Support inhibiting sleep and hibernate for XScreensaver/DPMS users
This is a somewhat speculative blueprint, so anyone who understands these issues better than myself should feel free to close this blueprint if I'm not understanding things correctly. As I see it, there are three things that Caffeine needs to be concerned with: DPMS, powersaving modes like sleep, and the screensaver. As an example of this, when Caffeine is activated in KDE, a dbus interface is used to inhibit the screensaver, another dbus interface is used to inhibit sleep and hibernate, and the "xset" program is used to inhibit DPMS.
So we have KDE handled properly, and also Gnome. However, our current handling of XScreensaver and DPMS doesn't do anything for the sleep or hibernate powersaving modes. So my question is this: what would someone who uses XScreensaver and DPMS use to have their laptop automatically go to sleep after, say, 10 minutes? Is there another program that someone might use to control that? Are there any distros that use such a setup by default? If there is another program like this, then we should try to support it in Caffeine.
On the other hand, if there is no such program, please close this blueprint, and my apologies for wasting your time. :)
Blueprint information
- Status:
- Complete
- Approver:
- None
- Priority:
- Low
- Drafter:
- None
- Direction:
- Needs approval
- Assignee:
- None
- Definition:
- Obsolete
- Series goal:
- None
- Implementation:
-
Unknown
- Milestone target:
- None
- Started by
- Completed by
- Reuben Thomas
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Setting to low priority, as nobody has requested it.
Tommy Brunn (Aug 28th) If I understand things correctly, xscreensaver handles power saving via DPMS. So, we would just need to disable DPMS to disable power saving when using xscreensaver.
pragmattica (Oct. 5, 2009): I've been experimenting with Masonix, an LXDE based distro (another good distro to try for the purposes of this blueprint would be WattOS). In Masonix, you can go to "System Tools -> XScreensaver Setup -> Advanced" and enable DPMS. However, DPMS is only power management for the display, and only controls when to set the monitor to standby, suspend and off. That isn't related to the overall sleep mode for the whole laptop. In masonix, to get access to the powersaving controls for the rest of the laptop, you must right-click the little battery icon and go to "Preferences". This seems to display the same power management dialog as is used by Gnome.
pragmattica (Oct. 5, 2009 again): I'm having trouble causing my VirtualBox Masonix to sleep or hibernate. It seems that this is very hardware dependent functionality, so VirtualBox may not be the best platform for investigating this. I will likely have to install Masonix to a physical computer instead to learn more about this situation.
pragmattica (Oct. 15, 2009): I've downloaded WattOS and Masonux and burned their CDs. I haven't been able to figure out how to set my laptop to sleep after a period of time using WattOS, but there's the standard Ubuntu config dialog (gnome-
