Re: 8 -> 9 update changing things
On Thursday 16 December 2021 02:49:17 pm Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2021 at 02:35:43PM -0500, Roy J. Tellason, Sr. wrote:
> > I'd posted about my update a while back, and while some folks were
> > encouraging me to go all the way to 11 since it's the current version,
> > my thinking has been to see how things are working, what's changed,
> > what broke, etc. and deal with all of that before I continue on in the
> > update process.
> >
> > Some of the things I'm dealing with are:
> >
> > 1. An annoying blue dot showed up in my taskbar.
> > Right-clicking on this gave me an option to "quit", which I would do,
> > and then within a few seconds it would come right back again! I finally
> > tracked this down to being "KDEaccessible", which I've done nothing to
> > invoke and don't know why the upgrade put that in there. I solved the
> > problem by using synaptic to uninstall the package, since I have no use
> > for it.
> >
>
> This one is solved for the moment, then.
Yeah, but why the heck did this get turned on in the first place? Or even installed?
> > 2. My virtual (older) Slackware virtualbox install is seeing a few issues.
> > One of them is that there is apparently a screensaver kicking in after
> > some extended period of time. I can't find any place where this is
> > enabled, to turn it off. I wasn't using one before and don't want one
> > now. Suggestions?
>
> XFCE desktop: if this is blanking the screen, try checking for power settings.
> If it's an _actual_ screensaver with patterns - check to see what screen
> saving/locking programs come by default.
Under Slackware it's a very old version of KDE, which I much prefer to the newer stuff. When I select screen saver from the k menu, it acts like it's loading for a bit and then stops, with nothing loaded. When I open the control center I can select screen saver in there, under appearance and themes, and blank screen is one of the choices besides all of the graphic ones, but "start automatically" is NOT checked. Under power control the only option seems to be "laptop battery" and selecting a number of different tabs tells me that there seems to be "a partial ACPI installation", but nothing seems to be activated in there either. I can't see anything else in there that seems applicable, even after poking all through the k-menu.
The other thing that's changed is that this is a different (and newer) version of Virtualbox, which in fact has been recently upgraded even further. I've poked around in all of the options for that, too, and don't see anything applicable to this. And regarding ACPI, I have used the ACPI shutdown and it does work. Nothing else in there about that.
> > 3. Also under the Slackware virtualbox sound has quit working.
> > When I boot it, I get a message that says "Host audio backend (PulseAudio)
> > initialization has failed. Selecting the NULL audio backend with the
> > consequence that no sound is audible." I'm not sure what changed here
> > either. On the host (Debian) side, audio works fine for, ferinstance,
> > playing a youtube video. But for some things I want to be able to play
> > audio under Slackware as well. I found an item in the Xfce applications
> > menu under Multimedia that says "Pulseaudio Volume Control" and when I
> > hit that I get a smallish popup window with no apparent content other
> > than "Establishing connection to PulseAudio, please wait..." and then
> > nothing happens for a good long while now. Suggestions?
> >
>
> How old id the virtualbox version - is there an option for audio passthrough or similar?
The version is pretty recent, and in fact has been recently updated. Clicking on the about option under help, I see "Version 6.1.3-r148432 (Qt5.7.1). But both this and the above issue were happening before and after the virtualbox upgrade, and only since the Debian upgrade, which got me to a different version of Virtualbox than what I'd been running before. As far as Virtualbox audio settings, under Devices there are two options under Audio, one for in and one for out, and when selecting them there's a minor change in the icon displayed, but other than that it's not clear to me what these are supposed to do. I suppose digging into the help might be enlightening. Except that it's not finding the file that it wants to open to display help. :-( Their online help pointed me at settings, where I see that audio out and in are enabled but it also says "invalid settings detected" on that page, and I've not a clue yet where I might find those...
> > 4. There is *something* kicking off around midnight local time that
> > produces a whole lot of disk activity for a few minutes, slowing down
> > whatever else I might be doing at the time. I've looked at various things
> > like cron, at, etc. to see if I can find something in there but no luck
> > so far. Suggestions?
>
> Run top / ps -elf | less to see what processes are running and check
> what seems to be eating memory or disk?
I haven't run top in ages. At the moment I have KDE System Monitor running on one desktop, but a glance at that wasn't terribly illuminating. I'll have to try and catch it when it's happening again, see if I can find out what it is and what's kicking it off.
It bugs me that things get changed, for no apparent reason, and that stuff gets added, likewise.
> > There's probably more, but I would like to get these things ironed out
> > before I go chasing any more stuff, and before I continue on the upgrade
> > path...
>
> Hi Roy,
>
> I would seriously suggest upgrading from 9 to at least 10. You might sort out some of the issues but, more
> importantly, will be moving up to a better supported system
I'll get there. But upgrading involves me copying a whole pile of stuff over to my server, including some really large files that are involved in Virtualbox and the one snapshot I have, and then figuring out a whole mess of detailed stuff that I need to do to make the upgrade happen. Last time it was something like 3 or 4 days before I was back to anything remotely resembling normal, and I'm not looking forward to the next time (or two).
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. --Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
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