Prevent Automatic Software Updates / ksmserver-logout-greeter Error

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#1
  1. How to prevent Automatic Software Updates: I have an old repurposed Lenovo G550 laptop (old Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 CPU), ran miserably under WinXP but thinks it’s a fresh pup under Tumbleweed. I’m giving it to a friend who has a very tight budget - even piggybacking/cost-sharing a neighbor’s WiFi. Unfortunately, when this laptop powers up, it immediately wants to check for S/W updates (it’s set to Monthly frequency). The laptop is a bit laggy in activating its WiFi, and so the auto S/W update check always returns an update error. I have no problems getting the WiFi activated, but my friend is a certified technophobe, and I’m certain she would have difficulties with this.

So, question: How can I prevent the automatic software update check at bootup? I don’t want any automatic checking - I’ll periodically drop by her house and manually update it myself.

  1. Prior to the update to Plasma 5.12 final, I was experiencing the ksmserver-logout-error problem on all in-house machines. The three AMD systems are now working okay, but the give-away Lenovo laptop (perhaps not so oddly because it has an Intel CPU ???) still has the problem, causing me to back out the 20180207 update incorporating the 4.15.1 kernel as well as Plasma 5.12 final among many others.

I saw Knurpht’s response to this (Thread: after update plasmashell and many KDE apps black), and am going to try deleting the two /cache folders as he outlined. Hopefully that’ll resolve the problem on the Lenovo, too.

#2

Remove the updater. only use zypper dup.when you want updated. It is just a notifier and yes it runs at each GUI start and should not be relied upon in Tumbleweed since it is a roll distro

Second option start Networkmanger earlier by setting allow all users check box in settings. This will start NM at boot rather then GUI start

#3

Since you refer to plasma, I guess you want the updater applet killed, right? A rather brutal method I use on all computers is


sudo zypper rm plasma5-pk-updates
sudo zypper al plasma5-pk-updates

First line removes the applet package, second line locks it so it will not get installed again.

The graphics problem showing black screen with cursor happened again today. So I added a script that deletes the offending .cache/qt* entries on logout. Just create a script in, say, ~/bin/scripts/99-rm-cache.sh. Then go to plasma systemsettings > startup > autostart > add script, choose the script, set to ‘on logout’, done. I use that logout script feature quite extensively for various cleanup tasks.

#4

You can right-click on tray, and select “System Tray Settings”. Uncheck the box for the updater.

That’s all you need to do.

#5

… but, if giving it to a “technophobe”, I would install 42.3, not Tumbleweed.:open_mouth: