[mythtv-users] Mythbuntu 14.04 and unwanted pop-ups

Brian J. Murrell brian at interlinx.bc.ca
Mon May 5 11:12:56 UTC 2014


On Sun, 2014-05-04 at 18:29 -0400, Will Dormann wrote: 
> Since switching to Mythbuntu 14.04, I've noticed the system behaving
> less like a MythTV appliance, and more like an Ubuntu system that
> happens to have MythTV installed on it.

But are you using it as an "appliance" (set-top-box, or STB as I like to
call it) or as a "Ubuntu desktop"?  i.e. is it attached to and dedicated
to your television or does it sit on your desk and you do other
"computing" type stuff on it also?

> The first thing I ran into was the xfce panel at the top occasionally.

So if it's an STB, why do you even have this running?  If it's an STB
you need to discard all and every "desktop system" management tool that
normally comes on a Ubuntu machine.  The *only* thing that should run in
your Xsession is mythfrontend and possibly a screensaver if you don't
like having still images burned into your TV.  Some people here will
tell you to run a window manager (it's the only "supported"
configuration) also but I have not done that for the over 10 years I
have run MythTV and have never run into a problem.

> I thought that the "reserve space on borders" option fixed it, but it
> still seems the same.   Being intermittent, it's tricky to immediately
> see what fixes it.   I'll have to look into the other suggested
> workarounds I suppose.

You just have to do the above.

> The other thing I ran into is an apport (crash reporter) dialog that
> came up.   I think I've now got it disabled, by following the steps
> outlined here:
> <http://askubuntu.com/questions/93457/how-do-i-enable-or-disable-apport>

Without any of the "desktop system" crap running, you won't get these
either.

> The most recent thing I ran into is the Ubuntu Software Updater dialog
> coming up.   One workaround might be to disable the checking for
> updates, but that doesn't seem ideal.   Alternatively, perhaps removing
> update-manager might work, if I do any updating manually from a terminal.

And again, discard the "desktop system" stuff and you won't get this
either.

Now if your use-case is more like the latter in my opening paragraph,
well, having those tools "pop up" is all just part and parcel of running
a Ubuntu desktop system.  In that case, you are no longer running an
"appliance" but rather a multitasking computer which happens to be able
to watch your PVR as one of it's tasks and the popups from the other
tasks are just expected.

Cheers,
b.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 490 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20140505/82e4712a/attachment.sig>


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list