[plug] mouse noise stopping idle screensaver - how to ignore?

[Russell]

On 8/16/06, Michael Holland <myk at myk.id.au> wrote:
>
> Often I see that a long-idle system is not sleeping, or even blanking the
> screen, and the problem seems to be jitter from an optical mouse.
>
>   Is there some way to tell the Gnome power manger (or lower level?) to
> ignore the mouse (or small movements) for idle timeout?

Assuming you're using xscreensaver, it has a pointerHysteresis
resource.  This can be set in ~/.xscreensaver.  xscreensaver(1)
explains a bit about it:

       pointerHysteresis (class Integer)
               If the mouse moves less than  this-many  pixels  in  a  second,
               ignore  it (do not consider that to be "activity.")  This is so
               that the screen  doesn't  un-blank  (or  fail  to  blank)  just
               because you bumped the desk.  Default: 10 pixels.