restwatch is intended to run permanently during an X11 session and to monitor the time during which the keyboard or mouse is used. The best way to do this is with the XTestExtension1, but this is rarely found in X11 implementations and never got to be "standard". It is the best because it is the most efficient and also gets you mouse clicks. This is the preferred method used by restwatch. However, if the program does not compile because you do not have this extension on the client side, move the #define USEXTESTEXTN1 in restwatch.c inside the comment, and the program will use the alternative method of selecting for events on each window. This cannot get mouse events. (The XTRAP extension could probably provide the same functionality, as well as the new RECORD extension which appeared with R6 in draft status. This has not been investigated. The XTEST extension is not useful, as it only allows keyboard and mouse to be sent (for simulation) and not received.) Having XTestExtension1 in libXext.a and being able to compile with USEXTESTEXTN1 defined does not necessarily mean it is supported in the server. (Note it is not usually "trivial" to add XTestExtension1 to the server). You can find out by looking at the output from xdpyinfo after the line number of extensions: ... you need to see XTestExtension1 I use a second keyboard on my server, and use a2x to emulate keyboard events via XTEST. This is a problem as these emulated events are not seen by XTestExtension1, so I have hacked a2x to also generate a sendevent on the root window, and the restwatch program has a hook in it whereby sendevents on the root window are looked for. Terrible, but should not cause any concern for other users of the program. If it does, set the variable usea2xhack to false.
