joystickwake
A joystick-aware screen waker
| Manual section: | 1 |
|---|---|
| Date: | 2020-07-09 |
Synopsis
joystickwake -h|--help
joystickwake [--command cmd] [--interval seconds] [--loglevel level]
Description
Linux gamers often find themselves unexpectedly staring at a blank screen, because their display server fails to recognize game controllers as input devices, allowing the screen blanker to activate during gameplay. This program works around the problem by (temporarily) disabling screen blankers while joystick activity is detected.
Operation
Once installed, joystickwake launches automatically when a user logs in to any modern linux desktop environment. It can also be run manually, either from a command prompt or from a user-created menu entry, so formal installation is not required.
While running, it monitors udev to find joystick devices (including any that are plugged in later) and reacts to activity from any of them.
The screen is kept awake by periodically running simple commands provided by whatever screen blanker is in use. This approach keeps joystickwake compatible with just about every screensaver and power management system there is.
The first time joystick activity is detected, all known wake commands will be run. Those that fail will be skipped thereafter. A minimum time between wakes is always observed. Joystickwake thereby learns the needs of the host system, avoids causing lag with unnecessary work, and minimizes log clutter. In practice, it is very lightweight.
If all of the wake commands fail, it usually means that the screen blanker requires a custom command that has not yet been configured, so joystickwake will quit.
If the python3 Xlib package is installed, joystickwake will quit when the desktop session ends. Otherwise, it will quit when its parent process exits. (This avoids leaving old instances running after the user logs out.)
Log messages are written to standard error, which is normally captured by the
desktop environment in a file such as $HOME/.xsession-errors. At the
default log level, very few messages will be produced, if any.
Configuration and Options
In many desktop environments, no configuration is needed. Joystickwake comes pre-configured with commands that will defer DPMS power-off and common screensavers. Those commands are:
xset dpms force on s reset xscreensaver-command -deactivate gnome-screensaver-command --deactivate mate-screensaver-command --poke xfce4-screensaver-command --poke
If needed, an additional wake command can be configured in either of the following files:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/joystickwake/joystickwake.conf $HOME/.config/joystickwake/joystickwake.conf
This example illustrates the configuration file format and settings:
command = xdg-screensaver reset # This might work on some desktops interval = 30 # Number of seconds between wakes loglevel = warning # Also: debug, info, error, critical
Command line options --command, --interval, and --loglevel are
available, and will override their corresponding config file settings.
Custom Wake Commands
If none of the built-in commands work with a particular desktop environment,
finding one that does can require some experimentation. For example, to
determine whether test command will wake the screen, try it with
joystickwake running in a terminal window, using a short wake interval and a
verbose log level, like so:
joystickwake --loglevel debug --interval 2 --command "test command"
If joystickwake logs a "custom waker failed" message, it means the custom command either produced an error or could not be executed. If it logs a "custom waker succeeded" message, and pressing a joystick button wakes the screen, then the command works. It can then be saved in the configuration file for future login sessions. (Of course, This experiment is best done with the screen blanker set for a very short timeout, so the screen will blank while being observed, and the command being tested will have a chance to wake it.)
When run in a terminal window, Control+C will tell joystickwake to quit.
See Also
- Project page: https://github.com/foresto/joystickwake
- Ubuntu package: https://launchpad.net/~foresto/+archive/ubuntu/toys
- xdg-screensaver (from xdg-utils, aka Portland) attempts to be a unified screensaver control interface: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/xdg-utils/
- Caffeine inhibits the screensaver when it finds a fullscreen window: https://code.launchpad.net/caffeine
- Faux GNOME Screensaver is a GNOME compatibility layer for XScreenSaver: https://github.com/jefferyto/faux-gnome-screensaver