Xfce Forum

Az777

Member

Registered: 2025-06-05

Posts: 1

[SOLVED] light-locker error, screen (light-locker) does not lock

I had broken my XFCE4/Lightdm but I managed to fix it after many attempts but the light-locker never worked again, I have tried reinstalling it and several other attempts recommended by LLMs but the following error continues:

$ light-locker-command -l
** Message: 08:48:40.984: Received error message from the locker: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.Spawn.ChildSignaled: Process org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver received signal 5

[SOLVED]

After a lot of head-scratching, I upgraded my Debian to Debian 13 Trixie, and the problem persisted. This led me to believe the problem was in the configuration files of the /home directory/partition. So, I deleted almost all the configuration files (which made me lose my beautiful GUI settings, but that's okay). Then, I reinstalled Debian, and the problem was resolved. However, shortly after configuring it to start in text mode with the command:

$sudo systemctl set-default multi-user.target

The problem returned. I switched back to graphical mode:

$sydi systemctl set-default graphical.target

And the problem disappeared...
This led me to research and discover that Debian separates text mode from graphical mode by default, for security, and stability, and that Light-Locker relies on a chain of processes that only start in graphical mode. This wasn't the case when I logged in in text mode and ran $startx. For the chain of processes and logs to work correctly, it's important to understand that You need to start graphical mode after logging in with the command:

$sudo systemctl start lightdm

Simple!

Last edited by Az777 (2025-09-22 02:07:00)