From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020830 Description of problem: Lock Screen option does not work. I click on the lock screen in the launcher and nothing happens. I've verified this on 3 other computers also. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Log in using Gnome 2.Click on the Redhat launcher 3.Click on lock screen Actual Results: Nothing happens Expected Results: The screen should lock, disallowing me to continue using it unless I supply a password Additional info: I am using an IBM 390E Thinkpad laptop. I have verified this bug on an A22m thinkpad also. By the way, this also was a problem in the NULL beta release of Redhat 8.
I think I've figured out why it doesn't work. It's not working when I'm logged in as root, because the Xscreensaver isn't running. If I log in as another user and click the lock screen option, the Xscreensaver screen pops up and asks me for my password. Should this work for users logged in as root?
It should. Or it should put up an explanation why it doesn't.
Here is what I get in .xsession-errors file : SESSION_MANAGER=local/localhost.localdomain:/tmp/.ICE-unix/789 Loaded background '0x8095f50 xscreensaver-command: no screensaver is running on display :0.0
If you run xscreensaver as root it prints this: xscreensaver: Can't open display: :0.0 xscreensaver: initial effective uid/gid was root/root (0/0) xscreensaver: running as nobody/nobody (99/99) xscreensaver: This is probably because you're logging in as root. You shouldn't log in as root: you should log in as a normal user, and then `su' as needed. If you insist on logging in as root, you will have to turn off X's security features before xscreensaver will work. Please read the manual and FAQ for more information: http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/faq.html http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/man.html It *is* true that logging in as root is a pretty bad idea, though it's also true that you have to use the command line to avoid a root login sometimes (always a bug when you have to, IMO).
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 10715 ***