Where is xfce4-screensaver started

[Jarno Suni]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2022 at 8:24 PM Kai-Martin Knaak
<knaak at iqo.uni-hannover.de> wrote:

> IMHO, xfwm starts xflock4, which is a fairly simple shell script that
> looks for a few popular screensavers. The first one found gets started.

I happen to know how xflock4 works, I am co-author of it and I have
been developing it lately.
This is my latest merge request:
https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/-/merge_requests/24

> There are a few options to start user configured screensavers:
>
> 1) Define a global shell variable $LOCK_CMD to contain the desired
> screensaver command.

No, but, you may define Xfconf setting /general/LockCommand in channel
xfce4-session. (You may use e.g. Settings Editor to do that.)

> 2) Edit the script /usr/bin/xflock4

Not recommended, as that may be overwritten by updates.

> 3) Put an alternative script in /usr/local/bin/xflock4
> If the $PATH variable is defined decently, this script will take
> precedence over the one in /usr/bin/ .
>
> Hope, that helps,

Yes, superuser can do that.

However currently those settings are not respected when suspending;
xflock4 script might not be called at all and locking could be done
based on different code:
https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/-/issues/108
https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/-/issues/127
https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/-/issues/51

Anyway, in my question I am not asking where Xfce4 Screensaver lock is
initiated, but where the daemon of Xfce4 Screensaver (i.e.
xfce4-screensaver) is started. IIRC it will be started when suspending
if it was not running before that, but it seems to be started during
session start, too.