I have Kubuntu 8.10, KDE4.1 installed. My goal is to implement control over the screen saver outside of the GUIs and I have thus far found the ~/.kde/share/config/kdesktoprc file and can edit the screen saver section. The khelpcenter documentation discusses this under ScreenSaver. That documentation says that certain changes require restarting KControl center. Since my changes don't seem to take effect automatically, I believe a restart is in order. However, I think KControl Center went out with KDE 3.*. Is there a routine way to restart whatever reads the settings in the kdesktoprc file?

May I ask, in addition, for suggestions as to where I might find documentation to answer questions such as my question above. I have tried numerous options and am led down a dead end. It seems that khelpcenter documentation is probably not updated to 4.1. Perhaps I ought to vow to update it with the answer that I hopefully receive to my question above.

Since you are editing configuration files directly, in stead of via a GUI, i think you need to start a trigger that tells KDE the configuration file is changed and should be reread. My guess is rebuilding ksyscoca would do that.

KDesktop was the KDE3 program that drew the desktop, replaced by Plasma in KDE4. Plasma does not control the screensaver, and the kdesktoprc file is completely ignored in KDE4. You would want to edit kscreensaverrc to control the screensaver in KDE4.

JontheEchinda wrote:You would want to edit kscreensaverrc to control the screensaver in KDE4.

Thanks for the replies. I found the above file and edited it, but I need to know how to get that file to be re-read.

Code: Select all

kbuildsycoca4

I think that ought to do the trick

kbuildsycoca4 doesn't do the trick. When I saw the message "kbuildsycoca4(3098) kdemain: Reusing existing ksycoca" come from the command without any arguments, I also tried --noincremental and the end result was unchanged, (but it did display lots of messages about files with lines unterminated by semicolons).

Try killing any *.kss processes with System Monitor, then waiting for the time your screensaver would normally show. KDE should then start the appropriate one, which will read in the updated settings as it starts. if you don't kill it KDE just messages the old process, with the old configuration to show.

I found no .kss processes running. I tried killing and restarting plasma also to no avail.

Maybe you can see how [url=http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Screen+Saver+Switch?content=93752]this Plasmoid [/url]does it.

Generally, I think [url=http://techbase.kde.org]Techbase[/url] is good place to search for such information. Needless to say, it's far from complete - I'm sure contributions are appreciated.

Thanks for the information Hans. Apparently all screen saver controls should be possible through org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver

The most interesting control looks to be SetActive for starting the screen saver and GetActive for checking if the screen saver is active. "configure" also looks interesting. Maybe it reads the configuration in again.

The process that manages these is called KRunner. It also provides the Switch User and Shutdown dialogs, And the Run Interface.

Hans wrote:Maybe you can see how this Plasmoiddoes it.

It must just be me...but this plasmoid does nothing when I install it. I remains dimmed all the time.