Daily reboots - Ubuntu 22.04 - 'cause I'm lazy

Ubuntu
1

Note for the easily offended - there’s some cuss words in this post…

Ubuntu 22.04… AMD Ryzen 7… 32 GB DDR4 RAM (fast) - AMD GPU… 1TB NVME ssd…

No dual booting - just stinkin’ single boot bunty in my GRUB on a single partition…

I’ve no idea if this issue is Synergy or just cruddy Linux on the desktop - which I"ve previously whinged about being more than 10 years away in reliability and usability compared to MacOS or Windows (which I refuse to use, and would rather Linux’s massive failings and limitations than use Microsoft O/S)…

Anyway my Synergy (1.14.latest) server is running on my work issued MacBook Pro (M1) - client on the left is my personal MacBook Pro (M1), client on the right is my Ubuntu 22.04 AMD machine…

Constant issue on my Linux client on the RIGHT - daily (sometimes 2 or 3!) - one key or another gets “stuck” - it might be control, it might be shift, or shift might stop working altogether - it’s FUCKING infuriating… Sometimes stopping Synergy server on my MacBook will fix the issue, for an hour, or two even… sometimes NEVER!

And - even when I switch to using a Linux “physically” connected keyboard (wireless via a 2.4 hz dongle) - the symptoms persist - and stay persistant till I reboot (fucking sync; fucking reboot [see below])

Needless to say - this is pure unadulterated garbage, especially during the middle of the day when I’m trying to work (like today - where I was trying to use THREE VirtualBox VM’s running REL5, 6 and 7, to download Red Hat RPM patches from Red Hat with my developer license, so I could patch some shonky customer’s REL5, 6 and 7 systems that probably haven’t been patched since they went live a decade plus ago)…

Daily reboots? That’s the Windows way of working not LINUX!

Note also - there are NO instances of this hideous behaviour on my other Synergy client, running MacOS 12… lucky I have “alias fucking=sudo” in my .zshrc to ease some of my frustration - me rebooting my Linux system from iTerm2 on my MacBook Pro :

╭─x@titan ~
╰─➤  fucking reboot                                                                                                                                                                                                   1 ↵
Connection to titan.local closed by remote host.
Connection to titan.local closed.
╭─x@methone.local ~

I actually wish Linux was more reliable… Because in MacOS the only X select buffer, and middle button paste stuff, that works, is in the MacOS native terminal app, and iTerm2… I tried spreading that love across MacOS (with some kinda “extension”) and it was havoc…

Please don’t suggest other Linux distros - if the “de rigeur” Linux on the Desktop distro won’t work - WTF makes anyone think something else (most of which are Ubuntu based anyway) might be more reliable???

And I also really couldn’t be arsed trouble-shooting - when “fucking reboot” does the trick for a while…

I’m not asking for help just venting my frustration at how “not ready” Linux desktops are for “prime time”…

2

Instead of reboot try kill -1 1
so init will restart and everything it starts will restart. That may not cover the keyboard?

3

I know we don’t have actual “init” anymore, since the advent of systemd… but isn’t “kill -1 1” killing init?

Which is basically a reboot?

Why would that be better than reboot? Reboot is a matter of seconds and not minutes…

and I was just thinking… hmmm - if this thing whatever it is gets fixed now - what if its never fixed in wayland… and fucking synergy is stopping me using Wayland and FUCK YOU Synergy!

4

It doesnt restart the kernel, so it is quicker.
I think even systemd still has a process no 1. It should still work. That used to be the standard thing after a configure… make it look at the config files.

Is there any alternative to Synergy?

1 Like
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There’s “barrier” which itself was a fork of some earlier version of Synergy 1.x when it was still open source. I don’t see how that could be any better… and I paid for Synergy Pro license - so I want to use it.

Also - if I kill Synergy (on the server - or the client) and and use an attached keyboard the problem persists. It could be Synergy doing something nefarious that persists after disconnect, but I just don’t know…

Anyway - this piece of crap was only rebooted last night and already this morning gone HAYWIRE - i.e. unusable - I can’t type - I think this time ALT key is stuck on… a few times previously I’ve been able to stop CTRL key being stuck on by pressing both of them repeatedly (actually BASHING them with great force!) - doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Note - when this shit happens - it does NOT affect the other Synergy client running MacOS.

So - it’s either Synergy client on Linux, Ubuntu 22.04, or - and I’m leaning towards this theory - it’s 100% just FUCKING Ubuntu dodginess… Been thinking about going back to 20.04, and then I can install the AMD Catalyst proprietary drivers for my AMD GPU…

But in the interim - to fix this issue - I’m going to have to (remotely over SSH because the FUCKING keyboard on Ubuntu won’t fucking work!) :

╭─x@titan ~
╰─➤  fucking reboot
Connection to titan.local closed by remote host.
Connection to titan.local closed.

Also - when this shit happens, mostly the mouse is unaffected - unless e.g. I click on a link, and it thinks I’ve pressed ALT + mouse, or CTRL + mouse…

And now it’s rebooted - I’m going to try and make the Linux box the Synergy server… and see if it happens again - and - if that bullshit carries on over to TWO MacOS Synergy clients…

6

Yeah, there is no real alternative anyway.


[quote="daniel.m.tripp, post:5, topic:10124"]
make the Linux box the Synergy server
[/quote]

Thats a good experiment.
I have never delved into communication with mouse and KB… I know one thing… it is different when X11 is running compared to a CLI screen. X11 has extra software involved in its mouse/KB comms.
I dont know if that helps, but maybe another experiment would be see if you get the problem with a CLI screen - eg in single user mode.

7

and completely replacing Linux with MacOs is not the answer either…

So many limitations… (in MacOS)

Something as simple as downloading a digital download album (in lossless FLAC format) - is plagued with all sorts of limitations on MacOS - stuff that’s a “no brainer” to me on Linux - I have to think, and double-think - on MacOS…

As for the SHELL - the “work place” (I prefer working here - SO MANY COMFORT ZONES) - MacOS is still wanting in some many dimensions compared to your average off the shelf Linux distribuion…

So there’s that :smiley:

The awesome thing about shells - you can get to them from nearly anywhere… from my ZSH shell on either of my MacBooks I can SSH to my main Linux machine and do my favourite shell stuff here…

Those poor pitiful paupers in Redmond land are left high and dry with their pitiful and pathetic powershell… it’s pure garbage - I say that a lot (‘pure garbage’ is probably my most quoted subphrase of 2023 so far) but I mean it this time… Microsoft will forever be playing catchup to “THE SHELL” battleground - that’s where the stuff that counts is happening… “git push BLAH BLAH BLAH”…

8

Its really X11 that makes rlogin work, the shells are just there waiting .
I remember being amazed when I could firat operate multiple machines from one screen. … must have been late 1980’s. X was quite an innovation. I hope wayland is up to it.

9

Doesn’t seem to do anything :

╭─x@titan ~
╰─➤  sudo kill -1 1
╭─x@titan ~
╰─➤  kill -1 1
kill: kill 1 failed: operation not permitted
╭─x@titan ~
╰─➤  fucking kill -1 1

bearing in mind “fucking” is an alias for “sudo”…

It’s just happened again - so it doesn’t seem to be a Synergy thing necessarily - and - it carries on over to Synergy clients - weird characters instead of “expected” :

╭─datripp@loge.local ~/ResilioSync/bigshit
╰─➤  ÅıÇδÏÓˆÔÒ´˜Ø∏‰Å͡¨◊„Á¸

that’s supposed to be abcdefghijklmnopqurstuvwxyz (typing into an iTerm2 “local” terminal session on one of my MacBook Pros).

My keyboard in settings is still showing as US keyboard :

Selection_007
Selection_0071920×1128 161 KB

Above is while the symptoms persist - below is after rebooting :

Local terminal session on my MacBook Pro, Synergy client - typing using the keyboard attached to my Linux box :
Screen Shot 2023-02-04 at 2.16.01 pm

So the solution ISN’T running Synergy Server on Linux…
I’ve seen historical posts about people using Ubuntu with CRAZY keyboard behaviour, or stuck keyboards, and most of them seem to be old old Ubuntu versions (like 12, or 14 or something) and other related symptoms like high CPU load… I’m running Ubuntu 22.04 and there’s nothing signifcant or noticeable on the process tree …

One thing I might try and check, is the temperature of my PC… but I doubt that’s it either - when it gets really busy, and hot, it makes an awful vibrating racket either from the CPU fan or the GPU fan, or the ATX power supply fan - and THAT NEVER happens when these symptoms occur.

I might wire up a different keyboard and see what happens when the symptoms happen, but I reckon that won’t make any difference - because I connect and disconnect this keyboard (using a 2.4 hz dongle) and symptoms persist - so - I guess it could be this keyboard? BUT I DOUBT it because I use the exact same keyboard via Bluetooth on my Mac and it doesn’t happen. It’s gotta be software, and it’s gotta be Linux… and it happens in Linux with a physical keyboard, or a virtual one via Synergy…

I haven’t seen it happen in Ubuntu 22.10 on my AMD Thinkpad - but - I barely ever use it - so that’s not conclusive…

10

So you restart all the daemons, and it doesnt help?
That means you have to restart kernel ( ie boot) to fix it.
There must be some kernel module involved with KB/mouse?