[SOLVED ??] xscreensaver issue Bullseye

[ticojohn]

I am using Bullseye (amd64), XFCE, lightdm on an Intel NUC 5i5ryh. Previously had Jessie and Buster installed.
The issue I had was while watching a movie on Kodi 19 the screensaver (xscreensaver-demo) activated. Normally I have the screensaver disabled but forgot this time. When it activated I immediately moved the mouse and Kodi was again displayed. However the keyboard was no longer active (no response) and the control area of Kodi was no longer visible. I was not able to use control alt right arrow to bring up a different workspace so I could not kill the Kodi process. Also, the power button on the NUC did not respond to turn of the computer and I was forced to unplug power. Fortunately there were no ill effects from doing that.

I never experienced anything similar when running Jessie or Buster so I am assuming that there is some issue either with xscreensaver or Kodi 19 (both were installed from the Debian repos). I have searched the log file using journalctl -p 3 and found nothing that I could identify as relating to this issue.

The screensaver is normally disabled when I use the NUC so this shouldn't be an issue in the future, but for the sake of finding out what might have gone wrong, so as to be able to communicate the issue to those who might have an interest in such things, I am looking for some guidance as to what I might search for in the log files.

Thanks for your input and guidance.

[peter_irich]

Try purge xscreensaver and use xfce4-screensaver.

Peter.

[ticojohn]

Try purge xscreensaver and use xfce4-screensaver.

Peter.

Thanks for the comment but I have a couple of issues with your suggestion.
1. I don't see xfce4-screensaver in the Bullseye repo. I generally only install things that are in the repos. Otherwise one runs the chance of generating more problems.
2. I'm really looking for suggestions on how to find out what went wrong, not how to install something else that might also have the same issue.

[ticojohn]

This is interesting. The problem does NOT occur on my desktop machine. One difference between the desktop computer and the NUC is that I am using a USB wireless keyboard on the NUC versus wired USB keyboard on the desktop. I am wondering if the screensaver is somehow disabling the wireless keyboard adapter. Will do some experimenting to find out and will report back.

[ticojohn]

I am truly disturbed. I have tried to replicate the problem and cannot. I hate it when thing appear to fix themselves. I will mark this as [SOLVED ?]

I am going to ASSUME that one of the upgrades I did, between the event and today, somehow fixed an issue. I have to assume that is what happened otherwise there is something hiding somewhere that is going to get me again. LOL!

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I am going to ASSUME that one of the upgrades I did, between the event and today, somehow fixed an issue.

Bugs in bullseye are being processed now we are in the freeze so that doesn't sound unlikely. If this happens again use the systemd journal to investigate, it really is excellent for troubleshooting because all of the logs are collated to a single location and the filtering tools are first rate.

But whatever you do don't report a bug against Debian's xscreensaver package directly with jwz (the upstream developer). Unless you want to wind him up ofc

[ticojohn]

As always, thanks for your feedback HOAS. I did look at journalctl using several search options, ie journalctl -p 3 and others, but didn't see anything that I could identify as being related to the issue. I looked for instances of xscreensaver and Kodi but nothing seemed to be relevant. Of course it may be that I just didn't know what I was looking for.

And since I couldn't identify a cause and give some credible information I wasn't planning to file a bug report. But yeah, it was probably an update that took care of the issue, and since it has not recurred since the first instance that is probably a safe assumption.