XscreenUsb

This gem provides a command line application that will control xscreensaver's lock/unlock features via connecting/disconnecting a given USB device.

This will work best with a device that presents a unique serial number, and you have with you all the time . . . like your smart phone. In fact I designed this to be used with an android phone in usb debugging mode (so it will register with the system). I don't have to mount the disk, simply plugging it in is enough.

Installation

$ gem install xscreen_usb_unlocker

Usage

Automatic

To try to detect devices do:

    $ xscreen_usb_unlocker --select-device

Obviously, the device has to be plugged in for this to work. Give it a try and let me know if anything doesn't work. It's interactive and will save a config file for you.

Manual

You can also do all this by hand via methods like this via the output of lsusb.

Once you find the device (if it has a serial, most phone's do.)

    $ xscreen_usb_unlocker -s SERIAL

You can also save these so you don't have to retype them, or have them in your history:

    $ xscreen_usb_unlocker -s SERIAL -d 1234:ABCD --save-config

Running

Last, it can be daemonized, if this happens it will write a log to your homedirectory in: ~/.logs/xscreen_usb_unlocker.log.

    $ xscreen_usb_unlocker -D

If you unlock xscreensaver by hand, you are not disabling this, the next time you plug/unplug your usb device, it will lock again. This is useful if for some reason your usb device isn't available, you can still use your system as normal.

SECURITY

This is incredibly important to understand, their isn't any. This isn't a tool designed to secure your workstation, I can think of half a dozen ways to get past this easily.

Instead, this tool is for convience, to help facilitate simple locking/unlocking in a casual business/home environment.

All it does is start/kill (safely) xscreensaver based on scanning for usb devices.

TODO:

  • Add a --name to trap for the device name (regex? substring?)
  • Add basic device detection to print out a pretty table to help configure it (offer options and save automatically?)

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create new Pull Request