Error message when starting desktop JWZ Screensaver package too old.
 

Got a nasty error message that distro is not doing me a favor if they packaged such an old version of xscreensaver. Error message says to build from source. Yet, when one goes to www.jwz.org/ to look for source, the message is numerous dependencies, use package binaries. This error message has just started today. Anyone else seen it? My desktop is xfce4, and am running Slackware 14.1 x86_64.
my .Xdefaults
-------------cut here -------------
XTerm*faceName: Droid Sans Mono
XTerm*faceSize: 10
XTerm*cursorBlink: true
XTerm*saveLines: 32768
XTerm*locale: true

! Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.hinting: 1
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
Xft.rgba: rgb

URxvt.font: xft:Droid Sans Mono:pixelsize=13
URxvt.saveLines: 65535
URxvt.scrollBar: false
URxvt.reverseVideo: true
URxvt.depth: 32
URxvt.foreground: rgba:0000/0000/0000/cccc
URxvt.background: white
Rxvt.cursorBlink: true
Rxvt.visualBell: true
----------------end cut --------------

Hey, I had the same issue ;)

Just go to your favorite Slackware mirror, find slackware64-14.1/source/xap/xscreensaver
and download the various package files, download xscreensaver sources from www.jwz.org in the same directory, chmod +x then execute ./xscreensaver.Slackbuild as root and build and upgradepkg xscreensaver

Not even need to modify the slackbuild script to change version, it's done automatically
I didn't notice any dependency issue

It has a 12 month trigger (July 2013 version date, 12 months later August 1st it starts complaining). We have 5.22, latest is 5.29, so it should be upgraded. It would be nice if a Slackware patch appeared...

I must admit it's weird programm behaviour complaining that it's one year old so it's nasty while bad talking about the distro packagers wtf

From the programmer (comments in the code where it does the date check):
(I guess "multi-year-old" means more than 1 year old)

Yep, still I don't think display big warning is the right thing to do

It was upgraded in -current, I don't know if there are any side effects if you install
the new version from -current over 14.1

I think patching out the big warning seems like the best course of action. Hardcoding a software expiration date is seldom helpful.

SOLVED:

turns out a new version is in today's Slackpkg update. No more error message. Thank you to all who posted in this thread.


The GNUinator

Here is a patch (tested) that basically removes the expiration time test function [ senescent_p() ] and all references to it

[edit]
I just see you your patch, bah I did it another way :D

When running with this new version I get the following error when I lock the screen:
"xscreensaver: 12:42:42: couldn't grab pointer (AlreadyGrabbed)"

Edit: This only happens when I click on wmclock to lock the display. Running "xscreensaver-command -lock" from an xterm works fine. So I'll look at wmclock for this. Thanks for all of your help.