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int_ua
Asked: 2015-06-29 01:56:22 +0800 CST

How to prevent auto-pausing processes in an inactive user session?

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For a while now when I switch between two user sessions the inactive one in some cases will stop executing GUI processes. This way I'm forced waiting for another session to load and can't do something in another one, because if I switch and return after a while it's still on the same point. The software affected includes rsync, rdiff-backup, KDE background processes, Steam launched in Openbox session (even downloading stops) and at least some games. VLC is not affected, at least it skips to needed time after I switch back, but for a moment I can see old frame and time in it's window.

What process is responsible for such behaviour? Can I reconfigure it somehow?

Update: Memory and Swap Usage

Some additional context: The irony is I suggested this exact behaviour on the old brainstorm.ubuntu.com (now defunct).

xorg

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I run into this problem too because I switch between console and graphical virtual terminals on a regular basis. Xorg by design suspends its clients during VT switches, which is why its clients seem to "freeze" when Xorg's VT is no longer active. Wayland does not, so if the programs you need to stay running in a background VT support the new display protocol, use a Wayland compositor instead of Xorg.

    One way to work around this problem is to run graphical programs on a local VNC server so that they never get suspended. This is the workaround that I use the most frequently.

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  2. What process is responsible for such behaviour?

    Display Manager (DM) is the one you are looking for. Anyone: lightdm, gdm, kdm (old kde), sddm (new kde), xdm ...

    Can I reconfigure it somehow?

    AFAIK, That should be that way with X server. However, I used to skip that behavior using:

    • CLI tools on another virtual console TTY
    • CLI tools as initservice

    Concerning audio streams, when I started using GNU/Linux in 2006. Audio devices were managed separately from Display. Now, things changed much specially with the new integrated devices/ports like HDMI. So Pulse server should be aware of some X display events. As I remember (I will recheck this), Pulse server is run as user process.

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  3. You can launch a screen session from the CLI with bash and inside this session you can launch the application. And now you can close this Terminal without problems and recover using screen -r command. Is more or less this:

    screen bash
rsync -V xxx yyy

    And you can close the CLI and return whatever you want and do:

    screen -r

    To confirm the job is done. I don't know if this can work with GUI apps using a command like:

    nohup your-X-application &
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