Energy Saver in 10.3 kills screensaver

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suid77

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Normally that would be the desired effect for a screensaver, but ours acts as a means to count users to our computer lab - when a mouse or keyboard event happens it prompts for a valid id# and exits, when the user leaves theres a button to "log out" which restarts the screensaver for the next person. Not fool-proof to say the least, but we're just after a rough number and it works for that.

However, since the energy saver now kills it, there's no chance for the program (screensaver) to validate the user -- the program simply stops. In 10.2 this didn't happen. The monitor would come back on and the screensaver would be waiting.

So, does anyone know of a method that can be overridden to disable this new functionality? or some other work around? The screensaver is just a normal screensaver plugin project in xcode (cocoa).

With 60+ OSX boxes, the energy saver is essential to our electric bill, so disabling it is not an option...

any help would be appriciated.
-jeffrey
 
What do you mean when you say Energy Saver kills the screen saver? Is it disappearing when the computer goes to sleep (turn off sleep)? Is another screen saver coming on that is overriding yours (turn off that screen saver)?
 
hrm. tough to explain I guess. It is an actual screensaver module, not just a fullscreen app. it IS the only active screensaver.

In 10.1 and 10.2 after the screen went to sleep (not the whole machine) when it would wake up the, screensaver would still be there - a normal screensaver would then process the mouse or keyboard event that woke up the monitor and exit. Our screensaver over-rode those events so that it wouldnt exit until a valid ID# was entered.

In 10.3 however, despite all keyboard and mouse events being over-ridden, when the monitor wakes up the screensaver is stopped. All conventional ways of stopping the screensaver are disabled, even force quit -- as far as I know the only way to kill it is to ssh in and 'kill <pid>' but the energy saver manages to do it....

Obviously I'm adding functionality that was never intended for a normal screensaver - but it *was* working just fine....

-jeffrey
 
I'm assuming you're trying to do something similar to what Kinkos does with the rental computers they have, albeit a different main reason.

Look at getting a proper program for that. Having it intergrated with a screensaver seems like a nasty hack, and from what I can tell there's no way to do what you want on Panther without disabling the Energy Saver features. The way it was handled before in 10.1 and 10.2 caould be considered a bug really.

Here's the program Kinkos uses. I know it works on WIN2000 or lower, and on OS 9. Not sure about OS X or Linux. The website seemed to be down though.

DeskTracy is a cross-platform client/server resource manager/tracker that can audit computer use, bill by department or customer, or limit access to a system. DeskTracy is good for tracking users, time, and prints and includes system protection and new administration tools. It accurately reports computer use and charges, and software modules can be customized for company logos, designs for invoices, log-in screens and screen savers.


Contact Information:

KansasBay Systems
720 Market, 9th Fl
San Francisco, CA 94102
800-754-7300 (voice)
415-788-8789 (fax)
www.kansasbay.com
Click to expand...
 
suid77 said:
So, does anyone know of a method that can be overridden to disable this new functionality? or some other work around? The screensaver is just a normal screensaver plugin project in xcode (cocoa).

With 60+ OSX boxes, the energy saver is essential to our electric bill, so disabling it is not an option...

any help would be appriciated.
-jeffrey
Click to expand...

Since this is financially important to your university, I'd think they wouldn't have a problem purchasing an ADC Tech support incident for you. I believe they're $125 each, or if you join the Select program, you get two incidents with your membership.

Open an ADC incident on this and Apple will help you figure out what's different and how to work around it (if possible).

Wade
 
thanks for all the input.

I wouldn't consider it a hack, in fact it definately seems like the 'proper' way of doing it. Overridding keyboard (and mouse) functions isn't the most uncommon thing for a screensaver to do; I've seen more than one screensaver 'game' that works this way. An app that attempts to do screensaver like tasks brings up a whole new can of worms. That's how we had to do it back in OS9 - and that certainly was a hack. But perhaps OSX has opened up some new possibilities.

At any rate, I'll open an ADC case as suggested - I'm guessing its an obscure enough change that few people there are even aware of it.

thanks again,
-jeffrey
 
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