Kodi Community Forum

So I have tried a lot to fix this. Basically I have a laptop that I need to close the lid on while it's connected to the telly. However, everything I have tried has not worked. Here is what I've done:

I set gconftool to change lid settings:

That didn't work, so I installed gnome-settings-daemon and changed the lid settiings:

That still didn't work, so I tried changing the lock screen settings:

That still doesn't work so I got despirate and tried to just get rid of lock screen period:

Here is my current readout for power settings:

I'm seriously lost here. I have no idea what else to try.

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BTW, I'm using the 12.00.Intel-NVIDIA XBMCBuntu image.

So does anyone at all have any ideas, I've spent hours working on this trying to make it work. Everything is working perfectly, All I need to do is to be able to shut the lid so I can put it in a bracket behind the telly without it shutting the display down when I do.

Well for starters, what kind of laptop is it ?
This has to do with power / sleep mode support in your motherboard and bios (and not very much with XBCM)

You need to tell use the make and model of your hardware, and your OS (which I see is Ubuntu).

its a compaq presario f700. Considering there are no power options in bios for lid settings or anything of the sort, and in XP, 7, Vista, and CentOS I can control how the lid behaves from the OS, I don't think it has anything to do with hardware. I'm actually a server admin and also certified in windows configuration, I can do this in windows with no problems and have done things like this in ubuntu and deb before, for some reason it's not working with XBMCBuntu. (which I know is ubuntu modified to run xbmc at start).

So what else could be causing this? Hardware and mobo is ruled out as there are no bios options for power control, period. It has to be an OS issue since other OS's can control what the lid behavior does.

So why are you setting Gnome powerstates, if you are not running Gnome...
XBMCbuntu uses lightdm as window manager. By default gnome and kde are not installed.


add a line or modify

Mmm, thats not working either, i just assumed it was opening xbmc automatically from the desktop. I tried what you suggested, but it didnt work either.

From what desktop ? XBMC runs as a session itself, there is no seperate desktop.

I am just rereading your original question and realise you never accurately describe what the issue is.
Does the laptop go into sleep or into hibernate mode ?

You asked why i was changing gnome settings, i was telling you that it was because i was unaware that it was in its own session, i was thinking it was a program that was open from the desktop. As i said before, im not at all familiar with xbmc, thats why im asking for help here. Either way i made the change you suggested, it hasnt done anything, any other ideas, this is the first time ive ever encountered a problem like this.

And its going to sleep, the issue is that i want nothing at all to happen when i close the lid, that was what i originally said.

You should reread what you have typed so far. I was going on the assumption that the laptop entered a sleep state but you never stated 'sleep' or 'hibernate', which are different ACPI states as you should know.

I am just trying to help you - this hardware has loads of issues with ACPI states. I see a lot of people who say they can't get the thing to get into sleep or wake up correctly. Obviously people will be less likely to complain when a device can't be kept awake, as going to sleep is usually the expected behavior. It is really weird that you were able to run all these other operating systems on this same hardware without sleep or hibernation issues.

I am a bit mystified by the fact that there is nothing about ACPI, or S3 / S5 states in the bios - other people do describe those settings. I am still wondering if you have an older bios version.
If all fails you can of course disconnect the switch that detects that the lid is closed, but that might be considered cheating

What's funny is that the sound stays on, only the video goes away when I close the lid. Lid behavior options work in every other OS, for some reason I can't get it to work with XBMC. Just to update, when I went into the desktop it was working, so the issue is with XMBC and not the OS. There has to be some way to get XBMC to keep the video running when the lid is closed, at least I would think so. If I can't find a fix in xbmc I might just remove the screen and strip it down to the parts I want to keep and build out a new casing for it anyway, but I want to avoid the extra work if possible lol, I'm already working on a new case mod for a contest and don't want to add this to it.

You could run XBMC from the desktop instead of standalone, that would run your desktop underneath.

Also please check to see if consolekit and upower are installed.

I'm pretty sure upower is part of the ubuntu os, I checked and it's in there, however isn't consolekit outdated? I remember seeing something at some point about replacing it with something else... either way, it's not on the system.

I do have an update though, it seems as though ONLY the video shuts down, everything else is functioning perfectly, when the lid is closed sound continues, I put a thin knife through the crack to press a few keys and when I opened the lid the typing was there. So it seems that the only thing that is going away is the video feed to the telly when I close the lid. Right now the screen on the laptop is disabled in the OS, and the only output is the telly, I verified that's working correctly.

The only thing I can think of is that the lid closing shuts down the feed on the screen even though it's disabled and that the Telly is mirroring the screen so it looses feed when the lid is shut rather than being it's own monitor independent of the screen. Seems logical, but the settings aren't established that way.

Have you thought about opening the case and unplugging the trigger that makes the pc detect the lid is closed ?