0

I have been using Ubuntu now for twelve years. Last summer I fresh-installed 20.04 LTS on all my systems. On at least one of my systems (my laptop), every day it plays a three-beat, two note chime at 16:45 UTC (09:45 local). It's been doing it for ~3-4 months. I didn't do anything intentional to create this strange behavior. There's no popup, or new notification associated with the chime, just the sound. I don't know how to begin troubleshooting this. Where would I look to start figuring out what is chiming?

Update: Today, the chime sounded at 15:55 UTC (08:55 local) and again at the "normal" time, 16:45 UTC.

This is the command I used:

sudo journalctl --since "2022-09-29 08:50:00"  --until "2022-09-29 09:54:00"

This is the output from that command:

-- Logs begin at Thu 2021-10-28 06:14:58 MST, end at Thu 2022-09-29 10:07:19 MST. --
Sep 29 08:55:32 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Sep 29 09:01:35 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Error in cpuinfo: failed to parse processor information from /proc/cpuinfo
Sep 29 09:10:05 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Sep 29 09:10:07 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Error in cpuinfo: failed to parse processor information from /proc/cpuinfo
Sep 29 09:17:01 john-Q501LA CRON[18953]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Sep 29 09:17:01 john-Q501LA CRON[18954]: (root) CMD (   cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
Sep 29 09:17:01 john-Q501LA CRON[18953]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Sep 29 09:24:04 john-Q501LA systemd[1445]: Started Application launched by gnome-shell.
Sep 29 09:25:47 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Error in cpuinfo: failed to parse processor information from /proc/cpuinfo
Sep 29 09:30:01 john-Q501LA CRON[19298]: pam_unix(cron:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Sep 29 09:30:01 john-Q501LA CRON[19299]: (root) CMD ([ -x /etc/init.d/anacron ] && if [ ! -d /run/systemd/system ]; then /usr/sbin/invoke-rc.d anacron start >/dev/null; fi)
Sep 29 09:30:01 john-Q501LA CRON[19298]: pam_unix(cron:session): session closed for user root
Sep 29 09:30:38 john-Q501LA systemd[1]: Started Run anacron jobs.
Sep 29 09:30:38 john-Q501LA anacron[19317]: Anacron 2.3 started on 2022-09-29
Sep 29 09:30:38 john-Q501LA anacron[19317]: Normal exit (0 jobs run)
Sep 29 09:30:38 john-Q501LA systemd[1]: anacron.service: Succeeded.
Sep 29 09:38:27 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Sep 29 09:38:41 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
Sep 29 09:39:58 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Error in cpuinfo: failed to parse processor information from /proc/cpuinfo
Sep 29 09:39:59 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: [2443:2443:0929/093959.370379:ERROR:gl_utils.cc(319)] [.WebGL-0x347c0033ff00]GL Driver Message (OpenGL, Performance, GL_CLOSE_PATH_NV, High): GPU stall due>
Sep 29 09:40:46 john-Q501LA kernel: perf: interrupt took too long (3963 > 3937), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 50250
Sep 29 09:48:49 john-Q501LA gnome-shell[2156]: Error in cpuinfo: failed to parse processor information from /proc/cpuinfo`enter code here`
JohnCroc
  • 33
  • have you installed something like this? When it is time to go off, click on the notification area in the system tray... – graham Sep 28 '22 at 17:18
  • I'd check journalctl to see if there's any useful message(s) being logged at the time of the sound. You can use --since and --until to narrow down the output from journalctl. Depending on who has access to your system, I'd potentially be suspicious of friends and colleagues and check crontab and systemd timers before doing any further troubleshooting – frippe Sep 28 '22 at 17:26
  • @24601, nothing like that installed. Also no notifications in the system tray. – JohnCroc Sep 29 '22 at 16:55
  • @frippe, I've updated the OP to include the output from a journalctl command. Although there are some errors logged, there isn't anything logged at the times at which the chime sounds. Also, this is happening on my personal laptop. There are no friends or colleagues who have access to my system. – JohnCroc Sep 29 '22 at 17:21
  • Following because, as Ashleigh Brilliant said, I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.

    Have you checked your crontab?

    ―

     – MDeBusk Sep 29 '22 at 17:52
  • @frippe, I am the only configured user on the system (me and root). There is no crontab for me and I have never logged in as root, so I can't imagine there's a crontab for it. – JohnCroc Sep 29 '22 at 17:56
  • @MDeBusk, No crontab for me and I am the only user. – JohnCroc Sep 29 '22 at 17:57
  • I love a good mistery :D :D do you know the name of the sound it is playing? In theory you could do a system wide grep on the name if you know it. /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts$ has bark.ogg drip.ogg glass.ogg sonar.ogg but those are not chimes. Could it be something like tiktok or facebook app? Mail app? – Rinzwind Sep 29 '22 at 17:57
  • @RinzWind, I don't recognize the sound, but looking for playable sound files is a good idea. It can't be TikTok or Facebook because I don't use either of those. This morning, when it sounded, the only things I had open were System Monitor and Chrome. In chrome I had a tab with reddit open, as well as tabs for Outlook (MS webmail), and the NY Times Wordle. Tomorrow, I'm going to reboot just before 9:45 and not open any apps, to see if it's the OS or Chrome. I'm confident it's not System Monitor. – JohnCroc Sep 29 '22 at 20:49

0 Answers0