Kubuntu Forums - General

30 s boot stall "Scanning for Btrfs filesystems"

jlittle — Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:57:35 GMT

The NVMe SSD in my desktop died a few days ago, while it was in use (as the sender of a send/receive incremental backup). It was only a few years old. It is completely lifeless.

Using an old (2015) SATA SSD, I restored from a backup, and with some adjustments to /etc/fstab and a few subvolume creations (for .cache and snapper snapshots) Kubuntu 26.04 is running, albeit more slowly.

But during the boot, before plasma starts there is a step that stalls for about 30 s:

Code:

Scanning for Btrfs filesystems
registered /dev/sdc1
registered /dev/sdb6
registered /dev/sda2

(Those devices are those with btrfs on them, the last being the drive being booted.)

Can anyone explain this step? Removing the failed drive had no effect. Another install, a vanilla Kubuntu 26.04, on the same SSD does not have the problem.

display shows very large courser pointer and large fonts after log in in kde user edition plasma 6.7.0

marco07 — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 23:34:26 GMT

Folks the title says it all. this is what I got today after login in my fully updated kde
neon the mouse movent is so fast and the fonts are so large that i can not get out of this. I switched from waylan to x11 which did not help. any comment as how to solve this? thanks!

Trying to reduce dmesg btrfs spamming to reduce SSD wear - and now what?

oshunluvr — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:32:04 GMT

So I got tired of a set of dmesg entries filling up my logs, specifically these two:

Code:

[Mon Jun 29 02:16:11 2026] ata11.00: Enabling discard_zeroes_data
[Mon Jun 29 02:16:11 2026] ata12.00: Enabling discard_zeroes_data

and a couple more related to them. This is a 24/7 server so logging goes on continually so I thought I might get a few mores years out of the root storage device if I log less.

Some internet sleuthing and my own observations led me to this conclusion: The drives attached to ata11+12 are older (as in a decade) SSD's and both were btrfs formatted without a partition table. This was the source of the message - letting me know that the drives were able to support trim (discard) correctly. The newer SSDs don't do this nor do the HDs. So I reformatted both SSDs with a partition table and a single partition and those messages are gone.

UFW logs a lot but it's set to "low" and I want some logging from it so I guess I live with those (15-60 a day). However, one of my Roku TVs is causing these messages! Hopeully this will fix this one:

Code:

sudo ufw allow from 192.168.1.15

and I set it's IP the fixed address.

Finally, I'm seeing - about every 30 minutes - this:

Code:

sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4

Sort of an announcement of the partitions on this hard drive It's not even mounted. Still working on that one...

Still not using UEFI. Should I?

oshunluvr — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 15:07:03 GMT

I went to KDEneon in 2018 but thinking I might transition back to Kubuntu. While I'm re-configuring everything, I thought about UEFI and if there's any real reason to use it. I have avoided it successfully for many, many years. Why? Initially the release of UEFI was tied to MS and dual booting was problematic. So I just stuck to GRUB.

Current setup: I have 4 bootable installs. One of those is an Ubuntu server install (no graphics) that only serves as a GRUB host. It boots to a custom grub menu. From there, I select my chosen distro, and it switches to the grub.cfg of one of the other 3 installs. Then it boots the selected distro. I doubt it matters, but all the distros are in BTRFS subvolumes on the same BTRFS file system. This was set up in 2018 or so.

Reasoning: I went with this design after having GRUB wiped out in the past by subsequent installs or removing the distro that had last installed GRUB leaving my system unbootable. Now, when I do a bare-metal installation of a new distro, I point it's GRUB install to a partition rather than the boot drive. This allows each distro to create it's own GRUB config but insures the bootable version of GRUB is untouched.

The downside: I have to manually edit GRUB menu of the GRUB host distro and update GRUB before booting to a new install. Not really an onerous task, but still a task. Also, since this approach results in two grub menus at boot time, there is an additional timer delay at boot time unless I hit Enter twice. Again, not a huge problem, but it's there. I have all GRUB timeouts set to 5 seconds to minimize the delay.

The reason to change: Moving to a single boot manager that doesn't need as much manual maintenance would be nice, as well as a single boot screen instead of two.

The questions:

Should I change to UEFI and why?
Can UEFI even allow this?
How would UEFI handle multiple new installs without messing with other existing installations?

I have run into problems in the past on my laptop, which is using UEFI, when I had Kubuntu installed and then installed KDEneon. At the time, both distros using the same UEFI folder so installing KDEneon resulted in Kubuntu not being displayed in the boot menu. I think KDEneon fixed this, but I could see this happening again somewhere in the future, like installing a newer version of a distro along side an older version. TO be fair, I probably wouldn't do that because I typically us VMs for short term testing.

copy of [CODE]....[/CODE]

die.boer — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 20:43:52 GMT

is it possible to install a vBulletin plugin that adds a Copy button to code blocks?
so users can just click on the copy button instead of selecting text and copy?

[RESOLVED] Mark Channels Read not working

life0riley — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 14:06:40 GMT

I've read all the posts in the Announcements Sub-Forums yet they still say "Unread". All posts as far as I can see show they are "read" (not highlighted or flagged unread). I clicked Mark Channels Read but the read status isn't changing.

I noticed the read status changed to Unread yesterday with the slow response times on KFN but didn't mention it because I thought it was related. Today I'm still not able to change the read status by clicking Mark Channels Read. All other sections and sub-forums are behaving as expected (I read a post and it changes from "Unread" to read).

Did something change or is it my profile?

NeoChat Unable to Sign-in using SSO

CappuccinoJack — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:36:34 GMT

Hello everyone!

I wanted to share my resolution for signing into NeoChat using a matrix.org account. I am using Kubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Problem Behavior:

When attempting to sign-in using the SSO URL in the NeoChat, my browser (Librewolf AND Firefox) would fail to sign in with the following error: "can’t connect to the server at localhost:XXXXX" where “XXXXX” would be a random assortment of numbers every time.

Resolution:

This was a two-part resolution:

Use a different browser other than Librewolf. I used the snap pack of Firefox.
Temporarily disable the Firewall in your System Settings (System Settings > Networking > Wi-Fi & Internet > Firewall > toggle in the top-right corner of window).
Make sure to close and re-open NeoChat after changing your browser and temporarily disabling the Firewall.

Attempting to use Librewolf even with the Firewall disabled did not work, but worked fine again using Firefox. Hope this helps if you are having this problem as well!

Slow Response Time On KFN

life0riley — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:25:55 GMT

I'm experiencing slow response time here on KFN. It is the same on all my machines. I noticed this last night at around 10:30 PT. The response times on other websites is normal. I checked my internet speed to make sure the issue wasn't on my side.

Is KFN experiencing issues?

[RESOLVED] What is the "Correct Way" To Insert An Image When Posting?

life0riley — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 17:15:05 GMT

I've posted images in the past on KFN without issue, and I can see them in my old posts from any computer or virtual machine. I noticed in my recent post I only see my photo when I view KFN from my laptop. I don't see the photo in my post from my virtual machines or my iPhone, but I see other member's photos consistently. I checked the Help files, but I didn't find a solution.

This is the post:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...330#post692330

I'm using the Image button on the toolbar to insert a photo. Is there a better way to insert a photo?

Kdialog script in Dolphin service menu not honored

oshunluvr — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 16:00:14 GMT

I use several Dolphin service menus I wrote to semi-automate some tasks. One of those uses ffmpeg to re-encode video files to mp4 and with custom settings to reduce their size. In this service menu I use kdialog to show a progress screen so I know when the encoding is finished.

For some reason I have not yet figured out, the icon in in progress dialog window does not display the icon I have chosen and instead displays the "Wayland" place-holder icon (white W with yellow background). This is not a big problem, but I wonder if there's a way make it display the chosen icon (convert.svg) instead

Script contents (truncated - nearly duplicate actions removed):

Code:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
Icon=video-mp4.svg
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=video/*;
Actions=g-copy;g-rate24;g-rate28;
#X-KDE-Priority=TopLevel
#X-KDE-Submenu=Convert-Compress
Encoding=UTF-8

[Desktop Action g-rate24]
Name=Re-encode w/rate 24
Icon=video-mp4.svg
Exec=dbusRef=$(kdialog --icon convert --title="Conversion ffmpeg" --progressbar " Converting $(basename %f) " 0); fn=%u; ffmpeg -i %u -y -vcodec libx265 -crf 24 "${fn%.*}.24".mp4; qdbus $dbusRef close; kdialog --title "Conversion complete" --passivepopup "$(basename %f) converted to MP4";

Pop up WIndow:

[RESOLVED]Error Message while updating KDE Neon User Edition Plasma 6.70

marco07 — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:26:00 GMT

Hi folks:
The following is the message I got today while updating my Kde Neon user edition plasma 6.7.0.
Any comments about how to resolve these dependencies?
Thanks in advane!
Fatal error: The following packages have unmet dependencies:
pipewire-audio: Conflicts: pulseaudio
Conflicts: pulseaudio-module-bluetooth but 1:16.1+dfsg1-2ubuntu10.1 is to be installed
Conflicts: pulseaudio
pipewire-alsa: Conflicts: pulseaudio
Conflicts: pulseaudio

Avidemux: Total confusion on the project?

boospy33 — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 14:34:45 GMT

Hello all,

the project is quite old, but in my opinion, it's one of the best simple video editing programs that also works with GPU support. I just took a new look at the Avidemux project. But based on what I found, it's completely confusing me, and I'm not sure where I can still safely install Avidemux.

Avidemux is available via the following download/installation options (some downloads were hard to find):

DEB packages directly from the Website "avidemux.org" (high level of trust): https://www.avidemux.org/nightly/ubuntu2604/
Appimage directly from the Website "avidemux.org" (high level of trust): https://www.avidemux.org/nightly/appImage/
DEB packages from this PPA (moderate level of trust): https://launchpad.net/~xtradeb And the website of this project: https://xtradeb.net/
Various installation options available here "avidemux.net" (no trust): https://avidemux.net/download/ They're also releasing the PPA mentioned above, and an uncertified Flatpak https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.avidemux. An AppImage is also available for download, but you must have a TeraBox account.

What do you think about this situation?

Any network experts please ?

fatbloke — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 19:25:03 GMT

Ok so it's like this..........

small "network" icon bottom right looks ok when I log in, but after a while, I get a dialogue that says it knows it's connected but with limited connectivity. I've mulled it all over and started to try and understand this issue. Other devices that connect to the BB router (from SKY) don't seem to be affected. Just my older style PC (an HP tower). I prefer cabled connections to this device (but It can do bluetooth/wireless as well), I use powerline networking and to rule that out, I replaced the powerline kit - which seems to be working fine (as far as I can tell).

I don't believe it (the tower) is being disconnected, just that there seems to be some sort of intermittent issue.

My network card is RealTek based, and some reading suggests that they sometimes have issues - I've done all the updates that I know how to do, but to no avail - other than to tell me everything is up to date.

The bit of reading that I've done says about network cards are better if they're using intel chips as those ones work from the kernel and not with some extra driver of some sort.

Can anyone suggest how I might be able to examine the performance of my current network card ?

I've got no issue about replacing a network card physically, but a quick look at Amazon and there's many different makes that use intel chips and I have no way of knowing whether brand X is better than brand Y, or whether I could stick to a cheaper model or whether I would need a higher end/more premium make/model

As ever, any guidance you may be able to offer is very much appreciated.......

Latest update creates warning when running apt

oshunluvr — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 15:08:32 GMT

I did the HUGE update to 6.7 this morning. As is my habit I did so from the terminal. When it was done, I rebooted then ran "apt update" again to make sure everything was upgraded.
I then got this warning:

Code:

All packages are up to date.
N: Ignoring '20apt-esm-hook.conf' in directory '/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/' as it is not a regular file
Listing... Done
N: Ignoring '20apt-esm-hook.conf' in directory '/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/' as it is not a regular file

A little sleuthing revealed:

Code:

$ ls -l /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-hook.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Jun 19 10:36 /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-hook.conf -> ../../kde_neon/20apt-esm-hook.conf

Digging a bit more:

Code:

$ cat /etc/kde_neon/20apt-esm-hook-neon.conf
# KDE neon diversion to remove ubuntu advantage bits

Although the symlink appears correct; i.e. doing "ls ../../kde_neon" from the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ directory does indeed reveal "20apt-esm-hook-neon.conf", the link still appears broken.

Although removing the symlink doesn't appear to have any ill effect, I recreated it using "/etc/kde_neon" instead of "../../" and the link now works. I have no idea why it didn't before. Code to create the new symlink:

Code:

sudo ln -s /etc/kde_neon/20apt-esm-hook-neon.conf /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20apt-esm-hook.conf

non-breakage problem

die.boer — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 08:14:02 GMT

guys i'm in kinda unfamiliar territory here , you see i'm usually only a couple of months on a distro before things starts acting up and i must troubleshoot half the time to fix things, it's either that or i get bored with some bland looking distro that my ancient lappy can handle. So i switched distros often...
but now , here on kubuntu it's been 4 months and nothing wants to break ?
every damn update and upgrade just miraculously works? and looks damn fine? what gives?
so now i'm stuck on a distro that doesn't give me a reason to distro hop, and it feels ,strange...