I'm running Debian Etch/Testing. Old CRT went bad. New Niko TFT LCD 19" w. speakers not used. Totally fine onboard VIA video, works fine. Monitor does what an LCD does, but after installing my xscreensaver, screensaver won't work.

When I first hooked up the LCD and speakers the screensaver worked fine except that when it came on and I had some audio running when the monitor screen went to screensaver, the speakers turned off. The audio was still running but not coming thru the speakers. So I brought out my old speakers and hooked them up and something happened somewhere and I came up w. this different situation. I probably did something but for the life of me I don't know what.

It does come up w. a screensaver, ie. rotating Blank(backlit), Large X, Small X. w. small X on various parts of screen but no movement and X locations only change when screen changes to other picture/screen. But when I try to re-set in Control Center a different screensaver there is no change. HOWEVER, if I go to lock screen then my selected screensaver comes up just fine. And if I change time for screen saver to come on in Control Center it recognizes that too. I have done "dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg" and it recognized the exact LCD monitor. Have set DPMS in CMOS. The screenserver I use is the Clock and when I looked in /home/user/.xscreenserver I didn't see it listed but it's probably under another name. I can't figure out what I have to change to get away from this screensaver and to my clock. BTW I know that DPMS has to do w. shutting down the machine after x minutes but I found somewhere that someone was fooling with it and I was ready to try anything. Actually Linux(Debian) doesn't seem to care whether the CMOS recognizes it or not. It goes ahead and does so. Has anyone got any ideas. I'm lost. Although I have been using various Linii (love Debian) for about 4 years or more I am still a newbie. Many thanks in advance for any help.

Whit

I'm not sure this is related but I had a difficult time getting xscreensaver to work when I first installed etch six months ago. It turned out to be a conflict with gnome screensaver. I had to delete gnome screensaver from the <Desktop> <Preferences> <Sessions> <Startup Programs> listing. Make sure xscreensaver is listed in the <Startup Programs> listing. Like you, I have a 19 inch LCD monitor and VIA on-board graphics.

Thanks for the reply Kel en...

When I set up etch a while ago I don't remember having troubles with the screensaver at that time Now over time various updates have had problems and I was down from the net for almost 5 days because of an install problem on an update to Mozilla. One file loaded too early and hosed up access to the net until the fix came in the next tuesday. Glad to see others using Via and an LCD w. no problems. I just had to have done something to this to mess it up but have no idea what.

I know it, the system, Debian and KDE are all seeing .xscreensaver because it works when I want to lock the screen w the screensaver I have chosen visible. And it will change the time to come on when I change it. I can use 1 minute, 5 minutes 10 minutes or whatever I want and "A" screensaver comes on. It just isnt' the one I want to use and I have no idea where it came from or where it is. It might be in the software on the monitor for all I know but I doubt it.

I think it might be a laptop screensaver setup for all I know but don't know if I can or where I can change a file to change the files that are being accessed. I know that google is my friend and so is dogpile but I have searched all over the net for any kind of info on this particular file with a big white X and smaller Xes and a little while ago there was even a midsized one show up. All I get is derivations of linus's X configuration stuff. It's hard to find a search phrase that will hone down on what I want. I've been thru pages of stuff and found one place where it was mentioned a big white X and it was a laptop situation and they ended up talking about shutting off the screen, hence DPMS, instead of talking about this graphic file and where it came from or is.

Again, any help is very much appreciated. I'm kerstuken. At a loss. Thanks in advance.

Whit

I haven't used KDE in a couple of years so can't help there. I suggest you look at what processes are running to make sure that you have only one screensaver active. I checked the screensavers available in my installation of xscreensaver and there is nothing like that which you describe. Sorry.

Thanks for your efforts, Ken el.

I ran ps aux and looked at what was running. Interesting that it did not show the xscreensaver but it gets called from kdesktop I found out as a dcop call. I really don't know that much about what I am doing but found that the filenames for the screensavers end in .kss and I found the kclock.kss file. Tomorrow I am going to do a grep and see what I can find. See what file is calling it, if any. We'll see. But thanks again for your efforts. Much appreciated.

Whit

Haven't fooled w. what I spoke of in last message but found a graphic of the large X in a message which also had problems w. this coming up but no answer. The graphic can be found at :
http://www.darose.net/NXProb.png

It is that size and also much smaller on various parts of the screen and then also much smaller than that, also in various parts of the screen. Someone in another message said it looks like the xlogo logo symbol. I don't know. It is my new screensaver, for now, I guress. I checked also and it seems that both kscreensaver and xscreensaver are installed. I have .xscreensaver set up in my /home directory so assume I am using that one. Again if anyone has an idea how to change from this to a "full" xscreensaver usage I would appreciate it. I know it's wierd.

TIA
Whit

Solved!!!!!

Was over at KDE-forum.org on a fluke and found a message "screensaver problem" and for grins took a look. Well, sometimes you just step in it and I did. This guy had the same problem and was a lot smarter than I and found te answer. It follwos:

Go to configure desktop - Peripherals - Display - Power Control, then click Enable Display Power Management. Then set Standby After, Suspend After, and Power Off After to disabled, and click Apply.

So easy to do but I have no idea why this had to be done because a new monitor was installed. But it might have to do w. my driver setup on this particular monitor. I don't know. But my prob is solved thanks to s guy who solved his problem and was kind enough to post it somewhere. Tahks to all you solution posters. You're great folks.

Whitster

I tried the same solution before finding this thread & it seemed to work for the first time the screensaver kicked in but then it went back to the big white x again. Then I saw that I had "xscreensaver" installed but not "xscreensaver-gl". Installing this gave me libgl3. Don't know why my favorite gl screensaver worked for weeks & then failed without these extra packages but that's for people who know more than trial & error like me.

Where exactly did you do this? I think this is what is going on with my system now. Kde screensaver was working fine till the last update. Now, gnome-screensaver comes on and insists on a password. I can't figure out how to disable it.

Jim

gconf-editor seems to have the options that control it. Thanks all.