How to suspend from command line such that screen is locked?

Question

I'm using Xubuntu 12.04. In the Power Manager, I have checked Extended -> Lock screen when going for suspend/hibernate. If I choose to suspend from the main menu / Panel 1, the screen is locked. However, if I use dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.UPower" /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend (see How can I suspend/hibernate from command line?; I use this command via a keyboard shortcut), the screen is not locked. How can I (1) suspend the system (2) have the screen locked at the same time (3) do not require root rights to do so [since I would like the command to be assigned to a keyboard shortcut].

Answer 1

You can do that by using the following:

gnome-screensaver-command --lock && dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.UPower" /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend

In a keyboard shortcut you need to put sh -c "<command>" replacing <command> with the command above, like:

sh -c "gnome-screensaver-command --lock && dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend"

If the above command does not work, you can also try using a shell script file (for example suspend_lockscreen.sh). First create the file call the following commands in a console:

cd ~
echo "gnome-screensaver-command --lock" >> suspend_lockscreen.sh
echo "dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend" >> suspend_lockscreen.sh
chmod +x suspend_lockscreen.sh

That will create a file named suspend_lockscreen.sh in the user home folder. Then, in the shortcut just call: ./suspend_lockscreen.sh.

Note: gnome-screensaver-command can be replaced by xscreensaver-command, as pointed out in one comment.