@mitu said in Turning the screen off (again) and screensaver problems.:

You can log off the console user (the one on the tty1) and the auto-login will kick in and start EmulationStation again. An ugly workaround, to say the least.

I'd preffer not to do that, I was trying out some chatgpt suggestions and instead of logging in and starting ES, I was met with log-in screen for virtual terminal 0, and tty1 wasn't starting at all.
I had to "sudo apt remove --purge kmscon" to make it work again (after hour or two of debugging, I already wanted to reinstall everything) It seems that kmscon was hijacking the getty (I never heard of getty nor kmscon before so it was like an actual study doing it)

... well, I asked chatgpt about the "starting as NOT superuser problem", I tried out the first suggestion it gave and it actually works first try!

su - pi -c "setsid emulationstation < /dev/tty1 > /dev/tty1 2>&1 &"

I actually understand the linux stuff more now as this needs both "< /dev/tty1" and "> /dev tty1" (it didn't occur to me that you can do both!). It also needs setsid before running, it needs that weird "2>&1" in the end ... that's allegedly also doing something... ok... as long as it works! :D

Thanks for the help guys, I appreciate it a lot!

Use picture as screensaver