Creating the shutdown timer: Step 1: First and foremost, you’re going to need to launch Command Prompt and then type the following command and hit enter: shutdown -s -t seconds. I think the culprit is xscreensaver which doesn't work as is set by entered parameters. Carry on reading to find out how to set this up. The final result - my system has been usually shutdown after 20 mins maybe, if I set the max idle value to 30 mins. In one system it works only using root cronjob set in file:Īnother problem is that xprintidle in my system has given sometimes random for me values and sometimes logically incremental. I tried such cronjobs on 2 similar distro Lubuntu 12.04.4 RC LXLE 32-bit ( ) In sudoers file, so shutdown command won't need a password to be executed. If script is not run by root we should remember to add the line: ALL ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown OUR_USER should be replaced as earlier to the user we refer to.My script was run from cron by line in cron file: */5 * * * * /home/OUR_USER/autoshutdown.sh If script is run by OUR_USER, shutdown command should be preceded by sudo sudo shutdown -h now If script is run by OUR_USER, line above can be reduced: idle=`env DISPLAY=:0 xprintidle 2>&1` OUR_USER is the user we refer to for checking idle time (not root user)ĭISPLAY=:0 is correct for one desktop display (run env command to read DISPLAY in your situation) This script needs some improvements to work, like: idle=`env DISPLAY=:0 su OUR_USER -c xprintidle 2>&1` Has been idle for too long and if it has been idle for a longer thanģ0 minutes it will shutdown. Make a cronjob for this that checks from time to time if the system Instructs the computer to shutdown if idle for 30 minutes.

Make a script autoshutdown.sh which checks for the idle time and I will copy it below and then explain improvements to make it work: I hv tried different programmes but they haven't work for me so I found using short script with cronjob the best solution.įirstly I refered to post Timed Shutdown - shutdown after 30 minutes I spent lots of time to solve this problem, so I find it useful to share it, to make the same issue simple for others. Because the topic abt shutting down PC after certain period of inactivity is redirected to this topic, I will explain this issue here.

Set a 1 time shutdown timer windows 10