Ok i have 3 monitors connected, each has its own xsession, is there any

way i can set a screensaver for each xsession.?

for example this is why im after such options..

have 5 screens right.. primary is used for general desktop, e.g. browsing, email etc.. the other 2 lcd's are the seperate xsessions with tv's cloning each of the othr lcd's, which stream media, thus i dont want the screen-saver active on those screens, but i would like the screen-saver to be active and work on the primary screen...

Hope someone knows what im trying to say..?

Do you mean you have a separate instance of X running on each monitor? It should be very straightforward to have different screen saver settings for entirely separate instances of X: just configure the screen saver on each display how you want. The details of how to do that depend on the particular Desktop Environment (such as GNOME, KDE, or XFCE) and screen saver program.

well here's the thing...

if i set this xsession here to use say matrix screen-saver and put it at1 minute before it kicks in, it doesn't work... the computer certianly isnt idle as the other to screens do have proccess's running..

Also, i am running 3 xsessions, but when the screen-saver does come on it comes all 3 screens..

Find attached my xorg.conf...

my setup is like so...

Ubuntu 8.04 64BIT - Gnome desktop, Gnome-screensaver


3 xsessions, primary monitor 22" LCD, on my left in a 17" LCD that a tv clones. on my right is a 17" tv that has its own xsession...

i just want the screen-saver on the 22"

OK, now you've answered my original question, albeit indirectly. You are not running three separate instances of X. You do in fact have one session with three screens. Different sessions would each have at least one screen, one mouse, one keyboard, and one instance of an X process.

The main problem with what you want is how to determine a screen is idle. Usually, any keyboard or mouse input means the session is not idle. I'm not sure there's an easy way to determine that one screen is idle and others are not when they all share the same keyboard and mouse. If you had three independent sessions, each with its own screen and input devices, what you want would be easy. However, that usually requires a separate video card for each session. When I'm not using one of my monitors, I just shut it off with the main power switch.

im not usig twin-view and according to nvidia - i'm runing 3 xsessions... well thats what there configuration said, i cannot drag anything to another screen..

I dont want to have to turn off theone monitor, just becoming annoying. prefer the screensaver to be only active on the primary screen..

Regardless of the number of displays you have, you are still running in a single X session. Although you can individually set resolution and color depth on each screen, they are still using a single DISPLAY :0.

You can, however, start another X session by going to one of the terminals and typing startx -- :1. In that case, you will have a display environment variable of DISPLAY :1, but all three screens will still be under that single control.

In short--from what I know--you cannot set individual screen savers for separate displays under the same X session.

Well i spose i should pick away at trying to achive that then....

What do i have to do..

Basically, here's how my setup works

22" LCD main desktop / 5.1 Creative Extreme Audio Card

17" LCD Has a media player on it 24/7 with a tv cloning it / 5.1 Creative Live! Card

32" TV Cloning 17" LCD / Re Above

15" TV running another Media player... / Onboard 7.1 Audio


How would i achive what im trying to do ..

You didn't mention how many video cards you have available. You should be able to run several independent sessions of X, each with its own video card, mouse, and keyboard. Each session can have multiple monitors if the card supports them. With some multi-output video cards, it might even be possible to share them between X sessions, but that's unlikely.

I have x2 Nvidia 8500GT's

Each card has a TV and a LCD each. i have tried to run 2 monitors and a tv off one card at once but that wouldnt work..

This thread shouldn't be that complicated to solve. Most video players do have an option to disable the screen saver and powersaving stuff when they are running. This should work out of the box or with very little configuration on the video player program.



I will not discuss the exact terminology because I am not really sure and don't have the time to check right now. But if you are running on X server on each screen (and if you are not using xinerama or twinview, then that's the case), you can run even a different WM on each screen (I've done it without a problem lots of times). So, let alone the screensaver... Each WM can be started with it's own set of apps, including it's own screensaver (or none at all).

If the first solution I mentioned does not work, I can provide sample xinitrc files for almost anything. I just need to search a bit, so let me know if you need specific help with that. I've experimented quite a lot with multi head setups.

Well basically what i though i was asking was simple...

Apparently not..

All i wanna do is stop the screen-saver from running on all screens bar the primary one...


With these other ideas, it sounds like i will need 3 keyboards and 3 mice, which isnt a very good alternative..


???????

I don't know if anyone above suggested such a thing. If you speak about my post above, I never implied that. You don't need any extra keyboards nor mice.

2nd. EDIT: I just received your private mail, but it seems you have disabled that in your profile so I couldn't contact you that way. And anyway, this might be useful for something else, so I'll better explain it in the thread if you are really interested.

If you like the idea, don't be afraid to ask here. I can guide you through this, though we will need more help to integrate this into your graphical login (in case you want to keep the graphical login). I know next to nothing about graphical login managers.

If you want to take this approach, we need to know these things:

1.- your normal desktop, which you use everyday
2.- the light wm you will be using for the other monitor(s)
/2nd.


[original post starts here]
Just to put a little example, this is one of the many xinitrc files that I have stored that I have tailored a bit to illustrate what I mean here:

If you put this in your ~/.xinitrc, and you start X using "startx" on your command line, you will get fvwm on your first monitor, and fluxbox in the second one. It's just an example, but it serves my purpose: illustrate that you can run anything you want on a given monitor. I could configure fvwm to launch an screensaver, while leaving fluxbox as-is, without any screensaver. I could as well launch kde on one monitor, with it's screensaver, and use a light wm on the other monitor, just to play the videos, without screensavers nor any other useless stuff on that head.

This, as said above, assumes you are using a correct xorg configuration, with two heads (or more), without xinerama/twinview.

EDIT: Of course, you need to check the docs for your WM(s) to see how to start them only on one screen. In fvwm it's -s, in fluxbox it's -screen. Other WM's might use different ways to configure that.

Well i only use gnome dsiplay manager / gdm

As for the seconardy wm - i have no idea, something thats pritty basic i spose...

Also - using this method will the 2nd lcd still be cloned with the tv on its video-card.?

Well, that shouldn't have anything to do with the wm you use. The clone settings and that stuff should depend only on the X configuration (xorg.conf). We shouldn't need to touch that, so it should continue working the same way.

So, you work in gnome. We can try gnome + fluxbox. Later it's easy to change the secondary WM if you are not happy with fluxbox. But it's small and easy enough to handle. So it can be a starting point.

Let me sumarize, and correct me if something is wrong:

• You have 5 monitors.
• One of them is the main one (lets say, monitor 5), in that, you want gnome.
• Monitors 1 and 2 will show one video stream, fluxbox here.
• Monitors 3 and 4 will show another video stream, fluxbox here also.

If affirmative we can start doing real work.