Blank screen and muted audio in XFCE.
The first issue, I noticed, when switching from GNOME to XFCE, was, how the HDMI output was cut-off after a few minutes in which there has been no user input, such as attending a video conference. Pressing a key would turn-on the screen, but the audio would never return again. The audio could not even be re-enabled with Pulse Audio controls.
Disabling power management from XFCE interface.
Using the settings dialog, I disabled any kind of power management. This includes any screen blank and suspend option. Despite of this, the video and audio is getting cut-off. I could not find any kind of screensaver, that should be causing this.
# ps aux | grep power
/usr/local/libexec/upowerd
xfce4-power-manager
# ps aux | grep saver
# ps aux | grep screen
Removing power manager from XFCE?
I assume, that this is related to power management, because a screen saver would probably not be so aggressive. Knowing, that I will not need power management, a simple approuch would be to remove it from the installation. However, XFCE went for a forced depedency on this one. What a piece of shit programming from XFCE. Power management should be optional – and not a plague!
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Deinstallation has been requested for the following 2 packages (of 0 packages in the universe):
Installed packages to be REMOVED:
xfce: 4.20
xfce4-power-manager: 4.20.0
Number of packages to be removed: 2
The operation will free 2 MiB.
Proceed with deinstalling packages? [y/N]: N
How does power managment in XFCE work?
A search for occurances indicates, that it could be started automatically as an unwanted service. It could even be started, if it was running in an earlier user session.
# find / -type f -name '*xfce4-power*'
/home/lightman/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-power-manager.xml
/usr/local/share/metainfo/xfce4-power-manager.appdata.xml
/usr/local/share/man/man1/xfce4-power-manager-settings.1.gz
/usr/local/share/man/man1/xfce4-power-manager.1.gz
/usr/local/share/applications/xfce4-power-manager-settings.desktop
/usr/local/etc/xdg/autostart/xfce4-power-manager.desktop
/usr/local/bin/xfce4-power-manager-settings
/usr/local/bin/xfce4-power-manager
Stopping power manager in XFCE.
To my surprice, XFCE did actually write a built-in help, which kindly lists a quit option. It also seemed to actually quit the unwanted service. However, this is probably just a shortlived pleasure. It might restart. Especially after a new session or a reboot.
$ xfce4-power-manager --help
Usage:
xfce4-power-manager [OPTION?]
Help Options:
-h, --help Show help options
--help-all Show all help options
--help-sm-client Show session management options
Application Options:
--daemon Daemonize
--debug Enable debugging
--dump Dump all information
--restart Restart the running instance of Xfce power manager
-c, --customize Show the configuration dialog
-q, --quit Quit any running xfce power manager
-V, --version Version information
$ xfce4-power-manager -q
Killing the XFCE power manager from cron as a work-around.
As it remains unclear, how the unwanted service is started, a work-around is to repeat killing it from cron, until I learn, how this service can be permanently disabled. This cron job kills it every minute, if running. I have tested this be working.
# pkg info -r xfce4-power-manager
xfce4-power-manager-4.20.0:
xfce-4.20
# pkg info -r upower
upower-1.90.7:
xfce4-settings-4.20.1
xfce4-power-manager-4.20.0
gnome-power-manager-3.32.0_3
gnome-control-center-43.2_4
mutter-42.4_3
gnome-settings-daemon-42.2_8
# nano /etc/crontab
* * * * * root pkill xfce4-power-manager
* * * * * root pkill upowerd
# service cron restart
Tips appreciated!
I appreciate any tips about this issue.