Can't lockdown user account from shortcut or panel menu

Support & Help Requests
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So I’m having a slightly odd issue I’d like to try to resolve, if anybody can help me figure it out? I can’t seem to to choose “lockdown” from the advanced mate menu, and neither does the shortcut combo I setup for that option work (I customized it to “ctrl+SuperL+L”. It appears to completely ignore any attempt to go to the password lock down screen. However, I seem to be able to still log out, shut down, etc normally. This started happening sometime after I did a new reinstall of the OS after I put a new SSD in my system, but the iso was good from what I recall. I’m actually uncertain if it started doing this after the install, or to be fair, after I updated to mate 1.14 for my system according to this: https://ubuntu-mate.org/blog/mate-desktop-114-for-xenial-xerus/

If it also helps to have this info, I kept my home partition on my mechanical HDD from the previous install, but I figured since I was using the exact same distro and such, it wouldn’t or shouldn’t have any ill-effect. I would greatly appreciate any help with this, and if any additional information is needed, let me know!

EDIT: It solved itself?! After doing nothing and attempting to randomly try though out the day, both through my shortcut key combination, and the panel menu… Somehow it seems to have resolved itself? I don’t understand how. I came back to my computer sitting at a mate screen saver after being away from it for a while, then it was “magically” working. (though maybe that’s it, cause I also swore I installed the xscreensaver stuff and have that used instead… maybe I forgot to turn off the settings for mate screensaver? Perhaps some left over config file got adjusted by the program or something? I’ve honestly no idea.)

I’m confused, but it’s working now, so I guess we can mark this as solved (There a way I’m able to do this with this singular post?) Or lock the topic? My apologies if this took up needless space. :\ It was causing me to butt my head against the keyboard for a while wondering what was going on, and I couldn’t find an answer on the web either.

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Hi @glgamer, You never know, someone may come back with a "I'll bet it was...".

I'll place my money on mate-screensaver was having problems or not running for some reason. It's in the startup apps as Screensaver and locking is part of it.

If it happens again, try to manually lock at a terminal with the following command. Maybe it will tell you something:

mate-screensaver-command -l

That's a lower case "L". Try it first, make sure it works same as your other lock methods.

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OP solved his own problem but no function in first post to mark as “Solved” (apart from editing theme title!).

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I think mate-screensaver maybe having issues might have been some of it, @Bill_MI. Thanks for the advice! At least if it happens again, I’ll know what command to use to see what’s going on a little behind the scenes. But for now, all is well and I’m happy overall again :smiley:

Thank you both for replying, and to @wolfman for that tidbit of info about the solved thing, heh. I wasn’t too clear on that.

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No problem @glgamer, I don't know why there is no option to mark the very first post as the solution?, maybe @lah7 can advise on that one?. :smiley:

Normally clicking on the 3 dots exposes more options and you can click the solved button!:

Pasted image1280×746 91.9 KB

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Well, first posts have never shown the button. It would be better to make a new reply then mark that as solved.

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I will have to remember that for future use, thanks @lah7 :thumbsup: