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NeStack
Asked: 2020-04-04 07:43:06 +0800 CST

Xscreensaver not working properly

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I don't understand Linux and sys-admin stuff, but I have installed recently xscreensaver Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS as described here and I have followed all the steps. If I lock the screen with Cntrl+Alt+L then the xscreensaver starts. But If I wait for the screen to time out, it just goes blank black like the gnome-screensaver does, despite that I have gnome-screensaver installed. Curiously, when I type locate screensaver.desktop I get:

/etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-screensaver.desktop
/home/nestor/.config/autostart/xscreensaver.desktop

I was afraid to delete the gnome-screensaver.desktop file, so I out commented everything in it. Still, same problem persists.

If after a restart I type xscreensaver -nosplash I get:

xscreensaver: 18:39:29: already running on display :0 (window 0x1a000de)

I guess, this is good and excludes the possibility that screensaver just doesn't get automatically started on start-up.

Then I followed the instructions here and I did:

sudo apt-get remove --auto-remove gnome-screensaver
sudo apt-get purge --auto-remove gnome-screensaver
systemctl --user enable xscreensaver.service
systemctl --user start xscreensaver.service

After the last command I got the message:

Failed to start xscreensaver.service: Unit xscreensaver.service is not loaded properly: Exec format error.
See user logs and 'systemctl --user status xscreensaver.service' for details.

The referred log says:

● xscreensaver.service - XScreenSaver
   Loaded: error (Reason: Exec format error)
   Active: inactive (dead)

апр 03 18:07:22 nestor-Eve-V systemd[1492]: /usr/lib/systemd/user/xscreensaver.service:5: Executable path is not absolute: xscreensaver
апр 03 18:07:22 nestor-Eve-V systemd[1492]: xscreensaver.service: Cannot add dependency job, ignoring: Unit xscreensaver.service is not loaded properly: Exec format error.

This suggests the problem is "Executable path is not absolute", so I opened the file /usr/lib/systemd/user/xscreensaver.service and it contains:

[Unit]
Description=XScreenSaver
[Service]
ExecStart=xscreensaver
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Do I have to type there an absolute path? Any ideas how can I enable screensaver to work properly? thanks

lock-screen screensaver gnome-screensaver xscreensaver

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Thanks for your question, @NeStack.

    This error message seems clear:

    systemd[1492]: /usr/lib/systemd/user/xscreensaver.service:5: Executable path is not absolute: xscreensaver

    So I opened the file with sudo vim /usr/lib/systemd/user/xscreensaver.service and saw this:

    [Service]
ExecStart=xscreensaver

    I replaced it with ExecStart=/usr/bin/xscreensaver, after which systemctl --user start xscreensaver.service no longer gives an error. `

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