doubleidle

A simple utility that keeps a remote host awake while another host is being used.

Imagine you have two hosts, one is your main desktop you work on and another machine that you need to periodically look at but not typically interact with. For example, you may have a reference manual open on that machine.

Because you don't interact with the second machine, it will eventually lock the screen, requiring you to type the password. Disabling screen lock is not an option, because security.

doubleidle is the solution. You run the server on the main machine and connect to it from the other machine(s). The server will periodically update the clients with the idle time on the server.

While the server is active (idle time below threshold), the client prevents the machine from going to sleep or engaging the screensaver via the Inhibit portal.

Once the server's idle time goes past the (client-specific) threshold, the inhibit lock is dropped and the client can fall asleep, or lock the screen, or whatever it thinks is appropriate.

Building

This is a typical Rust project, see the Rust documentation for details on cargo.

We recommend to build with zeroconf support so server detection is automatic. Note that zeroconf requires apt install libclang-dev libavahi-client-dev on Ubuntu/Debian and dnf install clang-devel avahi-devel on Fedora.

$ cargo build --features zeroconf
$ cargo install

And then run it on the machines as server or client:

main-machine> doubleidle server
[10:37 INFO ] Starting server on port 24999 with interval 10s
[10:37 INFO ] Generated new fingerprint and saved to "/home/user/.config/doubleidle/server-fingerprint.txt"
[10:37 INFO ] Server fingerprint: 9e754f83-712f-4cce-8ce5-ab0eb7e660e9
[10:37 INFO ] Server listening on port 24999
[...]

# If zeroconf was enabled, you can skip the hostname argument
second-machine> doubleidle client --allow=9e754f83-712f-4cce-8ce5-ab0eb7e660e9

# Otherwise connect to a specific client:
second-machine> doubleidle client --allow=9e754f83-712f-4cce-8ce5-ab0eb7e660e9 main-machine.local

The server's fingerprint is a UUID generated on first startup and then re-used, you can replace it if need be (and it doesn't need to be a UUID either). The client will only connect to servers with an allowed fingerprint - the allowlist is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/doubleidle/allowed-servers.txt with one entry per line. If --allow is given to the client on the commandline, the allowed-servers.txt file is ignored.

License

GPLv3 or later