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I've installed Mate on top of Unity in Ubuntu 16.04. In my process list, gnome-screensaver appears persistently:

UID        PID  PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
username  8434     1  0 09:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver --no-daemon

I can kill it successfully, but it will always reappear after the next time the lockscreen is activated (when I close and reopen the laptop).

Its PPID is always 1, which is systemd. grep shows no files within the /etc/systemd/ directory that contain "gnome" or "screensaver". I can't figure out why it keeps restarting. How do I stop it?

Edit:

dpkg -L gnome-screensaver | grep service

shows the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.gnome.ScreenSaver.service with contents

[D-BUS Service]
Name=org.gnome.ScreenSaver
Exec=/usr/bin/gnome-screensaver --no-daemon

This looks like how the process is being restarted. I guess that somewhere is a file or setting that tells systemd "in response to X signal from dbus, start this service," with X being something related to closing and reopening the laptop. Is this correct, and is there a way to identify that file or setting?

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Welcome to Ask Ubuntu.

If you don't want gnome-screensaver, you can try to just uninstall it:

sudo apt remove gnome-screensaver

You can also try masking the service, which is telling systemd to act like the service doesn't exist:

sudo systemctl mask org.gnome.ScreenSaver.service

/etc/systemd is used for files that you manage. systemd related files installed by the systemd are often not stored there.

You can find where the systemd service file for a package is installed like this:

 dpkg -L gnome-screensaver | grep service
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  • I don't want to uninstall it, but I didn't know about masking. That might work if I can't find the real problem. The last part is another great tip I didn't know, thanks! Based on it, I've edited my question with info that the process restart seems related to dbus. Is there a way to narrow it down more?
    – Darien Marks
    Nov 2, 2017 at 2:14
  • @DarienMarks the real problem? What is the real problem here? What do you intend to achieve by killing gnome-screensaver?
    – muru
    Nov 2, 2017 at 2:23
  • @muru By killing gnome-screensaver, I intended to determine that gnome-screensaver is the source of the lock screen that shouldn't appear when I open my laptop. Turns out it was. Now I want to determine what process makes it keep restarting in order to learn enough about systemd and dbus to solve a whole host of related problems that exist due to interference between Unity and my desktop environments. The XY problem you've linked to concerns users who become fixated on their attempted solution. I have no attempted solution, so I'm not sure how it applies to me.
    – Darien Marks
    Nov 2, 2017 at 13:32
  • @DarienMarks you wanted to determine what's showing the lock screen that shouldn't be appearing (=X). You determine some method to determine that and ask about that (=Y), and when somebody answers that, say that something else is the real problem. Classic XY to me.
    – muru
    Nov 2, 2017 at 13:37
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    I've never asked this on any forum I've been a part of, but... can I block users here?
    – Darien Marks
    Nov 2, 2017 at 23:26

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