redshift autostarts without known cause and keeps respawning when killed

[raphaelcervantes]

When I try to kill redshift either through the Task Manager application or using the kill -9 command, redshift respawns as a new instance and makes the screen redder.

I did not do anything else to make redshift autostart, but it does autostart.

I have tried to find a systemd service that would autostart redshift but didn't find one. dmsearch% systemctl status redshift Unit redshift.service could not be found.

I have also tried to find something that might start redshift in files like .bash_profile or .xinitrc, but did not find any.

To Reproduce:

1. Install redshift.
2. Log-out.
3. Open up task manager.
4. Search for the redshift process.
5. Right click and click kill.

Expected behavior I expect the redshift to terminate when I ask it to without spawning a new process. I expect redshift to not autostart in the first place.

Error output/logs/screenshots If applicable, add screenshots to help explain your problem.

Software versions (please complete the following information):

• OS: Linux.
• Redshift version: 1.12
• Distribution: Manjaro-XFCE 7/11/2019 (rolling release)
• Redshift installed from: pacman

[6lancmange]

I thought the issue was slightly funny (probably due to the wording of it respawning), then I think it kind of happened to me too. Since I can't use the icon that disappeared, I have to close Redshift in the terminal. "redshift -x" closes it, and it immediately comes back on. Listing all processes and killing the Redshift one does work, though. (Plus I did set it up to autostart)

[baal-zebub]

Redshift does install a service, but it's a user service located in /usr/lib/systemd/user so you need to pass --user parameter to systemctl. This is what helped me stop redshift from restarting itself (esp. annoying when geoclue doesn't work for some reason and redshift keeps spitting out error messages every few seconds):

systemctl --user stop redshift-gtk.service
systemctl --user stop redshift.service
systemctl --user disable redshift-gtk.service
systemctl --user disable redshift.service

[taivlam]

You could try the procedure I suggested in #794 if systemd is giving you trouble.

However, I have not experienced any issues when installing Redshift GTK from pacman on Manjaro Xfce. Also, I just realized that both redshift.service and redshift-gtk.service are active on Manjaro Xfce when I run

$ systemctl list-unit-files --user

The only way I've gotten Redshift GTK to work on Manjaro Xfce is to manually add the Redshift GTK entry in the Application Autostart tab of Session and Startup. Fill out redshift-gtk in the Command field if you are happy with the default settings of Redshift; or use redshift-gtk -t 6500:4500 and replace the 4500 with a smaller temperature in Kelvin if you want a lower screen color temperature/redder screen at night.

However, YMMV and this may or may not work for you.

Edit: I would suggest the method of escalation for this issue: try @baal-zebub's suggestion first. If that doesn't work, then try my suggestion (editing systemd files for Redshift and Redshift GTK). I may have actually disabled both Redshift related services on Manjaro Xfce manually, but I can't remember exactly.

[naoliv]

systemctl --user stop redshift-gtk.service
systemctl --user stop redshift.service
systemctl --user disable redshift-gtk.service
systemctl --user disable redshift.service

This is not working here. redshift gets spawned back by systemd after a reboot.

With systemctl list-unit-files --user I can see that it's still enabled too.