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Liito-orava

Member

Registered: 2026-05-04

Posts: 2

[Solved] Handling suspend on idle/DPMS/screen locking on I3WM.

I'm having trouble finding the best way to handle what the title says in I3WM.

My desired order:

inactivity (x min) -> dpms + lock -> more inactivity (y min) -> suspend (with lock).

This was working fine when :
1) using XFCE4 power manager to set DPMS and suspend on inactivity while using lightdm and running light-locker on startup
2) using X screensaver/dpms timeouts and xautolock to suspend while using lighdm and running light-locker on startup

I would like to not have to use a power manager or Lightdm (Lightdm is great but I like to try new things), like for instance plain startx and slock for locking.
However using other options it always seems like there is some sort of drawback, for instance systemd not handling inactivity correctly most of the time.

I don't really want to delve in to all my testing, I'm moreso interested in what everyone else is using. I'm sorry if this post is a bit all over the place, I'm happy to clarify
and discuss some of the things I've already tried.

EDIT:
This is a configuration that has worked pretty well:

Using ly as a display manager, X to handle dpms/screensaver, xss-lock and slock for locking and systemd for handling inactivity.

One interesting thing I noticed was that if using plain startx systemd wouldn't handle inactivity correctly (instead of doing a countdown from inactivity it was a countdown from boot). Seems like ly (or any display manager) set some enviorment variables or systemd targets/stuff that is needed for that.

I'm also experimenting with xidlehook (although it is unmaintained).

Last edited by Liito-orava (Yesterday 13:22:49)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,112

Re: [Solved] Handling suspend on idle/DPMS/screen locking on I3WM.

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xss-lock/ or you can also just run two instances of xautolock (one for locking and one to suspend)?

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Liito-orava

Member

Registered: 2026-05-04

Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] Handling suspend on idle/DPMS/screen locking on I3WM.

I found a forum post that said that running two different xautolock instances would not work, but I'ts worth a try.
I know of xss-lock and it works as it should. The problem with xss-lock for me is handling the suspend, systemd's inactivity to suspend seems to not always work
so well, for instance when I've tested it sometimes it didn't suspend my system at all. Running xss-lock with xautolock seems like it would work but it would not be a very clean solution in my eyes.

I have however been running some tests in the background and it seemed to work now (?) (systemd handling inactivity).

Thank you for the suggestions, I'll continue my testing.

Last edited by Liito-orava (2026-05-04 17:16:13)