rkeating's questions

The search results seem a bit strange. There aren't many options when you right click on the widget icon. What search program is this using and how can I alter it to get better search results?

examples of strange behaviour I'd like to correct/alter:

1. When I type "s" the search comes up with applications with names starting with "s" but also some that don't. It also comes up with a number files many or which have names that don't even start with "s". Why? How can I change that?

2. If I type "se" no applications show up but files do (some not starting with "se".)

3. If I type "set" application starting with "set" show up. Why didn't they show up when typing just "se"?

I've installed Kubuntu 19.10 twice with the same results. When the screen energy savings timer is reached, the sound is switched from the motherboard sound (the sound source I've set to default) to HDMI sound and the screen does not turn off. I am using a Radeon 580 graphics card with the open source drivers.

What steps should I take next to trouble shoot this?

Edit: the screen actually does turn off and if you move the mouse within about 10 seconds, the screen turns on and the sound is still through the motherboard. If you do not move the mouse within about 10 seconds, the screen will turn on by itself and the sound will switch to the HDMI output.

When trying to install flapaks in a script,

$ flatpak install program_I_am_installing

I get prompted with

Found similar ref(s) for 'program_I_am_installing' in remote 'flathub' (subsystem).

Use this remote [Y/n]:

The default goes to "n" when running the script since I have no way of entering Y withing the script.

I tried giving flatpak the full Application ID, but that didn't stop the question from being asked.

I'd either like to find how to answer the question Y in the script or know how to more specificaly state the program name so this question isn't asked.

I am running Ubuntu 18.10 (installed from mini iso) with Plasma desktop 5.13.5 (from the repositories.) I always do updates on the command line without any issues. sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade shows that there are no updates, yet Discovery shows there is an update "GNOME Application Platform version 3.32". I have not taken this update.

The Discovery icon always shows 1 update pending, but sometimes when I open Discovery it says there are no updates. This GNOME update seems to come and go but still, apt never sees it.

How can I figure out what is going on here?

I installed Lubuntu 18.10 overwriting everything on the drive. When the installation finished, I rebooted and logged in. I walked away for some time and when I came back this image was on the screen. Anyone know what it is or means?

Hitting a key cleared it and I saw the regular desk top and it seemed fully functional. The second time it happened I took a picture (figuring the printscreen key might clear the screen rather than capture it.) The vertical lines were moving in a wave pattern (the crooked vertical lines in the pic.) The flame pictured over the monitor didn't give me a good feeling.

At all other times since, leaving Lubuntu sit just brings up the default screen saver.

I am running Ubuntu 18.10 and am having problems with NVIDIA drivers. Would something like Mate, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu ... work better or are graphics driver problems at such a low level (the kernel?) that a different distribution wouldn't matter?

Note, I didn't have these problems with 18.04.

Edit to add more info:

Upgraded from 18.04 to 18.10. Installed nvidia-driver-390. Computer doesn't boot. Gets stuck around "starting gmome display manager" but sometime a bit before or a bit after. Installed the 410 drivers and the same thing happened. If I uninstall all Nvidia drivers I can boot. In /etc/gdm3/custom.conf, uncommented ...wayland=false. That allowed me to boot with Nvidia drivers. Problem is that after sleep, the computer screen is either 1)fine, 2)corrupt but still functional, or 3)corrupt and not functional (appears frozen but mouse pointer still moves.) Results seem random.

With the nouveau drivers the fan on the graphics card ran too fast even without running anything. There was another issues with them but I can't remember what it was now.

All of these things were experienced without any intense graphics programs running. At most just Firefox (no video was playing) and a terminal.

When inserting a video DVD, I used to be able to click on the DVD an have it open in VLC. When I installed Handbrake, it took ownership of opening video DVDs. I know how to assign "open with" to a particular file type, but that option isn't available for a disk. How do I set VLC as the default program to open video DVDs?

I am on Ubuntu 18.04. VLC (snap version) 3.0.4 Vetinan

VLC can play the DVD with no problem if I directly tell it to open it from within VLC.

The "default applications" for music and video are already set to VLC. Many video file type are set to open with VLC including the VOB files found on video DVDs.

I did a clean minimal install of Ubuntu 18.04.1, got all my programs and data installed and did a reboot. It only came up with the non-graphical login prompt. After trying to fix this a piece at a time I gave in and installed ubuntu-desktop. That fixed everything, but it also install all the "extra stuff" that isn't part of the minimal install.

I know how to delete the obvious additional programs that are listed as installed, but not how to uninstall anything that may not be visibly obvious. Is there a way to get rid of that extra stuff and just be left with what I would have had with the minimal install?

Running Ubuntu 18.04, I changed from a swap partition to a swap file.

swapon -s (summary) and free show the swapfile with the new size. /etc/fstab was changed, permission on the swapfile changed and the swap partition was deleted. When there are updates (apt-get update and upgrade), I get this error:

Setting up amd64-microcode (3.20180524.1~ubuntu0.18.04.2) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
amd64-microcode: microcode will be updated at next boot
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.27-3ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools (0.130ubuntu3.1) ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-29-generic
W: initramfs-tools configuration sets RESUME=UUID=c5a2c6f4-b67c-4d95-bc23-8333ed6c0f11
W: but no matching swap device is available.

The UUID listed there is for the old swap partition. I didn't think a swap file has a UUID, but I am not sure about that. Everything else seems to work fine. How should I proceed to troubleshoot and fix this?

I've been running Ubuntu 17.10 for a good while. Starting yesterday (April 9) the process gnome-software started using large amounts of memory. I don't know if it is related to the update that I took that day.

gnome-software grows to use up to 7G of memory (my system has 8G of RAM.) This expands into eating up swap and root. My root usually runs at 51% of its total disk space and it went up to 96%. System ground to a halt. Had to power off. Only after some automatic disk cleaning (?) did root return to 51% usage on its own.

This happened twice yesterday and it is starting again today. After running only 1 hour gnome-software is now using (according to system monitor)
virtual mem=5.4G, Resident me=4.7G, memory=4.7G

More info:

This is continuing to happen. The root disk space is being used in at least the file /var/log/syslog. Over the last few hours it has grown to 4.9G in size. I have to manually kill the gnome-software process and delete the log file to keep the computer functional.

When gnome-software starts using memory, the CPU jumps up and down from 100% to 0%. This can be seen in the system monitor program in the resources tab. I verified this by stopping the gnome-software process and CPU usage goes to almost nothing. Telling the process to continue show CPU usage jumping all over again.

This CPU usage doesn't show up in "% CPU" on the process page. Probably due to the refresh interval?

Even more info:

This is the error that repeats over and over in /var/log/syslog when this is happening. syslog was 1.7G when I caught it this time.

Apr 10 20:27:31 rwkeating-XPS-8300 gnome-software[2485]: g_byte_array_remove_range: assertion 'index_ + length <= array->len' failed
Apr 10 20:27:31 rwkeating-XPS-8300 gnome-software[2485]: Ignoring unexpected response

I verified this by pausing the gnome-software process while doing a tail on syslog and then un-pausing the gnome-software process only to see the error flooding the log. So it is caught in this loop. Don't know what it means ... yet.

On Ubuntu 17.10, pressing super+left arrow (or right) puts the current window on half of the screen vertically. I'd like the ability to do this horizontally. Is there a way to implement that?

I'd prefer editing a config file, but if that isn't possible, a GNOME extension would be fine. I'd rather not add a new program to do this but I guess it depends...