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I'm trying out Linux Mint 11 with LXDE. I'm used to being able to lock the screen with a keyboard combination (for example, Win+L on Windows) rather than tracking down a menu or clicking an icon.

Web search returned Ctrl+Alt+L as a default combination to lock the screen, but this did nothing for me.

Is there a way to do this in LXDE?


The link to http://wiki.lxde.org in the answer has the required steps, except that in Mint 11 the file is called mintlxde-rc.xml.

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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

I use mint10 where you go to menu-> preferences -> keyboard shortcuts.
I have not been able to find any gui lxde and do not have away of testing these methods.
Search to Index 3. mouse/keyboard,for mint 11 the file is mintlxde-rc.xml.
From Stray notes,
From Sourceforge,
From openbox/org,
I hope something helps.

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Thanks @mic84. The steps in your first link (wiki.lxde.org) worked. The file was named slightly differently for me, so I'll update the question with the exact steps. –  Ash Oct 14 '11 at 21:01
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I'm being lazy and just type xlock in a terminal, which I always have opened even if it's a GUI session. It works everywhere and is not tied to a particular hotkey combination that may be unavailable somewhere.

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vtest: Thanks for the tip. I must be lazier than you though...I'm trying to avoid all those characters in 'xlock'... ;) –  Ash Oct 14 '11 at 21:07
@Ash: you can always have some unique alias to make it shorter. For example, use ss as alias for calling your favorite screen locker (I recently learned about slock thanks to this question and will certainly try it). –  vtest Oct 16 '11 at 2:52
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Add the following to the <keyboard> section of ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml :

keybind key="C-A-l">
  <action name="Execute">
    <command>xscreensaver-command -lock</command>

Then run this command:

openbox --reconfigure

Now Ctrl-Alt-l should lock the screen.

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