Comment 6 for bug 1788235

I just wanted to report that initially I was using Ubuntu 18.04 and the lirc from the repository worked, appears to be:

apt-cache show lirc
Package: lirc
Architecture: amd64
Version: 0.10.0-2

Thats on my system where it still works.

However a few days ago I updated another 18.04 system that had a working lirc, and it just completely stopped working after sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

sudo irw (which was working perfectly fine) now shows:

Cannot connect to socket /var/run/lirc/lircd: No such file or directory

I noticed my arrow keys on the remote controller worked, but none of the other buttons did, and the only thing that changed was doing the dist-upgrade and rebooting. That caused one of my perfectly working system to quit working.

So I followed this workaround: https://twosortoftechguys.wordpress.com/2018/07/24/make-lirc-work-in-ubuntu-18-04/

It does indeed get me back to working.

My other system that is still using 0.10.0-2 will likely break next time I update it. I will have to use the workaround on it next im sure, will hold off a few days in case I think of anything else to investigate on the system prior to updating.