How to detect the screen is locked or not when the screen saver is active on Redhat 6.6?

Question

There are two screen saver options in Redhat 6.6 menu "System->Preference->Screensaver":

1. The option "Active screen saver when computer is idle". Check this option will cause the screen saver is active when the idle time reach the limit;
2. The option "Lock screen when screen saver is active". Check this option will cause the screen locked when the screen saver is active; otherwise, the screen will not locked when the screen saver is active.

My question is that how to monitor the screen lock/unlock if the option (1) is checked? I tried to use the dbus command:

dbus-monitor --session "interface='org.gnome.ScreenSaver'"  

Unfortunately, the result is not correct as it only catch the message "ActiveChanged", even I check the option (2) and the screen is locked actually.

signal sender=:1.37 -> dest=(null destination) serial=25 path=/org/gnome/ScreenSaver;
interface=org.gnome.ScreenSaver; member=ActiveChanged

boolean true

If I run the command gnome-screensaver-command -l manually, the dbus-monitor can catch the following message:

method call sender=:1.99 -> dest=org.gnome.ScreenSaver serial=3 path=/org/gnome/ScreenSaver;
interface=org.gnome.ScreenSaver; member=Lock  
signal sender=:1.37 -> dest=(null destination) serial=23 path=/org/gnome/ScreenSaver;
interface=org.gnome.ScreenSaver; member=ActiveChanged
boolean true  

I referred the document of org.gnome.ScreenSaver:
https://people.gnome.org/~mccann/gnome-screensaver/docs/gnome-screensaver.html
It seems the method call "Lock" means "Request that the screen be locked."
The signal "ActiveChanged" only means the screen saver is active or not.

So I suspect this is a Redhat 6.6 bug:
The message "Lock" is missed when the screen saver is active and the screen is locked by the above two options.
It cause I can't detect the screen locked or not in this scenario.

Is there any workaround solution for this issue? Is it possible that I can read the config file that store the above two options?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Running gconftool-2 --get /apps/gnome-screensaver/lock_enabled will return a boolean telling you if screen locking is enabled for the current user. If it is true, you'll know that when the "ActiveChanged" signal is true, the screen is also locked.

Since you asked about the config file for both options, you can also check if the screensaver is set to activate itself with gconftool-2 --get /apps/gnome-screensaver/idle_activation_enabled.