RE: Tracer Messages

[Stephen Morris]

*From:* Patrick O'Callaghan

*Sent:* Friday, 21 March 2025 at 01:50 UTC+11

*To:* [e-mail]

*Subject:* RE: Tracer Messages
> On Thu, 2025-03-20 at 08:55 +1100, Stephen Morris wrote:
> > *From:* Patrick O'Callaghan
> >
> > *Sent:* Wednesday, 19 March 2025 at 10:20 UTC+11
> >
> > *To:*[e-mail]
> >
> > *Subject:* RE: Tracer Messages
> > > On Wed, 2025-03-19 at 09:36 +1100, Stephen Morris wrote:
> > > > On 18/3/25 09:20, Will McDonald wrote:
> > > > > On Mon, 17 Mar 2025 at 21:54, Stephen Morris
> > > > >  wrote:
> > > > >       Having run tracer after a system update how do I determine
> > > > >   what it is referring to with the following messages:
> > > > >
> > > > >   You should restart:
> > > > >   * These applications manually:
> > > > >        DiscoverNotifier
> > > > >        Isolated Web Co
> > > > >        Privileged Cont
> > > > >        RDD Process
> > > > >        Socket Process
> > > > >        Utility Process
> > > > >        Web Content
> > > > >        WebExtensions
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > Does:
> > > > >
> > > > > # tracer --helpers
> > > > >
> > > > > ... make things clearer? Or, for example
> > > > >
> > > > > # tracer -s 'Privileged Cont'
> > > > >
> > > > > Always check the --help for a command and/or its man page.
> > > >
> > > > Issuing tracer -s 'Utility Process' now tells me that application
> > > > Utility Process is not running, so how do I determine what it was?
> > >
> > > If it's not running, why does it matter? (almost certainly it's a
> > > worker process under Firefox)
> > > > Also having just done an update now tracer tells me that goa-daemon and
> > > > plasmashell should be manually restarted. Tracer -s goa-daemon tells me
> > > > it is package gnome-online-accounts, and from its name I'm assuming it
> > > > can be restarted via systemctl, but as I'm using KDE I can potentially
> > > > ignore the restart suggestion, would that be correct?
> > >
> > > No, because you may be running some Gnome (or GTK) app under KDE, which
> > > is why tracer detected goa-daemon. However the man page for goa-daemon
> > > says that it starts automatically on demand, so there's no harm in just
> > > killing it, e.g., with pkill.
> > > > With the suggestion to manually restart plasmashell how do I do that
> > > > without shutting the system down or is the KDE environment not running
> > > > under Plasmashell?
> > >
> > > I have a tiny script for that, thanks to Rex Dieter:
> > >  $ cat bin/replasma
> > >  #!/bin/sh
> > >
> > >  # KDE list 06/01/2019 Rex Dieter<[e-mail]>
> > >
> > >  systemctl restart --user plasma-plasmashell
> > >  $
> > >
> > > poc
> >
> > Thankyou for that script, but I've seen instructions for switching
> > between DM's that specify to disable the existing DM before enabling the
> > new DM, which when you do that the disabling of the existing DM displays
> > a black screen that it never comes back from to be able to enable the
> > new DM, hence would this restart do the same thing, or do you need to
> > use ctrl-alt-F2 to switch to a command line interface, login and issue
> > the restart from there, and then when you logout of that interface or
> > use ctrl-alt-F1 the gui your switching to is the restarted gui?
>
> Don't confuse DM (Display Manager) with DE (Desktop Environment). The
> DM is the thing that presents the login GUI and then invokes a DE,
> which may be KDE, Gnome, Xfce etc. The preferred DM for KDE is SDDM,
> but it can invoke the Gnome DE if you like. Gnome normally uses GDM and
> the same applies in reverse. If switching between DMs then yes, you do
> need to log out and run a script, but there's normally no need. You can
> switch between DEs from the login screen.
>
> Plasma is not the whole DE. You can restart it at any time without
> logging out if you have a working terminal emulator.
>
> poc

Thanks Patrick, I thought that when, in my current case, SDDM starts up 
Plasma it was starting up a Plasmashell which Plasma was running inside 
of, hence how do you restart Plasmashell without that shutting down the gui.
I'll also need to look up the instructions again for switching between 
DM's again as I'm thinking of switching away from SDDM as it's start up 
performance is atrocious, but then the start up performance of 
KDE/Plasma is not much better.

regards,
Steve

regards,
Steve