Dear Maintainer,
The systemd service file (xscreensaver.service) has two issues that affect
user experience:
1. Missing --no-splash flag
The ExecStart line uses "/usr/bin/xscreensaver" without the --no-splash flag.
This causes a splash dialog to appear every time xscreensaver starts (including
system startup and X server restarts). From this dialog users can access
settings by clicking a button, which is unnecessary for normal operation and
creates annoying popup windows on every startup.
Suggested fix:
ExecStart=/usr/bin/xscreensaver --no-splash
2. Incorrect Restart directive
The service uses "Restart=on-failure" which prevents xscreensaver from
restarting when it terminates with SIGTERM or SIGINT. This causes xscreensaver
to not restart after certain X server restarts until the system is rebooted,
leaving the system without screen locking protection.
According to systemd.service(5), on-failure only restarts on:
- unclean exit code
- unclean signal
- timeout
Clean signals like SIGTERM/SIGINT are not covered. For a screen locker that
should always be running, this is problematic.
Suggested fix:
Restart=always
These issues affect the usability and reliability of xscreensaver as a
screen locker in Debian.
Best regards,
Dmitry Oboukhov