Feature #15542

Disable the automatic locking of the screen

Added by Anonymous 2018-04-17 19:39:07 . Updated 2019-01-05 13:24:00 .

Status:
Rejected
Priority:
Normal
Assignee:
Category:
Target version:
Start date:
2018-04-28
Due date:
% Done:

100%

Feature Branch:
Type of work:
Discuss
Blueprint:

Starter:
Affected tool:
Deliverable for:

Description

The only away I’m aware to disable automatic screen locking is changing gsettings org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled false from the terminal

an option or gui setting for those who don’t need it would be appreciated

Subtasks

Feature #15556: Document how to disable the automatic locking of the screen Resolved

0

History

#1 Updated by goupille 2018-04-18 18:57:13

  • Status changed from New to Rejected
  • Type of work changed from Discuss to Research

The screenlocker is activated only on demand or when a user set up an administrator password. I don’t think a lot of users setting up an administrator password would like to disable the screenlocker, given the security concerns that the existence of the administrator password brings.

#2 Updated by sajolida 2018-04-27 14:38:04

  • Status changed from Rejected to New
  • Assignee set to segfault
  • QA Check set to Info Needed
  • Type of work changed from Research to Discuss

On my Tails, the screen locker is activated automatically after a few minutes if I leave my machine idle.

segfault: Is this intentional?

#3 Updated by segfault 2018-04-27 14:41:49

  • Assignee changed from segfault to sajolida

sajolida wrote:
> On my Tails, the screen locker is activated automatically after a few minutes if I leave my machine idle.
>
> segfault: Is this intentional?

That is when you have a password already set (either in the greeter or via the tails-screen-locker), right?
Then I guess this is the default GNOME behavior to lock the screen after a few idle minutes.

#4 Updated by sajolida 2018-04-28 10:36:15

  • Subject changed from Option to disable automatic screenlocker to Disable the automatic locking of the screen
  • Status changed from New to Confirmed
  • Assignee deleted (sajolida)
  • Priority changed from Normal to Low

> That is when you have a password already set (either in the greeter or via the tails-screen-locker), right?

Yes!

> Then I guess this is the default GNOME behavior to lock the screen after a few idle minutes.

I guess so.

Now we should ask ourselves whether, it’s worth:

  • Diverging from the GNOME default in the case of Tails. I would say that Tails not being your everyday operating system, it might make sense to disable the automatic screen locking.
  • Adding an option to allow people to choose whether locking the screen in automatic or not. At first sight, I wouldn’t know where to put such an option… Tails Greeter is clearly over kill and the screen locker itself has no interface if you already set an administration password. So I think we shouldn’t do that.

But I also think that the current behavior is no big deal and that we can take our time to gather more info and discuss this more. So I’m marking this as low-priority and Discuss.

Help desk: Please add more info to this ticket if you get more complains or queries about the screen locker.

Technical writers: What about documenting gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.screensaver lock-enabled false?

#5 Updated by segfault 2018-04-30 13:52:06

sajolida wrote:
> Now we should ask ourselves whether, it’s worth:
>
> * Diverging from the GNOME default in the case of Tails. I would say that Tails not being your everyday operating system, it might make sense to disable the automatic screen locking.

I don’t see why Tails users would be less likely to benefit from a screen locker than regular GNOME users. Could you elaborate on that?

> * Adding an option to allow people to choose whether locking the screen in automatic or not. At first sight, I wouldn’t know where to put such an option… Tails Greeter is clearly over kill and the screen locker itself has no interface if you already set an administration password. So I think we shouldn’t do that.

The GNOME control center already has such an option, it can be found under Privacy -> Screen Lock -> Automatic Screen Lock. Unfortunately, that dialog is insensitive in Tails 3.6, because we set the org.gnome.desktop.lockdown.disable-lock-screen option to True, in order to hide the default lock screen button from the system status menu (and show our own button instead, which opens tails-screen-locker).

To fix this, we could set the org.gnome.desktop.lockdown.disable-lock-screen option to False if a password was set in the greeter or via tails-screen-locker, and then hide our screen locker button from the menu (which requires us to split the Status-menu-helper extension).

#6 Updated by segfault 2018-04-30 14:06:43

segfault wrote:
> The GNOME control center already has such an option, it can be found under Privacy -> Screen Lock -> Automatic Screen Lock. Unfortunately, that dialog is insensitive in Tails 3.6, because we set the org.gnome.desktop.lockdown.disable-lock-screen option to True, in order to hide the default lock screen button from the system status menu (and show our own button instead, which opens tails-screen-locker).

I thought we set this option in context of Feature #5684, which would make this a regression of 3.6, but it turns out it’s not: This option has been set to False at least since 2013 (see commit 2aab6fd3b73e315614e38b3a9a39b7c86818b25a), so the screen lock settings dialog has always been insensitive in Tails (and the screen was automatically locked for a long time if you set an admin password in the greeter). We could (and IMO should) still fix this the way I proposed in the previous comment.

#7 Updated by sajolida 2018-05-04 15:48:09

  • Status changed from Confirmed to Rejected
  • QA Check deleted (Info Needed)

>> * Diverging from the GNOME default in the case of Tails. I would say that Tails not being your everyday operating system, it might make sense to disable the automatic screen locking.
>
> I don’t see why Tails users would be less likely to benefit from a screen locker than regular GNOME users. Could you elaborate on that?
Let’s see…

  • In Tails the password is advertised as an “Administration password”.
    It might be surprising to have this same password reused to lock the
    screen automatically.
  • We could argue that Tails is an OS that you start, use, and shutdown.
    While you regular operating is more meant to remain idle while you
    walk away, are interrupted, stay on for days, etc.

But yeah, I couldn’t find a very good reason to diverge from the default. So let’s stick to automatic locking of the screen. I personally appreciate that behavior :)

So let’s reject this ticket and fall back on documenting how to disable it → Bug #15569.