[SOLVED] Featured - Discover running automatically

[TwoFistedJustice]

Sometime in the last couple weeks "Featured - Discover" started running on system startup. This is NOT something that I told it to do.

And another thing that happened just today, was that I opened the update window from the taskbar, and my system began installing updates without my telling it to. No password, nothing. I just opened the window and it started installing updates one by one.

I dropped Windows because of stuff like this.

What is going on and how to I prevent this unwanted behavior?

[Don B. Cilly]

What version of Kubuntu?
Because...

I dropped Windows because of stuff like this.

I totally understand and "I feel you pain"
And I take great pains to get rid of that sort of thing.
But it depends on the distribution...

[claydoh]

Do you mean that Discover opens up at login?
This is probably because Plasma by default opens whatever applications were running when it is shut down. Discover definitely is not set to open on its own at login.
Look at System Settings >> Startup and Shutdown >> Desktop Session
From there, either select 'Start with an empty session', or, of you use the feature, put 'plasma-discover' in the 'Applications to be excluded' section.
On rare occasions, a program may get 'stuck' in the saved session, and switching from 'Restore previous session' to the empty session option temporarily will clear it out.


As to the second issue, I don't think it is related to the first, but nothing has changed in 18.04 (or later afaik) to cause auto install of updates, so there is probably something else afoot here.

[jglen490]

@claydoh -- And the two portrayed activities could be linked by logging into Kubuntu on boot with elevated permissions, along with the scenarios you described. I sincerly hope that no one actually does log into Kubuntu with elevated permissions on boot!

[TwoFistedJustice]

@jglen490 I certainly didn't intentionally set it up to that. How can I check that and disable it if it's the case?

[TwoFistedJustice]

@claydoh, your suggestion worked. The discover app no longer opens on startup. Thank you!

[claydoh]

I don't think it can. I have in the past rebooted with something open that ran as root (the partition manager) and it failed after login. it has been a while since I have seen something like that happen.

There is a Software Sources setting to automatically install security updates automatically, but that is not using Discover/Packagekit, though the updater probably would show it happening.
Ubuntu does not look to have enabled this as a default setting as far as I can find, and it definitely would not happen suddenly at some point after an LTS has been released.
And Kubuntu could not (and would not do it) on their own as the changes to allow that would also affect Ubuntu, as this would involve changing Packagekit settings. Discover itself does not have this capability as far as I can tell.


This would also be a major news event with much complaints and loud discussion from everywhere, and I am not seeing it.
I also would no longer be here using and helping Kubuntu if this sort of thing of default were happening.

Looking for bug reports on KDE and elsewhere, but my real job is getting in the way