Linux - suspend Thunderbird when screensaver is active

Davide Airaghi less than a minute
If you have configured many Thunderbird's mail filters and you don't want them to be applied when you are away from your computer, maybe because (like me) you want to have all the messages in the standard Inbox when you are reading them on the smartphone, you could try to suspend Thunderbird when screensaver is active.   A simple script, and crontab, could be enough ... Create file /usr/local/bin/sync_thunderbird_with_screensaver.sh e inside it paste the following code:
#!/bin/sh

#
# Davide Airaghi
# Simple tool to suspend/resume Mozilla Thunderbird
# when the screen is locked/unlocked
#

LANG=en
export LANG

XCMD=$(which xscreensaver-command 2>/dev/null)
TDISPLAY=$(ps eax|grep thunderbird|grep -v grep|sed -es/^.*DISPLAY=//|sed -es/\ .*$// | grep : | tail -n1)

if [ "$XCMD" != "" ]; then
	export DISPLAY=$TDISPLAY
	ISLOCKED=$( ${XCMD} -time 2>/dev/null | grep -i locked )
	if [ "$ISLOCKED" != "" ]; then
		pkill -STOP thunderbird 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
	else
		pkill -CONT thunderbird 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
	fi
fi
Save the file, make it executable and, using crontab, add it to the scheduled tasks. I have added the following line to my crontab:
*/2 * * * * /usr/local/bin/sync_thunderbird_with_screensaver.sh 2>/dev/null >/dev/null
In this way the script checks every 2 minutes if the screensaver is active and suspend/resume Thunderbird when it has to.

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