Chapter 5 Setting Screensavers

This chapter describes how to set preferences for the screensaver. This chapter also provides information on how to modify the displays that are available for the screensaver.

• Introduction to Screensavers

• Setting Screensaver Preferences

• Modifying Screensaver Displays

Introduction to Screensavers

A screensaver is an application that replaces the image on a screen when the screen is not in use. The screensaver application for the GNOME Desktop is XScreenSaver. The following sections describe how to set preferences for the XScreenSaver application, and how to modify the displays that are available for the screensaver.

The XScreenSaver application does not allow you to lock your screen if you are logged in as root. If you want to be able to lock your screen, log in as a normal user. To obtain system administrator privileges, open a terminal window, then use the su command to log in as root.

Setting Screensaver Preferences

Default screensaver preferences are stored in a file that is called XScreenSaver. This file is stored in different locations, depending on the platform, as follows:

To modify screensaver application preferences, users can use the Screensaver preference tool. To start the Screensaver preference tool, choose Applications -> Desktop Preferences -> Screensaver from the Menu Panel. When a user modifies the screensaver preferences, the preferences are stored in the home directory of the user, in the $HOME/.xscreensaver file. For information on screensaver preferences, see the GNOME 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris Operating Environment User Guide.For information on screensaver preferences, see GNOME 2.2 Desktop User Guide.

Users can also run the command /usr/X11R6/bin/xscreensaver-demo to open the XScreenSaver dialog.

Users can also run the command /usr/openwin/bin/xscreensaver-demo to open the XScreenSaver dialog.

Users can also run the command /usr/openwin/bin/xscreensaver-demo to open the XScreenSaver dialog.

To set default screensaver preferences for all users, modify the XScreenSaver file. You can also use the XScreenSaver dialog to create a $HOME/.xscreensaver file, then copy the file to the location of the XScreenSaver file.

To restore the default settings for a user, delete the $HOME/.xscreensaver file from the home directory of the user. If no $HOME/.xscreensaver file is present, the default preferences in the XScreenSaver file are used.

The default display behavior of XScreenSaver is to display a blank screen. The blank screen might confuse users. You might want to change this default display behavior.

To activate changes to the screensaver preferences, use the following command to reload screensaver preferences:

# xscreensaver-command -restart

The xset application does not work with XScreenSaver at the time of publication of this guide. To modify screensaver preferences, modify the XScreenSaver file or the $HOME/.xscreensaver file.

Modifying Screensaver Displays

The screensaver application allows users to choose one or more screensaver displays. A screensaver display is an application that displays images on the screen of the user when the screen is not in use. The screensaver displays are listed in the XScreenSaver file and in the $HOME/.xscreensaver file.

To add a new screensaver display, copy the executable file for the display to the /usr/openwin/lib/xscreensaver/hacks directory. Add the command for the screensaver display to the XScreenSaver file or the $HOME/.xscreensaver file. Include any arguments that are required to run the screensaver display on the whole screen, rather than in a window. For example, you might want to include the -root option to display the screensaver display on the whole screen.

To add a new screensaver display, copy the executable file for the display to the /usr/X11R6/lib/xscreensaver/hacks directory. Add the command for the screensaver display to the XScreenSaver file or the $HOME/.xscreensaver file. Include any arguments that are required to run the screensaver display on the whole screen, rather than in a window. For example, you might want to include the -root option to display the screensaver display on the whole screen.

To disable a screensaver display, add a minus sign (-) at the start of the command for the screensaver display in the preferences file. The following excerpt from a $HOME/.xscreensaver file shows a disabled Qix (solid) screensaver display:

-		 "Qix (solid)" 	qix -root -solid -segments 100

To disable screensaver displays for all users on a Sun Ray™ thin client, rename the /usr/openwin/lib/xscreensaver/hacks directory to any name other than hacks.

OpenGL screensaver displays are provided with the GNOME Desktop. By default, all OpenGL screensaver displays are disabled, because many users do not have the OpenGL library installed. Users who have the OpenGL library installed can use the XScreenSaver dialog to enable OpenGL screensaver displays.

Some screensaver displays show the contents of the desktop environment of the user. To avoid security violations, screensaver displays that show the contents of the desktop environment are not included in the Sun Microsystems distribution of the GNOME Desktop.

The Pluggable Authentication Modules (PAM) service name for the XScreenSaver application is dtsession. This name is used to be compatible with previous applications.