Linux Mint 18 'Crashes' When Screensavers Are Interrupted
 

2017-06-21

Linux Mint 18 frequently 'crashes' when I try to interrupt screensavers from the keyboard or mouse. The system may eventually recover after many hours. Any help from this forum will be much appreciated.

Julianvb

Can you confirm that you're talking about Linux Mint 18 and not Linux Mint 18.1.

Also, which desktop environment are you using?

Do you have any other video problems?

Hi, Everyone,

My machine is about 5 years old. I've been using it for about 8 months. It came with Linux Mint pre-installed by the seller. It is based on a Jetway mini-motherboard. I use the XFCE terminal environment. I haven't detected other video problems yet.

How can I find out for sure if my Linux Mint is version 18 or 18.1. Thanks very much.

Julianvb

(if you're interested in more complete info on your system, inxi -F).

Will need the Video Card and driver info also, so how about
from the/a terminal and toss us the short link please?

Thank you!

Hi, hydrurga and Habitual,
Many thanks.

outputs the following information:
System: Host:nim4 kernel: 4.4.0-21-generic i686 (32-bit)
Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3
Distro: Linux Mint 18 Sarah

I've also run the following powerful code to send my inxi data to Habitual:
Julianvb

I am temporarily solving the problem by running 'killall xscreensaver' after I boot up Linux. I wish I could make Linux perform this command automatically at startup.

In other words, how can I execute a script with the above command automatically at startup? I find that crontab is not a simple tool to accomplish this task due to my unfamiliarity with it.

Julianvb

Go to the Xfce menu and look for screens or screensaver applet?
If it is an LCD you could just "blank it" and lose the screensaver altogether (xscreensaver, I believe)

The next time this happens, take a look at the log files in /var/log, particularly syslog and mintsystem.log; you may find some hints of why Mint is crashing.

You can use the tail command to make searching the logs for the most recent entries easier.

Menu > Log File Viewer

Oh, my, what will they think of next?

All they need do, is be aware while using Linux. ;)
https://xkcd.com/627/

Thanks for the chuckle.

Hi, Everyone,

I've looked into most of the log files and found no clues. I am inclined to believe that this may very likely be an Xscreensaver interrupt bug. Thanks very much again.

Julianvb