Tuesday, October 8, 2013

CentOS 6 and Standard X ScreenSavers

I use CentOS as a desktop, primarily because I need to be able to work on scripts and ensure they work on the servers before I throw the things over to the servers for production runs.  However, the default number (and style) of screensavers for Gnome are pitiful.  Popart, the insecure "photos", and some weird "gnome feet" screen saver.  Because of this, I needed to have the original X screen savers.

I'm using CentOS 6.4, and due to previous histories, I knew I needed packages named with the following :
    gnome-screensaver (already installed)
    xscreensaver-base
    xscreensaver-extras
    xscreensaver-extras-gss
    xscreensaver-gl-base
    xscreensaver-gl-extras
    xscreensaver-gl-extras-gss
    
I loaded up http://rpm.pbone.net/ (way better than http://rpmfind.net/), and tracked down RedHat EL6 RPM URL's.  Then threw them into the following command :
    yum install ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-base-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-gl-extras-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-gl-base-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-gl-extras-gss-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-extras-gss-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-extras-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm
    
This gave me a requirement for a package that was missing with the following error :
    Error: Package: 1:xscreensaver-base-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64 (/xscreensaver-base-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64)
               Requires: xorg-x11-resutils
     You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
     You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
    

I found the missing package that was required (news to me), and fired off the command :

    yum install ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-base-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-gl-extras-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-gl-base-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-gl-extras-gss-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-extras-gss-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xscreensaver-extras-5.11-7.el6.respin1.x86_64.rpm \
    ftp://ftp.muug.mb.ca/mirror/fedora/epel/6/x86_64/xorg-x11-resutils-7.1-10.el6.x86_64.rpm
    

Success!  Note that you will have TWO screen saver options.  If you use gnome-screen saver and hot keys to lock your workstation, you should continue to use that one (your new screensavers will show up in it's configuration pane).  If you open the first one and it says it needs to stop the gnome screen saver, cancel that, close that preferences pane, and open the other one.

3 comments:

  1. Looks like it worked just fine with this, since I use a named-pipe reader that dumps in a passive check into nagios for right now :

    Oct 24 13:07:02 localhost nagios: SERVICE ALERT: mycam;motion;CRITICAL;HARD;1;Motion detected, saved under mycam/20131024/13
    Oct 24 13:07:02 localhost nagios: PASSIVE SERVICE CHECK: mycam;motion;0;Motion cleared, finished writing to mycam/20131024/13
    Oct 24 13:07:02 localhost nagios: SERVICE ALERT: mycam;motion;OK;HARD;1;Motion cleared, finished writing to mycam/20131024/13
    Oct 24 13:07:02 localhost nagios: PASSIVE SERVICE CHECK: mycam;motion;2;Motion detected, saved under mycam/20131024/13/130719.mp4
    Oct 24 13:07:02 localhost nagios: SERVICE ALERT: mycam;motion;CRITICAL;HARD;1;Motion detected, saved under mycam/20131024/13/130719.mp4
    Oct 24 13:08:02 localhost nagios: EXTERNAL COMMAND: PROCESS_SERVICE_CHECK_RESULT;mycam;motion;0;Motion cleared, finished writing to mycam/20131024/13/130719.mp4
    Oct 24 13:08:12 localhost nagios: PASSIVE SERVICE CHECK: mycam;motion;0;Motion cleared, finished writing to mycam/20131024/13/130719.mp4
    Oct 24 13:08:12 localhost nagios: SERVICE ALERT: mycam;motion;OK;HARD;1;Motion cleared, finished writing to mycam/20131024/13/130719.mp4

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  2. Brilliant, thanks so much man. I researched this for a long time and could not figure it out. Genius :)

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  3. Note - I've moved to CentOS 7, and there is no xscreensaver in epel, base, or rpmforge repositories. So, I had to compile from source. Instructions can be found at http://www.silverhawk.net/2014/09/centos-7-xscreensaver.html .

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