Bug 1214430

Summary: xfce4 screen lock button broken: screensaver is not executed
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE Tumbleweed Reporter: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh>
Component: XfceAssignee: E-mail List <bnc-team-xfce>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Normal    
Priority: P5 - None    
Version: Current   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: x86-64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Found By: --- Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---

Description Jan Engelhardt 2023-08-21 08:42:37 UTC
Version: 4.18.3-1.2.x86_64

xfce4 taskbar, if you choose the "Lock screen" action, nothing happens. Instead, a line is emitted to ~/.xsession-errors:

    Property "/general/LockCommand" does not exist on channel "xfce4-session".

This seems recent; I believe this might have been introduced with the 2023-08-14 Tumbleweed update, though I recognize the xfce4 last changelog entry is from 2023-07-04. I'll try to gather more details.
Comment 1 Jan Engelhardt 2023-08-30 16:19:20 UTC
It magically fixed itself somehow. The message

>Property "/general/LockCommand" does not exist on channel "xfce4-session".

still stays, but the lock command functions again. *shrug*
Still the same xfce4-session version, but maybe a powercycle thingie.
Comment 2 Jan Engelhardt 2023-09-04 07:20:28 UTC
I grepped around in source a bit, found that it invokes xflock4, and so I straced that to get an idea if there are subordinate commands being run, which they are:

> "xfconf-query", "-c", "xfce4-session", "-p", "/general/LockCommand"
> Property "/general/LockCommand" does not exist on channel "xfce4-session".

That's where that comes from. Also:

> "xfce4-screensaver-command", "--lock"
> ** Message: 09:18:32.054: Screensaver is not running! Start xfce4-screensaver first

The reason this message does not show up in .xsession-errors is because it goes to stdout instead of stderr.

And that's then the reason the lock button did not work. Now, to find out why the xfce4-screensaver background process didn't start…