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#1 2016-05-02 11:09:01

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

[Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

The current nvidia driver (364.19-1) works with my setup, I can reboot and log in without issues.  If I lock the screen (either intentionally unlocking, or letting the screensaver light-locker lock the screen) and leave it idle for some amount of time, when I unlock the lightdm prompt, the resulting Xfce4 session will be blank, all that shows is my urxvt window (without text and tabs), and my Xfce4 panel area is blank (no menus, icons, or widgets).  The other display is completely blank.

I thought this might have something to do with Chromium and the vt switch that lightdm does, but killing Chromium ("pkill -9 chromium") doesn't immediately make the Xfce4 session show like normal.  I also think that using xscreensaver would workaround this problem, but I don't like the way that looks.  I prefer lightdm-gtk-greeter.

I have noticed I don't get this problem with the nouveau driver, but that has another problem.  Namely, DPMS just doesn't work with nouveau on this system.   

I don't see anything in the Xorg.0.log which may indicate a problem.  The only thing I notice is if I SSH into it from my laptop, I see X has spiked the CPU between 90-100 percent.  Restarting lightdm resolves the issue, but I've lost whatever I had open when I log back in.

Last edited by ectospasm (2016-06-10 23:25:33)

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#2 2016-06-01 01:21:15

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

Re: [Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

I found the nvidia-bug-report.sh script that ships with the nvidia driver.  Its output may help.

http://filebin.ca/2iiHvgMX1iH7/nvidia-bug-report.log.gz

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#3 2016-06-01 01:57:22

Arup
Member
From: Earth
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 95

Re: [Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

This is the reason I removed light-dm and installed gdm on my GNOME Arch.

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#4 2016-06-01 17:10:37

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

Re: [Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

Arup wrote:

This is the reason I removed light-dm and installed gdm on my GNOME Arch.

If it was a problem with lightdm then it should behave exactly the same whether I'm running nouveau or nvidia.  It doesn't, nvidia exhibits the spiked CPU in Xorg, and DPMS doesn't work with nouveau.  I don't like the customization options in GDM, so I fail to see the usefulness of your reply.

I can take any DM out of the equation and switch to startx, but I rather like using lightdm as my screen unlocking program.

Last edited by ectospasm (2016-06-01 17:14:44)

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#5 2016-06-01 17:47:52

superpacman
Member
Registered: 2016-02-11
Posts: 7

Re: [Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

I'm using xf86-video-intel and I have this problem sometimes, I avoid screen locking with LightDM. My DE is Xfce4, like you. It would be great if this wouldn't happen, I couldn't find a fix.

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#6 2016-06-01 23:37:06

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

Re: [Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

superpacman wrote:

I'm using xf86-video-intel and I have this problem sometimes, I avoid screen locking with LightDM. My DE is Xfce4, like you. It would be great if this wouldn't happen, I couldn't find a fix.

If it were that simple, then changing to nouveau from nvidia shouldn't change the problem, as lightdm remains constant.  I never get this particular problem with nouveau.  I get it consistently with nvidia. 

I suppose I can try a different DM, but I still like lightdm the most.

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#7 2016-06-10 23:24:47

ectospasm
Member
Registered: 2015-08-28
Posts: 273

Re: [Solved] Unlocking problem with nvidia, lightdm, light-locker, xfce

After trying a few different options, I've settled on using lxdm as my display manager (it's customizable enough for me), with xautolock + i3lock as my screen locker.  This also neatly sidesteps the issues I had with lightdm and Chromium (where Chromium didn't like the switch back to the login virtual terminal), and can mean I will get sound events (IRC highlights) even if this workstation is locked.

Short answer:  don't use lightdm as a screen locking program, it has some bad issues.  Why changing the video driver changes the character of the problem, I won't understand.  Perhaps they're not as independent as I thought.  Because of the nouveau DPMS issue, I'm sticking with nvidia.

Marking this as solved, though it's really only a workaround.

Last edited by ectospasm (2016-06-11 02:20:19)

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