Subject: Bug#1474: keyboard and mouse stop working after a few minutes of inactivity

From: "K. Kirsa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 24 May 2020 10:14:22 +0200

Package: x2goserver
Version: 4.1.0.3-5

Ubuntu server 20.04 lts with xubuntu-desktop, installed on actual hardware, not a vm. No physical keyboard or mouse connected.

After a while of inactivitiy (neither keyboard nor mouse are being used for a few minutes), the keyboard and mouse controls are lost. The session itself does not freeze: Windows with constantly updating contents or panel plugins still work. Resizing the x2go client window correctly resizes the remote xfce desktop. It's just like the keyboard and mouse are being disconnected somehow.

It does not matter, if the x2go client (ms windows) stays connected or if I disnonnect and reconnect the client after a few minutes to resume the session: Keyboard and mouse even get lost during my "absence". The problem seems to be independent of the client. A new session suffers the same fate after a few minutes of inactivity.

I disabled the screensaver and session locking in xfce settings. There's nothing I'm aware of happening in xfce that could act as a trigger for the keyborad and mouse loss. I searched the logs but did not manage to find any errors.

Any ideas on where to look or what to try next?

BTW: The same machine works perfectly fine with 18.04 lts, xubuntu-desktop and x2goserver.

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From: "Pavel Duda - [email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 07:47:43 +0000

I have found that the issue seems to be the screen saver. Looks like
screen saver starts up but doesn't show anything on the screen (does
not blank the screen) so user still see the workspace, the keyboard and
mouse is "locked" of course. My  workaround (so far) is to kill xfce-
screensaver completely to resume control over session.

Pavel

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From: "Pavel Duda - [email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2020 07:48:38 +0000

I have found that the issue seems to be the screen saver. Looks like
screen saver starts up but doesn't show anything on the screen (does
not blank the screen or starts the so user still see the workspace, the
keyboard and mouse is "locked" of course. My  workaround so far is to
kill xfce-screensaver completely to resume control over session.

Pavel

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From: Rob Whalley <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2020 15:17:56 +0100

I had the same issue connecting to a Centos 8 server running Xfce.
Clearly the connection was still responding, as screen elements would
resize with the window but mouse and keyboard input would appear
unresponsive.Suspecting the screensaver, I had previously tried
disabling all screensaver / screen blanking / power options in Xfce I
could find, but this did not seem to help.Manually testing the
screensaver from the options worked fine.
I tried Pavel's workaround of killing the xfce4-screensaver process and
that seemed to work (thank you Pavel!).
When checking the list of running processes I did notice that both gsd-
screensaver-proxy and xfce4-screensaver were running (makes sense as
Centos 8 comes with Gnome 3 installed by default, although it does not
work with X2Go, hence why I installed Xfce in the first place!). While
killing the xfce4-screensaver process does work, I believe the solution
below will work permanently, at the cost of seeing no screensaver at
all:
1. Disable the gnome screensaver:gsettings get
org.gnome.desktop.screensaver idle-activation-enabled
2. Kill the gsd-screensaver-proxy process - normally it will
automatically spawn a new process if you kill it, if it does not re-
spawn then the change above has worked.
It is to be noted that even if you have the Xfce screensaver activated,
power options switched on, etc. the screensaver will not appear at all
once the above has been done, at least in the simple testing I did.
I suspect it relates to X2go not supporting Mutter, and gsd-
screensaver-proxy trying to start it up, but it would need a developer
to comment really.
Thanks and kind regards,Rob