Power off after a certain time of inactivity in Ubuntu (using the activiation of a screensaver to do it)
Reece Arnott <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.org.user-groups.linux.dunedin.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Rob was asking for a way to save power by turning off machines that had been inactive for a certain number of hours in Ubuntu. The key thing to realise is that sensing inactivity is what screensavers do so... sudo apt-get install xscreensaver if it isn't already installed and do the following: 1) create an executable script file from the text file shown here: https://gist.github.com/chrisyco/988104 (this is a wrapper to give you the options to suspend, hibernate, restart, or shutdown). This is optional if you are only going to ever want to shutdown. 2) Run xscreensaver-demo to create a ~/.xscreensaver prefs file if it doesn't already exist. 3) Edit the ~/.xscreensaver file. The important thing is to insert the following line immediately under the line that says "programs: \": "Shutdown" /absolute/path/to/power.sh shutdown \n\ The other options below can either be set while you're editing the file anyway, or via the GUI by running xscreensaver-demo: timeout: 2:00:00 # This is the time of inactivity to wait hh:mm:ss mode: one # So only one screensaver is run. Note that if you ever set this back to cycle through random screensavers you should take out the above Shutdown screensaver :-) selected: 0 #which screensaver is run, if the shutdown script is the first one listed under programs then it will be screensaver 0 If you are *only* going to shutdown you don't need to power.sh script, instead you can replace the reference to it above with the following line: "Shutdown" dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Stop \n\ (I have tested this on Ubuntu 13.04 and it works. There may be minor variations in the older versions so YMMV) -- "Believing men would act in their own interest was not cynicism, it turned out, but sheerest optimism; in reality men do not meet so high a standard." -- Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (Chapter 84) http://hpmor.com/ Reece Arnott Dunedin New Zealand _______________________________________________ DunLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ethernal.org/listinfo/dunlug DunLUG Wiki - http://dunlug.kallisti.net.nz/