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Is there any way that I can lock the screen CLI-style? I'm trying to target as many desktop managers as possible (mostly LightDM, but GDM, KDM, SLiM, XScreensaver, etc. would be great too), but I can only dig things up for GDM and XScreensaver.

For GDM, it would be:

gnome-screensaver-command -l

For XScreensaver:

xscreensaver-command -lock

Is there a similar command for KDM and LightDM?

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Can you start the screen saver and ssh in and ps and see what screen saver is running and deduce from there what command to run? (how I found the gnome-screensaver-command) – polynomial Sep 30 '11 at 4:35
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man lightdm doesn't look too promising... moleberry.com/man/l/lightdm.1.html – jasonwryan Sep 30 '11 at 5:41
Perhaps you can try to control them via d-bus (using dbus-send to send the appropriate lock message). – andcoz Sep 30 '11 at 9:24
@andcoz: I saw a few dbus-send things while Googling, but sadly none of them worked. I even looked at the LightDM API reference for a solution, but even that doesn't have anything. Heck, I even tried to look at the source of Ubuntu's user switching panel (sorry, can't read like 1,000,000 of C). I might try emailing the dev list for help... – Blender Sep 30 '11 at 15:48
@polynomial: That seems like a good solution (maybe post it as an answer?). I don't have a second computer to SSH with, but I can try and print the process list every second or so to deduce what is happening. – Blender Sep 30 '11 at 15:51
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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I Googled/emailed around a bit and got these two commands.

To lock the screen:

xflock4

To activate user switching:

gdmflexiserver

For Lightdm, this file resides in a strange spot (at least on Arch Linux):

/usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm/gdmflexiserver

I merged these two into XFCE's logout button dialog, in case anyone's interested, so the patch is available here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=52816

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up vote 0 down vote

There are several DM-independent, simple solutions like alock, slock or xtrlock (manpage). Note that they might not even display any input window prompting for password - you just enter the password while the screen is blank and press Enter (that's the case of slock at least).

If you want the locker to be able to display a screensaver and show a custom prompt on un-locking, try xlock provided with xlockmore package (see this info and the manpage).

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I'm not looking for a lock screen (I have my own, plock, for that :P). I'm looking for a way to trigger the lockscreen (whatever it is). – Blender Sep 30 '11 at 15:47
Then xautolock (which is a part of xlockmore) provides this functionality - have a look at the last two links I posted and the xautolock manpage. – rozcietrzewiacz Oct 2 '11 at 18:07
xautolock locks the screen, yes, but I need to lock the screen when I press a button. I already figured it out, but thanks for the suggestions ;) – Blender Oct 2 '11 at 20:01

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