Kubuntu Forums - Miscellaneous

change root user / accounts

die.boer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 19:46:26 GMT

so in my scenario , i had my 1 account setup (root) , but my kids was getting more and more on my pc and doing whatever they do
so i was starting to get worried that they could install/delete stuff ,cause login password is the same as root password on admin account.
PS: i did 1st create 2 new user accounts for them (standard user) , but then found everything they are used to is gone ( they're used to log into my account with everything set up)
so what i did it is create another sysadmin account and then made my usual account standard ,so they can log into my usual account and everything seems like they used to by now, but they cant "change" anything.
if any1 find them self's in the same situation , here are the steps:

basically it goes like this
-Keep your current account (xxx) exactly as it is.
-Create a new account called sysadmin (or similar) and add it to sudo.
-Remove xxx from the sudo group.

like this :
Create the new admin account

Code:

sudo adduser sysadmin

You'll be asked to set a password for sysadmin.

Add sysadmin to the sudo group

Code:

sudo usermod -aG sudo sysadmin

.

Test the new account
Before removing xxx from sudo, log out and log into sysadmin.
Open a terminal and run:

Code:

sudo whoami

It should return:
root
If it does, you're good.

Remove xxx from the sudo group
Log back into sysadmin (important!), then run:

Code:

sudo deluser xxx sudo

Verify:

Code:

groups xxx

You should no longer see sudo in the list.

Test xxx
Log back into your normal xxx account and try:

Code:

sudo apt update

You should get:
xxx is not in the sudoers file. ( or in my case sudo: I'm sorry xxx. I'm afraid I can't do that)

and that's that ...

IMPORTANT :
Whenever you need to do admin tasks

Code:

su - sysadmin

hope this helps someone with kiddies on their PC

PS : if there is an alternative way , i'd love to hear (read) it

Can I delete an unused (Windows) EFI entry?

joneall — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 09:19:44 GMT

I had a trial version of Windows 11 on a computer I just acquired. Here's my efi partition.

sudo ls -l /boot/efi/EFI
total 12
drwx------ 2 root root 2048 Jul 10 14:51 Boot
drwx------ 4 root root 2048 Jul 10 15:43 Microsoft
drwx------ 2 root root 2048 Jul 11 16:40 neon
drwx------ 6 root root 2048 Jul 21 07:50 refind
drwx------ 2 root root 2048 Jul 10 17:41 tools
drwx------ 2 root root 2048 Jul 10 14:51 ubuntu

Can I delete the Microsoft entry without breaking anything?

Subvolume won't delete

oldgeek — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 01:48:07 GMT

Awhile ago I had to revert to a pprevious setup due to a problematic upgrade. The recovery went well, but the process left the previous @ subvolume (which I renamed @_new) as a lingering subvolume in a group which includes @, @home, and a swap file. I've tried to delete @_new, both using the command line as well as Oshluvr's script for Dolphin, but no luck. I'm notified that the subvolume has been deleted, but it hasn't bee, I suspect this might be a problem of heirarchy, but since I am by and large ignorant of the structure of btrfs, I have no idea what to do. Any help would be appreciated.

What is the project's philosophy with regard to vulnerability management?

gordonmessmer — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 19:52:03 GMT

I'm working on a conference talk in which I will discuss the trade-offs inherent to long term releases.

Specifically: distributing software for a longer period than it is maintained upstream is very labor intensive, and different long-term systems approach the problem in different ways. RHEL starts with Fedora but removes ~90% of the packages and features in order to reduce the labor costs over the life of a release. Ubuntu similarly starts with Debian but splits repositories into a small "main" repo component that they promise to maintain and a large "universe" component that they document as merely a snapshot for which they do not promise any updates. Debian is probably effectively similar to Ubuntu, but they don't divide their repo the same way so it's hard to make any clear statements about user expectation of patch coverage over the distribution.

I am curious about how the maintainers of systems derived from Ubuntu LTS releases think about security risks and patch coverage.

Are there any packages in "universe" that are used in a default installation of your desktop? Do you monitor those packages for new CVEs?

Are there any packages in "universe" that you patch because your users would otherwise be at risk? Do you update those packages by backporting patches or by rebasing to new upstream releases?

Do you provide guidance to users about the packages they install from the Ubuntu "universe" repo collection using apt?

Do you recommend using software sources like Flatpak or Snap to give users access to application releases that are maintained and get security patches?

Is there anything else that you want users to know about your approach to vulnerability remediation or related security topics?

If this is not the best place to ask a question of the maintainers, where should I ask?

Kubuntu 26.04: Black screen after screen lock or display power off (Wayland, NVIDIA RTX 3070)

Yamanqui — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:37:11 GMT

I upgraded from Kubuntu 25.10 to Kubuntu 26.04 LTS. Since the upgrade, my graphical session becomes unusable whenever the screen locks or the display powers off.

System

Kubuntu 26.04 LTS
KDE Plasma 6.6.5
Wayland session
Linux kernel 7.0.0-27-generic
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
NVIDIA driver 580.159.03

Problem
The issue occurs in at least these situations:

The screen locks (loginctl lock-session)
The display powers off after inactivity
Suspend also appears to trigger the same behavior

Steps to reproduce

Log into a Plasma Wayland session.
Run:
loginctl lock-session

(or wait for the screen to lock/power off automatically.)
Attempt to wake the session.

Expected behavior
The lock screen should appear and the session should be usable after entering the password.

Actual behavior

The monitor wakes up to a black screen.
The mouse cursor is visible and can be moved.
Typing the password does not restore the session.
Ctrl+Alt+F2 (or another TTY) still works.
The system itself appears to remain running.

Additional observations
From a TTY, I tried:
systemctl --user restart plasma-kwin_wayland.service

This changed the display to what looked like the graphical login screen. The clock updated, the mouse worked, and I could type my password. However, pressing Enter caused the graphical interface to freeze completely.

From another TTY I then tried:
systemctl restart sddm

After this, the screen became black with only a white cursor/underscore in the upper-left corner, and even switching to another TTY no longer worked. I had to power-cycle the machine.

no more discover

die.boer — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 17:24:07 GMT

so this is my new way off updating everything in terminal

Code:

sudo nala update && sudo nala full-upgrade && sudo snap refresh && [ -f /var/run/reboot-required ] && echo ">>> Reboot recommended <<<"

thoughts maybe ?

[SOLVED]Is this Krusader? What changed?

Qqmike — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 19:33:05 GMT

Catchy subject title, huh?

Been awhile since I've used Krusader. Used to use it a few years ago a lot for accessing and modifying files as root, like /boot/efi.
So, today, I installed krusader through Synaptic.
Opened it. And all I see is a menu of icons at the top. Back Up Home Select All Reload Text File etc. etc > >
Nothing about "Tools" (>run as root), or anything like that.
I've tried several things to get at it, like
-- rt-click show hidden menu (or whatever) -- this is not working;
-- edited the .config file krusaderrc for menubar=enabled (it had said "disabled");
-- configure the main toolbar -- there was nothing like Tools or Start as Root etc.

Is this a "full version" of Krusader? or what am I missing here? or do I need to put this down for awhile and come back to it?

BTW, in K 22.04 here.

Kubuntu user causes monitor to display at wrong resolution-- for just one user only.

taxpayer — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:48:03 GMT

This morning I discovered that my screen appears to be set for the wrong resolution and displays everything larger than it should be. I assumed that this was due to a setting on the monitor, but eventually determined that both the monitor and kubuntu (display configuration) are set for 2560X1440. Eventually I tried setting up a second user, and was surprised to find that the problem was solved; for this new user everything displays properly.
So something is wrong with the settings for my initial user but OK for the new user. Where might I look to figure this out?

KDE Desktop Zoom feature is much too poorly documented and confusing

stevecoh1 — Sat, 11 Jul 2026 17:33:46 GMT

This is an issue that I have solved, and not a request for help.

My point in raising this issue is that I think the obscurity and lack of documentation of this feature, which can drive users like me a little crazy, needs to be addressed.

Three days ago, I was working at my computer, a Lenovo Thinkpad P16 Gen 2, with a Nvidia RTX3500 GPU and an external BENQ monitor, running Kubuntu 24.04.4 LTS.. As I was typing, my screen zoomed in to a resolution that was too big for my screen causing everything to appear fuzzy and not fit on either screen. Moving the mouse moved the cursor as expected but also moved the display on the screen in the opposite direction. Very disconcerting behavior.

To fix this, I jumped down many wrong rabbit-holes that were unrelated to the problem.

My first recourse was to reboot. This did nothing.
Then, since I occasionally experience glitches with my GPU, my next step was to uninstall and reinstall my NVidia drivers. I tried three different ones, also the non-nvidia Nouveau driver. None of that fixed anything.
I tried googling the problem. Good luck with that if you don't know the name of this feature. Anything with "zoom" in it will send you to pages about the Remote meeting app of that name.
I tried getting help from some of the Ubuntu and Stack Exchange sites.
Some of the sites mentioned the "Meta" key. But what is that? I guessed wrong and the suggested Meta + - combination didn't work for me.
I even took the time to write an Ubuntu bug report. Since retracted.

Anyway I was eventually pointed here at the KDE Accessibility/Plasma page where I found this

Activating Visual Aids

Plasma desktop effects contain several accessibility-oriented features, including full-screen zoom, color inversion and assistance locating the mouse pointer.

Settings for these features can be found in System settings under Accessibility. Full-Screen Magnification

Meta++ and Meta+- zooms in and out, respectively.

The scale factor and mouse pointer tracking can be adjusted in the system settings. For a fixed-sized zoom window, use the "Magnifier" effect rather than the "Zoom" effect.

Again with the Meta key. Maybe I ought to really dig and find where my "Meta" key is. More googling, more confusion until I eventually tried the right one. Voila! Back to sanity after two days of hell trying to use the computer in this state.

----------------------------------------------------------

The reason I bring this up is that this feature is VERY poorly documented. Many helpful readers of the help sites tried to tell me to access the System Settings app --> Accessibility page but there's nothing there about this, at least not in 24.04. The very terms are obscure.
What does

'For a fixed-sized zoom window, use the "Magnifier" effect rather than the "Zoom" effect.'

mean? What and where are these effects

For every vision impaired person who needs these features, there might be 10 other persons who might inadvertently press the magic keystroke and discombobulate their screen. And good luck to them finding the way out. I suppose for vision-impaired people, it might make sense for this feature to persist across reboots, but that is not intuitive to people who have never heard of the feature.

This feature should be better documented and there should be a way to Enable/Disable it from System Settings App!

Hopefully some Kubuntu developer will see this.

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.