What's keeping my screensaver from activating?

Question

I'm running Linux Mint 13 KDE on an HP Pavilion g6 laptop.

The screensaver, which in my case is xscreensaver, but I've noticed this behavior with kscreensaver as well, never seems to activate.

After observing it, I thought it was the touch pad being too sensitive, but disabling it didn't help.

Observing it, it seems to be detecting some kind of input from somewhere, as I've seen the screen dim after some time, then brighten back up without being touched at all, and when locked, I've seen the password box pop up on its own.

Is there any idea what's going on, or something I've overlooked?

Answer 1

First run xdg-screensaver activate. If that works, perhaps

• you're having problems with input being sent to the terminal
• perhaps something like VLC is inhibiting the screensaver.