Ubuntu – How to purge Pantheon desktop?/Why does this window appear

pantheonppa

This browser window showing http://elementary.io/
appears after I installed then uninstalled the Pantheon environment:
enter image description here
^{Originally this occurred after (and possibly before) ppa-purging the PPA only when not connected to the internet – a window without a title that the window manager would ignore would appear, then dissapear. The grep process in the background was me searching the root of the system for clues to the problem – I found that some settings in gconf had been left which were causing a additional issue with the elementary theme set as default, which I then apt-get auotremoved)}

enter image description here
^{After apt-get autoremoving the elementary packages it opens properly in a web browser}

It seems to appear randomly (in a random web browser – I have Firefox, Chromium and Chrome installed – this started happening before installing Chrome), and after unlocking the screen, connecting to the internet etc. I think the URL it is pointing to is http://start.elementaryos.org which then redirects to http://elementary.io/

I installed it as shown here, and then removed the PPAs using ppa-purge, and then used apt-get autoremove on any remaining bits.

I know this a third-party PPA, but I don't think these issues should occur after removing it. It also causes issues with the Unity desktop as shown here. This feels uncomfortably like the things you get with adware/freeware/malware on windows..

Using Ubuntu 14.04 64bit

EDIT: By looking at htop I have found that the process is started as root the run as the active user (gamer) using su:

I have not a clue what point this has apart to encourage the rapid removal of everything relevant to elementaryOS…

Best Answer

ppa-purge is unneffective with that ppa, (elementary-os/daily) & the same with autoremove.

Open Synaptic, PPA1

click Settings, Repositories

PPA2

Click Add and add back the ppa you used previously & update sources.

Click the Reload button in the upper left corner, then Origin. Click on the entry for that ppa/now similar (entry highlighted above). With shift+click highlight all the packages & mark for removal, and remove them.

Then remove the PPA from your software sources Under Settings, Repositories.

Source: comment from @doug

Cause of the problem

When you have installed the elementary Pantheon desktop environment you have installed the elementary captive portal assistant too, which helps you to connect to different public WiFi networks. Its job is to open the portal website so that you can log in to the network. Actually it opens the https://elementary.io website. (It is the network's job to redirect you to their sign in portal.)

This logic is contained in this script /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/90captive_portal_test, which is being executed by the network assistant.

Solution

sudo chmod -x /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/90captive_portal_test

This will prevent the network assistant to execute the script.

Behind the scenes

This is the piece of the code, which causes the annoying popups:

#launch the browser, but on boot we need to wait that nm-applet starts
start_browser() {
    local user="$1"
    wait_for_process nm-applet
    $logger "Running browser as '$user' to login in captive portal"
    su "$user" -s /bin/sh -c "captive-login 2>/dev/null || sensible-browser start.elementaryos.org 2>/dev/null"
}

References:

Best Answer

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Cause of the problem

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Behind the scenes

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