Try New Technology

For a while now (since a kernel update back when I was still on an LTS) I will randomly have apps “hang” when opening or the icon show it’s open on the taskbar while it has closed from the screen. Sometimes it happened a lot, and other times not at all. I couldn’t find any solution and all the hardware tested good.

Recently I found about out about the issue with Kernels after 6.1 experiencing stutter because of the AMD Ryzen fTPM (Bug 216989).

After turning off the fTPM in my BIOS I so far have not had any of these issues anymore!

In many causes this can be found under Security > Trusted Computing: “Security Device Support” set to Disabled will completely disable TPM. There are other options if you just want to turn of fTPM but support a hardware TPM.

Many articles will point to the issue being caused by not updating for a while; I update daily if not weekly and this has happened to me twice even with recently updating a day or two previously. My system is Manjaro KDE. The solution I have come up with is pulled together from many forum posts and lots of testing to figure out what worked.

Below are examples of the error messages I saw while running sudo pacman -Syuu:

error: libadwaita: key "06687A1D9D4FAB08B50FD92B3B94A80E50A477C7" is unknown
:: Import PGP key 06687A1D9D4FAB08B50FD92B3B94A80E50A477C7? [Y/n]
:: File /var/cache/pacman/pkg/libadwaita-1:1.3.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst is corrupted (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature)).
Do you want to delete it? [Y/n]
...
...
error: failed to commit transaction (invalid or corrupted package (PGP signature))
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.


While trying different fixes I had some of the below steps missing and was getting errors like the following, but once I did everything in order they cleared up:

==> ERROR: Trust database could not be updated.
error: command failed to execute correctly

1. Terminal: kate /etc/pacman.conf
2. Edit line 45, which should read SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional to instead read SigLevel = Optional TrustAll
3. Save
4. Terminal: sudo rm -rf /etc/pacman.d/gnupg/*
5. Terminal: sudo pacman-key --init
6. Terminal: sudo pacman-key --populate
7. Terminal: sudo pacman -Sy archlinux-keyrin
8. Terminal: sudo pacman -Syyu
9. Reboot
10. Change Line 45 of /etc/pacman.conf back to the default value (shown in Step 2)

NOTE: I tried a lot of different things before coming up with these exact steps. There is always a chance that something I did in the middle, which isn’t listed in the above steps was also part of the resolution and was omitted think it just “didn’t work.” If I run into this problem again in the future I will update this if I find anything else is needed.

This allowed me to update an individual package as well as an entire OS update.

While working to setup the Steam Deck as a device to game stream (via Steam Remote Play) from my desktop to the living room TV I couldn’t get the Xbox One (wireless) or Steam Controllers to pair to the Steam Deck. Lots of searching online finally pointed to the fact that both of them needed to have their firmware updated before they would pair correctly. Below are details and solutions:

Xbox One Controller:

• Issue: After you selected the controller on the Steam Deck for it to pair, the Steam Deck would show it was paired while the controller still blinked like it was waiting to pair.
• Fix: Update the firmware via the Xbox Accessories App (Microsoft/Window Store). Once you open the app and plugin the controller it will ask to update.
• URL: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1675200/discussions/1/3186865169882157042/

Steam Controller:

• Issue: It would never show up on the Steam Deck even when put into pairing mode.
• Fix: Update the firmware via the Steam. Open Steam then go to Settings > Controller > General Controller Settings, if the controller is plugged in it will show up near the bottom and you can click on it which will then sow a “Bluetooth FW” button to do the update.
• URL: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/1796-5FC3-88B3-C85F#how

I thought I had gotten all of the NVIDIA out of my machine now that I am running on and AMD GPU, but recently when installing an update to the kernel I saw the “kernel-nvidia###” being installed so I went hunting. Below is what I ended up needing to do, and I learned all this by piecing together multiple forums discussions online plus a little bit of guesswork.

Running find /etc/X11/ -name "*.conf" reported there was a “/etc/X11/mhwd.d/nvidia.conf” file found. I removed the file…actually I moved it to another location to be safe.

Running mhwd -l showed everything as expect:

0000:03:00.0 (0300:1002:73a5) Display controller ATI Technologies Inc:
——————————————————————————–
NAME                           VERSION      FREEDRIVER      TYPE
——————————————————————————–
video-linux                    2018.05.04            true                  PCI
video-modesetting       2020.01.13            true                  PCI
video-vesa                   2017.03.12            true                  PCI

Running mhwd -li showed there was a “video-hybrid-amd-nvidia-prime” config still loaded. I had to do the following to fully remove it:

1. Log Off
2. Press CTRL+ALT+F2 to launch TTY2
3. Run sudo mhwd --remove pci video-hybrid-amd-nvidia-prime
4. Run sudo reboot

NOTE: During the removal process it will look for and resolve/remove any dependency files automatically.

Now when running any of the following: find /etc/X11/ -name "*.conf", mhwd -l, or mhwd -li there is no sign of NVIDIA anywhere.

Posting this here since when I search for “Minecraft save location” online I tend to get told the file is at another location, which is incorrect. Below is the location to the saves on my machine:

~/.var/app/com.mojang.Minecraft/.minecraft/saves/