KDE screen lock log?

Question

When the screen is locked in KDE (my specific version is Kubuntu but hopefully this is something that is generic Linux), is the event logged? If so where would I look to find it?

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Use D-Bus to get lockscreen's actived/deactived signals. The name of the screen saver service will vary from system to system. In general, KDE uses org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver and Gnome uses org.gnome.ScreenSaver. This cannot be relied upon though, for example, Mint uses org.cinnamon.ScreenSaver.

Helpful Commands

These assume that your screen saver is org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver and your DBus service is org.freedesktop.DBus. You may need to adjust this for other systems. Use the following information to find out what your system uses:

To get a list of the dbus services available in your current session, use:
```
dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus --type=method_call --print-reply /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames
```
Add |grep screensaver to the end if you just want the screen saver services available.
To get a list of the commands supported by your screen saver service, use:
```
qdbus org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver /ScreenSaver
```

To invoke a command, use:

dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver --type=method_call --print-reply --reply-timeout=20000 /org/freedesktop/ScreenSaver org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.SetActive boolean:true

Where SetActive was listed in the list of supported commands and takes a boolean value.

To monitor a service:

dbus-monitor --session "type='signal',interface='org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver'"

Automation

Now that you understand how your system works, you can use a python script to log this activity into a file:

#!/usr/bin/env python
from datetime import datetime
import os
import pwd
import subprocess
import time

LOG_FILE = os.path.expanduser('~/hours_log.csv')


cmd = subprocess.Popen(["dbus-monitor \"type='signal',interface="
                        "'org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver'\""], shell=True,
                       stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

running = 0
while 1:
    time.sleep(0.1)
    if running:
        output = cmd.stdout.readline()
        status = 'unlocked' if 'true' in output else 'locked'
        new_line = "{time} {user} {status} the screen\n".format(
            time=datetime.now().ctime(),
            user=pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid())[0],
            status=status
        )
        with open(LOG_FILE, 'a') as f:
            f.write(new_line)

        running = 0
    line = cmd.stdout.readline()
    if "ActiveChange" in line and 'org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver' in line:
        running = 1

[ Source: logging-lock-screen-events ]

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 08 '15 at 05:20

It isnt logged anywhere for you, but like @krowe said, you can hook into it.
I developed this bash script which works out your setup's specifics for you, if you have this running in the background and pipe it to a log file you will have your log.

#!/bin/bash

#prints out, among other things;
#      string "org.kde.screensaver"
#transform it to 'org.kde.screensaver'
service=$(\
    dbus-send \
        --session \
        --dest=org.freedesktop.DBus \
        --type=method_call \
        --print-reply \
        /org/freedesktop/DBus org.freedesktop.DBus.ListNames \
    | grep -o '[^"]*.screensaver'
)

#prints out, among other things;
#method bool org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.SetActive(bool e)
#transform it to 'org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver'
interface=$(
    qdbus \
        $service /ScreenSaver \
    | grep -oP '[^ ]*(?=.SetActive)'
)

path='/ScreenSaver'

#monitor it with a while loop
dbus-monitor "type='signal',interface='$interface',member='ActiveChanged',path='$path'" \
| while read -r line; do
    #ignore the metadata and pull the 'boolean <true/false>' line
    read line

    #check if it is set to true
    if echo $line | grep -q 'true'; then
        echo "Locked at $(date)"
    else
        echo "Unlocked at $(date)"
    fi
done

This ran fine on my Fedora with KDE, but I guess it should work on other things like Debian with gnome et cetera.
_{You may have issues if your grep doesn't support -P (in which case you can just use sed).}

KDE screen lock log?

2 Answers2