron aardvark]

No, it just worked. Note that I'm running the SageTV client on the Mini 9. The server is on a different machine on the LAN.

Do you have the SageTV server enabled under the Setup > Detailed Setup > Server menu? If not the client won't get anything from the server.

[agitate]

You might want to check out this thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38077