Automatically suspend 18.04.1 at idle login screen

Question

This PC is often left in a logged out state at the login screen. I have set power options to automatically suspend on idle, and these do work if a user is logged in.

They do not work if the computer is left at the login screen though. Using gdm3 as the login.

How can I enable this?

Answer 1

This thread might contain your solution:

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2425058&p=13881017#post13881017

First, I needed to use su to switch to user "gdm":

sudo su - gdm -s /bin/bash

(If running in a non-GUI context, such as ssh, I also needed to run : export $(dbus-launch) )

Then I was able to set some gnome settings as the the user "gdm"

GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type suspend

GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout 120

This sets the GDM3 screen to suspend after 2 minutes idle. Verify the settings with "get" commands:

GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings get org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-type

GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf gsettings get org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.power sleep-inactive-ac-timeout

These values can also be modified with GUI dconf-editor. Before the su command, you need to run (as your regular user)

xhost +

and then after the change to gdm user via su, you can run:

dconf-editor

Be careful, though, with using this app.