On my system, krunner flashes up again and again. I kill the process, and then it is back, seconds later. It steals the focus from the window I am trying to type in.
After years of stable operation, this started to happen the other day. It happens whatever user I log in as, and the issue has persisted across reboots. I have tried swapping out my mouse and keyboard, but it still happens. I’m beginning to suspect a hardware issue?
Actually when problems first occurred, it was spectacle which was spawning 10s of windows per second. The other odd thing was that Ctrl-Alt-F3 to login with getty, when typing my username as soon as I typed a double letter (eg the second t in “lotto”), it was as if the second letter was ignored/invisible and the letter displayed was one character behind my typing. But this problem went away after a reboot and has not re-occurred; whatever its root cause, the issue now manifests itself with the krunner symptoms described above.
Hi Vektor, yeah I thought that’d be my next step. Did that, and sure enough the problem was still there. But I think I’ve figured it out: there was a Dell wireless keyboard/mouse dongle in one of the USB slots which I’d long since forgotten about (because I prefer wired peripherals). Pulled the dongle out, and problem solved… Thanks … Jason
Do you think it was receiving commands from the great beyond? Cool!
Or your wireless internet connected toaster, fridge, dish washer, clothes washer, dryer, hot water heater or toothbrush?
Nothing so exotic I’m afraid. I hate to admit that my workspace is shall we say a little messy, but it is possible that the wireless mouse had fallen unnoticed on the floor upside down (and was still turned on, despite being unused for several years), or was there already, but moved enough to trigger… Similar story with the keyboard - it’d have to be the keyboard - pressure on Alt Spacebar - to trigger krunner…
Though I can’t explain this way the earlier symptom with spectacle opening repeatedly, or the strange behaviour with the getty login.