Final Focal on Kubuntu 20.04

[kyonides]

There'll be no kaboom as long as you avoid adding the following (unsupported) PPA:

pparoject-K9/ppa

and then installing the package: Illudium-Q-36ESM.deb

Warning: Just don't do it!

O_o? Why do you say that? Is it some sort of malware? A true piece of crap? Or is it just extremely outdated?

[GreyGeek]

No booms here, either.
Just lightening fast smooooothness!

[NoWorries]

That is because AMD uses and supports the open amdgpu driver, and Mesa. Their AMDGPU-PRO is for professional graphics workstation usage, so seldom adds anything for most users, and is actually based on the open driver. I can see AMD not having a PRO driver for this integrated (with Intel) GPU.

There are now too many mesa PPAs, but oibaf is one of the best, but some don't like the daily updates.

The Padoka PPA is another long running PPA that is updated less often, though it has been a month since the last update there.
If you are a gamer, there are some others, I believe one if not both are maintained by different Valve developers.:

https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesaaco

https://launchpad.net/~kisak/+archive/ubuntu/kisak-mesa

Using the first one, I did see a small but noticeable improvement in Rise of the Tomb Raider as well as Metro Exodus.
I have not used the second one since I upgraded to a much newer refurb PC, and 'downgraded' the RX 560 to an older but more powerful RX 480 gpu

The newest AMD cards, especially the super high end ones require a much newer kernel

Thanks very much for the alternative drivers for the AMD card. I decided to try https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesaaco. Using glmark2, I got the fastest glmark2 score of 2422. My fastest score with oibaf was 3587 on the 10th Feb this year. I decided to remove the software source mesaaso in Muon and enable oibaf. Unfortunately I did not get any updates from oibaf. So as to not waste time, I decided to re-install and start again.

I found it interesting that when I used glmark2 after this fresh installation, the score was 839 I added the oibaf ppa and, with this new installation, the fastest glmark2 score was now 2520. My current kernel version is 5.4.0-17.

I decide to remove, the following packages to make sure the provided default AMD drivers were not implicated in the performance.

• xserver-xorg-amdgpu

• xserver-xorg-video-all

This change made no difference. I found it quite useful reading the proposed solutions given at https://linuxconfig.org/amd-radeon-u...r-installation. The comment here was that oibaf was ahead of the stable default opensource driver. To avoid frequent downloads from oibaf, I sometimes disable this ppa in Moun package manager.

[acheron]

Heads up that you will likely get this error on upgrade today: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...h/+bug/1866377

[Snowhog]

Getting it here. Is this an inconvenience error, or something more? Specifically, should one wait to reboot until this is fixed?

[GreyGeek]

I ran into it awhile ago. Here is where it is described, and how to fix it:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...h/+bug/1866372

Doing the manual edit didn't work for me (strangely), so I created the patch given in the last post on that bug by copying and pasting.

diff -Npaur a/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth b/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth
--- a/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth    2020-03-06 12:45:51.563041573 -0500
+++ b/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth    2020-03-06 12:50:15.335756844 -0500
@@ -119,6 +119,7 @@ case "${THEME_NAME}" in
         ;;
 
     *)
+        mkdir -p "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner"
         cp /usr/share/plymouth/ubuntu-logo.png "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth"
         cp /usr/share/plymouth/ubuntu-logo.png "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png"

I saved it as 1866732.patch in my home account and then ran it from a root console while in my home account using the following command:

patch /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth < 1866372.patch

It worked.

Adding that line was an easy edit to /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth to make, so I don't understand why my edit didn't work and that patch did.

[Snowhog]

Editing the file and reinstalling plymouth also didn't work for me. When it failed, edited the file again, and the added line wasn't there. Hmm??

Where did you save the diff file? In /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks?

[GreyGeek]

Editing the file and reinstalling plymouth also didn't work for me. When it failed, edited the file again, and the added line wasn't there. Hmm??

Where did you save the diff file? In /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks?

No, I saved it under my home account and as root executed the patch command from there as well.

[Snowhog]

Executing the patch fails here:

patching file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth
Hunk #1 FAILED at 119.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth.rej

ADDED:
Well, copied the patch content, pasted it into the file in nano, exited nano, ran: sudo su - and then cd'd into /home/paul and ran the patch command again. This time it worked.

[GreyGeek]

Executing the patch fails here:

patching file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth
Hunk #1 FAILED at 119.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth.rej

ADDED:
Well, copied the patch content, pasted it into the file in nano, exited nano, ran: sudo su - and then cd'd into /home/paul and ran the patch command again. This time it worked.

The "ADDED" is, in essence, what I did. I edited my first post to make that clearer.

[NoWorries]

I must be living a charmed existence as, after the updates this morning, I got a few unusual informative messages which I ignored as part of the "normal" occurrence with a pre-released version.

Anyhow, my understanding is that plymouth does the graphics during bootup. When I re-booted all was normal and I could not fault the system in any way - as stable as ever!

[GreyGeek]

I must be living a charmed existence as, after the updates this morning, I got a few unusual informative messages which I ignored as part of the "normal" occurrence with a pre-released version.

Anyhow, my understanding is that plymouth does the graphics during bootup. When I re-booted all was normal and I could not fault the system in any way - as stable as ever!

So, when you did the update earlier, you did not get the failure of the initramfs to install over the previous version?
What happens when you do a "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt full-upgrade" ?

[NoWorries]

So, when you did the update earlier, you did not get the failure of the initramfs to install over the previous version?
What happens when you do a "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt full-upgrade" ?

I have just rebooted after having been through several updates and when I do a fresh update and full-upgrade I get a list of possible missing firmware relating to amdgpu because I have an AMD video card. At the end I get

cp: cannot create regular file '/var/tmp/mkinitramfs_Th52XT/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png': No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-17-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

These errors do not seem to stop my system from working in any way that I have noticed.

BTW, the initiramfs versions that I have are all at 0.136ubuntu1 and the available version is the same.

Is there anything you can suggest that I try, to show that these errors compromise my system?

[GreyGeek]

I have just rebooted after having been through several updates and when I do a fresh update and full-upgrade I get a list of possible missing firmware relating to amdgpu because I have an AMD video card. At the end I get

cp: cannot create regular file '/var/tmp/mkinitramfs_Th52XT/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png': No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-17-generic with 1.
dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure):
installed initramfs-tools package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
initramfs-tools
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

These errors do not seem to stop my system from working in any way that I have noticed.

BTW, the initiramfs versions that I have are all at 0.136ubuntu1 and the available version is the same.

Is there anything you can suggest that I try, to show that these errors compromise my system?

One of the posts in the bug report suggested the following method to find what may be causing the problem:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugr...cgi?bug=922754

You might find some of Bash's debugging functions useful when trying to
trace your own problem:

1. Change the problematic hook script to use #!/bin/bash
2. Set the following variable:
PS4=$'$? \\ (${BASH_SOURCE[0]}:${LINENO}): ${FUNCNAME[0]:--} [SHLVL=${SHLVL} BASH_SUBSHELL=${BASH_SUBSHELL}]\n '
3. Add 'set -x' at the point where you want to start tracing

That adds current line and function information to the normally terse
result of using 'set -x', which I find makes it a lot easier to figure
out what is going on in a complex shell script that sources lots of
files and makes use of lots of functions, etc.

And, there are other possible solutions:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1136...lling-updating

[NoWorries]

Executing the patch fails here:

patching file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth
Hunk #1 FAILED at 119.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth.rej

ADDED:
Well, copied the patch content, pasted it into the file in nano, exited nano, ran: sudo su - and then cd'd into /home/paul and ran the patch command again. This time it worked.

I got exactly the same output, ie

patching file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth
Hunk #1 FAILED at 119.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth.rej

I had the patch file in my home directory, did sudo su, ran the patch and I got this error. I have two systems with 20.04 and both give the same result.

What have I missed or done wrong?