Ubuntu – Way to measure computer usage via screensaver active/not active time

logscreensaver

I'm looking for a simple way to determine the rough amount of time per day I spend on a computer. This can be a difficult task if you try to monitor processes, key presses, mouse clicks and the like, because one can be doing anything from thinking about a coding problem, reading a web article, talking on the phone, or gone off walking the dog. The computer cannot read my mind. Since I leave computers on 24/7 monitoring log-ins won't work.

I hit on the idea of logging how much time the computer spends in screensaver mode. My error would then be no greater than the product of the idle-time-to-screensaver with the number of times it goes into screensaver mode. Subtracting this from 24 hours would give me an estimate which would be reasonable for my purposes.

The problem is: I don't know how to log when the screensaver turns on and off. I am running Ubuntu 10.10 at the moment on most machines, about to start upgrading to 11.04 on some of them.

Any ideas?

[edit] After more googling I hit upon the dbus-monitor which looked like it might work, but is missing an important ingredient. Here's the script I am running which launches the monitor as a daemon:

#!/bin/bash
RUNNING=`ps -A | grep "dbus-monitor"`
if [ ! $RUNNING  ]; then
    echo "(Re)starting dbus-monitor daemon"
    nohup dbus-monitor "--profile" "type='signal',interface='org.gnome.ScreenSaver'" >> ${HOME}/sc.log &
fi

Here is the output it produces after locking and unlocking the screen a couple times:

sig     1304860712      153829  2       /org/freedesktop/DBus   org.freedesktop.DBus    NameAcquired
sig     1304860717      318732  462     /org/gnome/ScreenSaver  org.gnome.ScreenSaver   ActiveChanged
sig     1304860725      547928  463     /org/gnome/ScreenSaver  org.gnome.ScreenSaver   ActiveChanged
sig     1304861018      17      464     /org/gnome/ScreenSaver  org.gnome.ScreenSaver   ActiveChanged
sig     1304862919      403523  466     /org/gnome/ScreenSaver  org.gnome.ScreenSaver   ActiveChanged

The second column is obviously unix UTC in seconds. The missing ingredient is it doesn't identify whether the screensaver is on or off! I suppose I could assume they toggle from the time NameAcquired happens, but it makes me queasy that there might be a missing or extra event I can't anticipate which would throw everything out of sync.

Much obliged for ideas.

jkcunningham

Best Answer

I would like to thanks and contribute back a simple, raw script (can be improved), put it on startup applications with: 

xterm -e logSessionLock.sh

it is system crash/blackout prepared too. It is not heavly tested... but is working great til now. it will create 2 files, one at $HOME (the log) another at /tmp (the sys crash workaround)

logSessionLock.sh

#!/bin/bash

logFile="."`basename $0`".log"

function FUNClog {
  strTime=`gnome-screensaver-command --time`
  strDate=`date +"%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"`
  strLog="$strDate ($1) $strTime"
}

function FUNCwriteLog {
  echo $strLog >>$HOME/$logFile
  echo $strLog
}

active=false
firstTime=true

# restores last log entry in case of a system crash
strLog=`cat "/tmp/$logFile.tmp"`
FUNCwriteLog
echo "" >"/tmp/$logFile.tmp"
if [[ -n "$strLog" ]]; then #if has something, it was active when the system crashed
  active=true
fi

while true; do 
  if gnome-screensaver-command --query |grep -q "The screensaver is active"; then
    if ! $active; then
      # restore the saved tmp log
      strLog=`cat "/tmp/$logFile.tmp"`
      FUNCwriteLog

      # update log (can be off when this line is reached? once it seem to happen...)
      FUNClog BEGIN
      FUNCwriteLog #logs the begin time

      active=true
    else
      FUNClog ON #stores the ammount of time the screensaver has been ON
      echo $strLog >"/tmp/$logFile.tmp"
    fi
  else
    if $active; then
      FUNCwriteLog #saves the ammount of time the screensaver has been ON

      FUNClog OFF
      FUNCwriteLog
      echo "" >"/tmp/$logFile.tmp"

      active=false
    fi
  fi 

  sleep 1
done

the log is like this:

 20120214-191528 (BEGIN) The screensaver has been active for 0 seconds.
 20120214-193602 (ON) The screensaver has been active for 1234 seconds.
 20120214-193603 (OFF) The screensaver is not currently active.
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