[Solved] - Cairo Dock suggests frequent reboot after many package updates

[kdemeoz]

I have used CD for years, but only since my recent upgrades have i begun using one of its specific applets; "Logout". It is described thus; "This applet lets you manage the current session. You can either:   shut down, restart, hibernate, suspend, log out, lock the screen, switch to another user, or program an automatic shutdown. It will also tell you if your system needs to be restarted."

I have noticed that this CD applet frequently tells me that i have to reboot, & these notifications always seem to occur in tandem with Update Manager having installed various/any package updates. One of the things i loved about Linux when i changed to it from Windows in 2014, was the freedom from all the constant Windows reboots needed after its frequent patches, bugfixes, & updates... in Mint 17.x i simply never had to do any comparable reboots, unless of course i'd updated the kernel or a graphics driver & wanted to begin using it immediately.

In contrast, in both Mint 18 & Maui, this damn CD applet is frequently flagging to me that a restart is needed, & it's driving me nuts. Is this because of Ubuntu 16.04? Is it because of systemd? Or maybe, it is simply a bug in that CD applet & in fact i do not really need all the reboots at all...?

Here's this morning's innocuous updates, as a result of which, the applet is again unhappy:
   
   

I'd love to hear your advice pls.

[leszek]

Seems to be an issue in this applet I guess. As usually you are only advised to reboot after a kernel upgrade to use this new kernel.

[wonder]

kdemeoz, I think the same like leszek, also I have Cairo Dock and appears the same, I think is a issue in CD.

Regards.

[kdemeoz]

Thank you both. I really do want to believe that this is not an issue with systemd &/or the Ubuntu 16.04 base, but is instead only a bug in the CD applet. However, here's why i'm still anxious.

The very first Plasma5 VM i created, to begin my self-education of how Plasma5 differed to KDE4, was Kubuntu 16.04 (i installed this on 13/5/16] . It came as a shock to me that Kubuntu itself, via its native System Tray Notifications widget, consistently told me that a restart was needed, most of the time that system updates occurred. That was not CD telling me, it was Kubuntu itself.

To check my memory, after reading your replies, tonight i fired up my Kubuntu VM. As i'd not run it for a while, there were a large amount of updates needed. After it installed them, this happened:
   

I rebooted, then found another 7 updates were needed. Once again, after installation, its Notifier said to restart, so again i did. Tonight's experiment is entirely typical of my previous months of playing with Kubuntu 16.04. As i said in my initial post, this behaviour shocked me; Mint 17.x never did this.

Now its true that Maui in my Tower has not told me i need to restart, & [as best i can recall], neither has Mint 18 on my Lappy... instead in both cases it is CD telling me. However, how then can we explain the Kubuntu behaviour? So you see, my anxiety is that Kubuntu is obviously based on Ubuntu 16.04, as are both Maui & Mint 18. Ie, how can i tell for sure that it is only a CD applet bug, rather than the CD applet is faithfully responding to an underlying message from the OS... the same message that is directly available in Kubuntu?

If you tell me that it is a certainty no restarts are needed, then i will stop worrying, disable that nuisance CD applet, & forget all about this... only that Kubuntu behaviour still would remain unexplained...

[AJSlye]

Doesn't Kubuntu use Discover update?
Maui uses Mint update, as does Linux Mint.

[kdemeoz]

Yes, but Kubuntu's Discover has been extremely buggy for me over the past month, continually stalling when part way through downloads & installing updates, even after several hours. This happened again last night, so i abandoned it & instead simply did it via apt-get in Konsole. After doing that, the same Kubuntu Notification per my previous picture, occurred... hence my ongoing point here.

[AJSlye]

Sorry, I was thinking this was the discover (muon) updater.
It is the kubuntu-notification-helper that is causeing that issue on Kubuntu.

Maui doesn't use Kubuntu as it's base so no kubuntu-notification-helper, we use Mint update for our notifications.

[kdemeoz]

Hmmm. My post has been moved to a different forum, & its subject altered from what i originally wrote. Both editorial moderation actions have altered my deliberately intended central query. My thread has become detoured into a narrow focus only on Cairo-Dock, which was not my intention.

Hence i'll now ask again, explicitly. Is there anything innate within Ubuntu 16.04, including but not necessarily its change to systemd, that now necessitates system restarts after installing "ordinary" [non-kernel] updates?


If the answer by knowledgeable people [& i am clearly NOT knowledgeable] is "No", then the logical conclusion i must draw is that i have unluckily discovered TWO separate unrelated bugs; [1] the Cairo-Dock "Logout" applet, AND [2] Kubuntu's kubuntu-notification-helper. Whilst i'm entirely happy to accept both propositions if advised, i would remark that this outcome would challenge the general Ockham’s Razor principle.

[AJSlye]

These two applications are looking under /run for reboot-required and reboot-required.pkgs. The reboot-required file is just a string indicating a reboot is needed, the reboot-required.pkgs file shows which package(s) are calling for the reboot. If you really want to know why your getting those mssgs, take a look inside the latter file.

[kdemeoz]

Ahhhhhh, now that is wonderfully good info for me to learn; thank you. Here's what reboot-required.pkgs contains:

• linux-base
  
• dbus
  

I wonder when they were last updated?* Now i'm wondering if my old Mint 17.x KDE4 might have also had multiple entries in this file, but without [apparently] an equivalent to kubuntu-notification-helper, never told me i needed to reboot, & so i remained blissfully unaware?** This has potentially even larger ramifications; as i wrote before, i used to think that one major benefit of Linux over Windows was the lack of need to reboot after updates... maybe i was completely wrong about that?

* According to Update Manager's History of Updates, dbus was updated last night [which come to think of it, i do remember now], but linux-base is not actually listed, which seems a bit weird.

** No, wrong. I launched my old Mint 17.3 KDE4 VM, let it do a big update [which included dbus but not also linux-base], then checked /run. Neither of those files exists. So this might imply one of the big changes from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04? By additional logical inference, it now does seem that the answer to my primary query, "Is there anything innate within Ubuntu 16.04, including but not necessarily its change to systemd, that now necessitates system restarts after installing "ordinary" [non-kernel] updates?", might be "Yes". That's pretty big news.