Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 114182
kde screen saver fails to active with vmware
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:07:00 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040115 Description of problem: After running kde for a while, the screen saver on kde will fail to activate. If I try to lock the screen manually it will also fail. This issue seems to occur after running vmware. A collegue of mine was suffering this problem before update 1 without running vmware - and it is now fixed. But having run vmware the problem still occurs. I have marked this as security - because as a sysadmin I absolutely must be able to lock my screen. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): kdebase-3.1.3-5.2 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. login to rhew with kde 2. run vmware 3. after some time the screen will not lock Actual Results: screen doesn't lock Expected Results: screen would lock Additional info: will try to post ann output of /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock when it happens again.
OK, locking using: /usr/bin/kdesktop_lock --forcelock always locks the screen. It appears that simply after a while the lock screen applet stops working. (ie the lock/logout applet) Still it is very annoying. Cheers, Paul
OK, more info. kdesktop_lock seems to keep running sometimes even when the screen is not locked. killing this process brings the rest back to life. Paul
This bug has now been in bugzilla for 2months. Is anyone looking at it?
Hm, i don't have vmware running on my machine, so i cannot reproduce this problem. But the desktop lock (Screensaver) works fine for me. which screensaver is running on your machine? does it work, if you change your current screensaver to "Black Screen"?
Hi Ngo, I'm running "circuit" as a screen saver, but other people have seen it with other screensavers here too. And it appears that it is not solely a problem with vmware. A machine which has had a local X login for a few days seems to suffer the problem. Unfortunately can't reproduce it on my machine at the moment - I only rebooted this morning. How may I help with the debugging? Cheers, Paul
Anybody going to do anything on this bug? I reported it in January and nothing has happened. Paul
The problem is caused because vmware is running when the screen saver tries to lock the screen but vmware has the focus. kdesktop_lock is activated but since it does not have the focus the screen is not actually locked. You have hit on one of the solutions which is to kill kdesktop_lock. The other alternative is to replace kdesktop_lock with a wrapper that checks for the occurrence of a kdesktop_lock process before calling kdesktop_lock --forcelock
Don, Thnaks for the info. I can see how this would cause the problem. However, the problem also occurs (after a few days of being logged in) on EL3 machines not running vmware. Anyone at redhat care to comment? I may well follow Don's advice and rewrite kdesktop_lock with a wrapper anyway... but then I have the hasstle of pushing that fix to other machines... muich better if it could be fixed properly and done via rhn. Paul
it's not reproduceable on machine with rhel3 with above instruction (without vmware) :( it would be great if i can get more instructions, how i can reproduce this problem on my machine. thanks
hhhhmmm interesting. I wonder if it is something else which is perculiar to our setup... I'll have a think.
sorry, it's not reproduceable on machine with rhel3 with above instruction. I now close this bug as WORKFORME,
I have the problem at work and at home. At home I do not run vmware at home. Several other people here have reported the same thing. Hopefully it will go away with redhat EL4. Thanks, Paul