Help me solve several problems with Redshift on Lubuntu 21.04

I have multiple issues with Redshift.

The first issue has to do with two Redshift instances running simultaneously. There are five processes in GNOME System Monitor as seen in this image, but I think that there are two instances because I see two icons in the system tray as shown here, and both act like two instances. E.g., if I place my redshift.conf file in ~/.config then reboot, the two will fight each other, continuously changing from red to no red during the day.

However, if I install Redshift afresh, there's only one instance. The problem arises when I reboot.

The next issue has to do with my redshift.conf file. I've set it up correctly, with the right lat and lon, both negative because I live in the Americas. But, the redness effect is applied during the day regardless. This happens with one Redshift instance. I've described above what happens with two.

And lastly, Redshift comes back after I close it, even with autostart disabled. E.g., if I click on "Quit," the redness effect goes away if any, the icon in the system tray disappears, then a new one comes up and so does the redness effect if applicable. This happens when there are two instances and when there's only one instance.

A few things worth noting are that I'm on Lubuntu 21.04 and I installed the status icon program to control Redshift and Redshift itself via Discover.

Also, here's the content of the redshift.conf file:

[redshift]
; Set the day and night screen temperatures
temp-day=5800
temp-night=4800
; Enable/Disable a smooth transition between day and night
; 0 will cause a direct change from day to night screen temperature.
; 1 will gradually increase or decrease the screen temperature
transition=1
; Set the screen brightness. Default is 1.0
;brightness=0.9
; It is also possible to use different settings for day and night since version 1.8.
;brightness-day=0.7
;brightness-night=0.4
; Set the screen gamma (for all colors, or each color channel individually)
gamma=0.9
;gamma=0.8:0.7:0.8
; Set the location-provider: 'geoclue', 'gnome-clock', 'manual'
; type 'redshift -l list' to see possible values
; The location provider settings are in a different section.
location-provider=manual
; Set the adjustment-method: 'randr', 'vidmode'
; type 'redshift -m list' to see all possible values
; 'randr' is the preferred method, 'vidmode' is an older API
; but works in some cases when 'randr' does not.
; The adjustment method settings are in a different section.
adjustment-method=randr
; Configuration of the location-provider:
; type 'redshift -l PROVIDER:help' to see the settings
; e.g. 'redshift -l manual:help'
[manual]
lat=-35
lon=-55
; Configuration of the adjustment-method
; type 'redshift -m METHOD:help' to see the settings
; ex: 'redshift -m randr:help'
; In this example, randr is configured to adjust screen 1.
; Note that the numbering starts from 0, so this is actually the second screen.
[randr]
screen=0

Any ideas?

1 Answer

I had the same problem after upgrading from 20.10 to 21.04.

It seems that there is one instance started by systemd (which crashes and gets restarted several times) and one instance started via the app itself by enabling autostart (which creates an entry ~/.config/autostart/redshift-gtk.desktop)

By removing redshift-gtk.desktop the flickering stopped, but redshift-gtk still crashed. I assume that it was either started to early or was missing a DISPLAY env-variable.

I had a hard time to remove redshift from systemd. Disabling or masking the redshift-gtk.service did not work. Still crashed on startup. I found that you have to disable the service with:

sudo systemctl --global disable redshift-gtk
sudo systemctl --global disable redshift

If you then enable the autostart via ~/.config/autostart/redshift-gtk.desktop it works as expected.