Powerdevil sleep timer behavior

[DrPanic]

Hello people,

I recently switched from Ubuntu vanilla to Kubuntu. After spending some time tweaking the OS to match the functionalities I had on Ubuntu, I've hit a wall with Powerdevil.

When setting the power options to turn off the screen and sleep after 10 minutes, the system doesn't immediately go to sleep after a movie ends in VLC. Instead, you have to wait the full 10 minutes after the sleep triggers, which wasn't the case with Ubuntu.

I've visited almost every website to get info on this, tried writing a bash script using xprintidle. Unfortunately, I discovered that the xprintidle timer resets when VLC stops, rendering it useless.

Is there anything that I'm missing? Or it's just impossible to achieve this given the way Powerdevil works?

[User09]

Hello DrPanic
I'm new in Kubuntu too, but you don't said in your message if you use the option "Quit at the end of the playlist" in the menu "Media".
I don't think the software behaves in the same way if this function is activated or not.

-Sincerely, User09

[DrPanic]

After a few tests more, I discovered that xprintidle resets every time an inhibitor entry is added/removed from "Energy management" on "Status and Notifications". I don't know if this is related with the idle timer resetting and could be the root cause.

In the mean time I made another script using xinput instead which I think works as Intended I'll leave it here just in case someone wants it.

#!/bin/bash

# Function to get the list of device IDs for the mouse and keyboard
get_device_ids() {
    xinput --list | grep -E 'slave\s+pointer|slave\s+keyboard' | awk -F'id=' '{print $2}' | awk '{print $1}'
}

# Function to reset the timer
reset_timer() {
    idle_time=0
    echo $idle_time > /tmp/idle_timer
}

# Function to check VLC playing status
is_vlc_playing() {
    vlc_status=$(dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc \
        /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get \
        string:"org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player" string:"PlaybackStatus" 2>&1)

    if [[ $vlc_status == *"Playing"* ]]; then
        echo "true"
    elif [[ $vlc_status == *"DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown"* ]]; then
        echo "false"
    else
        echo "false"
    fi
}

# Function to check Firefox playing status
is_firefox_playing() {
    firefox_status=$(dbus-send --print-reply --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.plasma-browser-integration \
        /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties.Get \
        string:"org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player" string:"PlaybackStatus" 2>&1)

    if [[ $firefox_status == *"Playing"* ]]; then
        echo "true"
    elif [[ $firefox_status == *"DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown"* ]]; then
        echo "false"
    else
        echo "false"
    fi
}

# Function to suspend the system
suspend_system() {
    pkill -f vlc
    pkill -f firefox
    pkill -f xinput
    systemctl suspend
    pkill -f test.sh
}

# Initialize the idle timer file
echo 0 > /tmp/idle_timer

# Get the list of device IDs
device_ids=$(get_device_ids)

# Monitor events from all devices in the background
for id in $device_ids; do
    xinput --test $id | while read line; do
        reset_timer
    done &
done

# Increase the timer in milliseconds
while true; do
    current_time=$(cat /tmp/idle_timer)
    new_time=$((current_time + 1000))
    echo $new_time > /tmp/idle_timer
    echo "Idle time: ${new_time} ms"

    vlc_playing=$(is_vlc_playing)
    firefox_playing=$(is_firefox_playing)
    echo "VLC Playing: $vlc_playing, Firefox Playing: $firefox_playing"

    if [ "$new_time" -ge 600000 ]; then
        vlc_playing=$(is_vlc_playing)
        firefox_playing=$(is_firefox_playing)
        if [ "$vlc_playing" = "false" ] && [ "$firefox_playing" = "false" ]; then
            echo "System will suspend now."
            suspend_system
        fi
    fi

    sleep 1
done

​