How To Ubuntu » screensaver

How to lock your screen from the command line

Eli — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 23:35:29 +0000

This could be very useful to you if you’re working in the terminal and need to step away for a moment. You can achieve a locked screen, just like when you do it the graphical way, with this command entered at the command line, or cli…

gnome-screensaver-command --lock

This will instantly launch your screensaver, and lock your computer’s screen. Your password will be required to gain access to your system once this is activated.

That command is pretty long, and typing it out would probably get on my nerves. You can use an alias to effectively shorten it. Here’s how we’ll do that, also at the command line…

Let’s say we want to be able to type in lock, to lock the screen. If I just type in lock, I get nothing. So I need to create an alias for this command. An alias is just like what it sounds like. It’s assigning another name to a certain command. At the command line enter…

gedit .bashrc

There’s a certain section of this file that talks about aliases. You can add this line of text to that section of the file…

alias lock='gnome-screensaver-command --lock'

This tells Ubuntu that when you type in lock, it executes gnome-screensaver-command –lock. Click the Save button and close the text editor. The next time you login, the change will have taken effect. Try it out and see how you like it.

Here’s what it should look like…

How to lock your screen

Eli — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 04:30:41 +0000

Locking your screen when you’re away from your computer is very important when there are other people around. You don’t want anyone messing around on your computer. In Ubuntu you can lock your screen very easily. Once your screen is locked, it will immediately start the screensaver. When someone tries to use the mouse or keyboard they are prompted for a password. If they don’t have the password, they can’t access your machine. This password is the same one you use to login with. Here’s how to lock your screen…

The quickest and easiest way to do this is to simply hit CTRL+ALT+L. This will automatically lock your screen, and start the screensaver. If, however, you don’t want to use that keyboard combination, there are other ways to do this. In this case, you’ll need to bring up this box, and choose the Lock Screen option.

You can bring this box up a few different ways. You can also hit CTRL+ALT+DEL, or you can go to the System menu and select Quit, or you can click on the Exit icon on the taskbar. If someone tries to wake your computer up from the screensaver, this is what they’ll see…

If they don’t have your password, they won’t get into your system. They can login as a different user, and this won’t affect what you’re doing. When that other user logs out, the machine will just go back to yourscreensaver. Another nice little feature is the ability for someone to leave you a message when your machine is locked. All they have to do is click the Leave Message box after they wake it from the screensaver. They type their message, hit Save, and leave. When you come back & login, that message is displayed in the lower right hand corner of the screen until you close it. Very cool!

Notice the non-darkened area

Zoomed in view

[digg=http://digg.com/linux_unix/How_to_lock_your_screen_in_Ubuntu]

Xubuntu screensaver fix

Eli — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:38:23 +0000

There are 2 ways of doing this. One uses the already installed gnome-screensaver, and the other uses xscreensaver, which you’ll have to install.

First option — gnome-screensaver

Go to Applications > Settings > Settings Manager > Autostarted apps

Click on Add, and enter whatever name & description you like, but enter gnome-screensaver in the command box. This fixes the problem of the screensaver not starting when it should. This makes the screensaver app start when the computer boots up so that it will function correctly.

Second option – xscreensaver

Open a terminal and enter

sudo apt-get install xscreensaver

This will install a screensaver application. Now you must repeat the steps in the first option to make this thing start when the computer boots up.

Go to Applications > Settings > Settings Manager > Autostarted apps

Click on Add, and enter whatever name & description you like, but enter xscreensaver in the command box.

This was a very frustrating problem that shouldn’t exist, but does. Xubuntu has so many benefits that I think I can deal with this one little, easily fixed, bug just fine.