Is it possible to load saver without reboot ?

[Manish Jain]

On 04/14/17 20:23, Polytropon wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2017 14:49:09 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
>> As part of my experiments with my tertiary box (FreeBSD 12-CURRENT
>> amd64), I am trying an apparently weird thing : load the saver without
>> rebooting. I configured the beastie saver by running 'bsdconfig console'
>> (although I could have just as well simply edited rc.conf myself).
>>
>> Normally, beastie would be expected to run only when I reboot. But in
>> theory, it should be possible to load the saver without rebooting.
>>
>> Anyone has any tips ? Thanks.
> 
> If I understand the mechanism correctly, the beastie saver
> is run depending on the kernel screen saver module. When this
> module has been loaded with kldload, the saver functionality
> should be enabled - when all other dependencies are met, just
> as /etc/rc would execute them when the system boots (rc.conf
> entries, service configuration and start for console). It
> should be possible to do this manually without rebooting.
> Just check which steps are involved during boot.

Hi Poly,

For some reason, it does not work. Normally, I would expect the saver to 
show up in 5 (max 10) minutes.

I disabled the saver by deleting the line saver="beastie" in rc.conf, 
and rebooted the system. On reboot, kldstat did not list the beastie 
module. I then used 'bsdconfig console' to again set the saver, and then 
kldloaded beastie_saver. I then waited 13 minutes - the saver did not 
show up. So there is something else too which stops saver invocation.

This is not exactly a tragedy, but a nice fun-thing to note. Perhaps you 
have knowledge to hack my system further.

Thanks.
Manish Jain