Kubuntu Restart Notification Balloon Should not Repeatedly show up

[Brian Watson]

Binary package hint: update-notifier-kde

I left Windows because of the annoying popup balloons constantly reminding me to restart or do whatever else.

Don't tell me Kubuntu is going to do this now too!

Everytime the system is updated and needs to restart before the new kernel image, I think, will take effect, the restart required balloon pops up. I can understand it popping up once, but please not again and again and again...

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

A few questions:

1) Does this happen only when a reboot is required or anytime the balloon appears due to some notification (reboot, updates, etc)
2) Do multiple popus appear at the same time or only one at a time, just repeatedly
3) Do you click the popup to make it go away or wait for it to fade

Looking into the code now to better understand where the problem may reside. Any additional info you can provide would be of great help.

[Brian Watson (vertexoflife)]

1) This happens usually only when a reboot is required, I havent seen it happen otherwise.

2)One popup appears, repeatedly, over and over again. Strangely enough though, it appears in the top left of the screen, instead of the bottom right.

3)Sometimes I clack the popup, or wait for it to fade, but either way it returns in about 15 minute cycles.

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

I've seen the popups appear in top left with Kopete. I am wondering if this is a bug somewhere else.

Can you provide output of (hopefully at time of problem):

ps -eaf

List what systray apps you have running?

Also wondering if you can close all systray apps and see if some other app starts up at some point. I have seen skim/scim cause certain systray apps get held when they aren't loading correctly and then the bubble can appear out of place.

Thanks,

Rod.

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

I updated the description to something more accurate.

I think your question/bug report is more accurately reflected by the updated description now.

While the Reboot icon is enabled, the program will check to see if a reboot is required and show the pop-up. If you re-run adept/apt/synaptic during this time and have not rebooted, this may trigger the balloon to re-appear (still digging into the code).

So, how often does the balloon tip show up for you? Once every 15 min or more like every minute or two? What happens if you leave the system idle for a period of time?

Periodically notifying (reminding) the user to reboot is a good idea, as services may need to be restarted to work and without a reboot a crash could occur. The balloon tip does this. Though, if it's popping up for you every minute or so, then there is some other bug happening and will need to be investigated.

[Brian Watson (vertexoflife)]

No, while the reboot icon is enabled, it will continually pop up time and again, no matter what you do. My output will not show the restart balloon right now because there is no new kernel image or the like.

Windows does the same thing, the balloon pops up about every fifteen minutes, and keep coming again and again and again. There should at least be an option to turn it off, at least, that's what I think.

Here's my output, like I said, while the problem is NOT occurring:
op amarok player totalTime
b 29004 1 4 15:50 ? 00:00:32 amarokapp
b 29093 7238 0 15:50 ? 00:00:00 kio_file [kdeinit] file /tmp/ksocket-b
b 29095 29004 0 15:50 ? 00:00:00 python /home/b/.kde/share/apps/amarok/scripts/Am
b 29096 29004 0 15:50 ? 00:00:00 ruby /usr/share/apps/amarok/scripts/score_default/sc
b 29097 29004 0 15:50 ? 00:00:00 ruby /home/b/.kde/share/apps/amarok/scripts/wiki
b 29543 6352 7 15:50 ? 00:00:52 /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.2/firefox
b 29553 1 0 15:50 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconfd-2
root 31073 1 0 13:44 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/acpid -c /etc/acpi/events -s /var/run/acpi
root 31665 1 0 13:44 ? 00:00:00 /usr/sbin/hcid -x -s

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

Ok, so only periodically (15 minutes or more) which is the way the program was designed.

Solutions:

1) Reboot when requested (or a soon as feasible)
2) Right-Click the notifier and exit it to disable Update Notifications for your current session (remember to reboot at some point)
3) Ignore the pop-up (I've fixed the code and new release 0.4 will move pop-up to bottom near systray rather than obtrusively at the top of screen)

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

Marking invalid, as not really a bug. Offered suggestions.

[Dave Bekker (phyrexicaid-gmail)]

"Ok, so only periodically (15 minutes or more) which is the way the program was designed."

Which is a poor design IMO. I googled "annoying popups kubuntu" and came across this bug report. It *is* annoying, and it *is* too much like Window's annoying popups. Can we alter the pop up so that it has a close button on the popup?

Is there a way to stop the program running to start with?

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

sudo apt-get remove update-notifier-kde will remove the application. If you remove it, you only lose notifications of past crashes, when there are new updates and when you need to reboot. This is likely the quickest and easiest solution for you.

On the other hand, I welcome any patches you may create to address the question in other ways. However, ignoring a reboot request, is really asking for a problem (realistically, reboot requests do not occur often).

[Dave Bekker (phyrexicaid-gmail)]

Thanks, the solution was what I was looking for at the moment.

In terms of patches, I am currently looking at the source (from here: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~jr/adept/update-notifier-kde/files) I will play around with it, but I don't know how much use I will be :P

Is the reboot request only occurring on a kernel patch? I see it checks if there is a /var/run/reboot-required file before popping up a notification. Is this file only created when there is a kernel patch? Otherwise I don't see why a reboot is necessary.

[Roderick B. Greening (roderick-greening)]

both applications and kernel upgrades can request that a reboot occur. It is rarer for applications (in general) to request this, however, some core system apps may require this in order to continue proper operation and avoid data corruption/crashes from occurring if you do not reboot.

A core app cannot always be restarted without a full reboot, while most other apps can simply be restarted. It is only in this circumstance (where is can only run after reboot) that a reboot would be required from a system app.