I have a box running ubuntu 13.10 unity that I need to auto log in and it currently locks after 30 seconds, but I'd like to reduce this to between 1 and 5 seconds - how can I do this?
Cheers
Usually you can set the timeout of gnome-screensaver (used by Ubuntu) with System Settings -> Brightness & Lock. However, this GUI only supports setting 1 minute at the minimum. For a delay between 1 and 5 seconds we need to set this manually.
You can use dconf watch / to watch all settings that are being changed.
If you issue that command, then open the Brightness & Lock panel and change the setting for Turn screen off when inactive for..., you will see an output like this:
/org/gnome/desktop/session/idle-delay
uint32 180
Hence, in order to set it to a value of for example 5 seconds, issue the command:
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/session/idle-delay "uint32 5"
Source & more information: How can I set a global timeout for the screensaver?
