Weather Applet Hacked?

[mintbird]

I've been using weather@mockturtl applet in the system tray for years. Today it notified me that it couldn't find my location. When I checked the applet's settings I could see that I had "Manual Location" toggled on, and the name of my town. When I scrolled over to see the rest of the location data it read "state of Frank Mortenson." I deleted this and began typing in the correct name of the state and immediately the phrase "Republic of Frank Mortenson" appeared. This happened a couple of times. I toggled off manual location and the applet quickly found a nearby town and showed weather data again.

But I uninstalled the applet anyway.

My questions:

1) what could cause this?

2) Is there any way to safely check a machine running Linux Mint for viruses/malware, etc?

[SMG]

You could check the ~/.xsession-errors file (a hidden file in your home directory) to see if there are any messages related to the applet. Maybe they will give a clue as to what might have happened.

Edited to add: Weather applet Readme indicates:

You can see Logs by opening the Cinnamon 'Looking Glass' debugger. You can open it by Right Clicking on your Panel (taskbar), then Troubleshoot->Looking Glass

Logs can be found under the Log Tab

[mintbird]

Thanks. It shows that the applet was struggling to refresh, but I'm not sure it gives any clue why. The Cinnamon Debugger Log only shows stuff from after rebooting.

Here's the relevant info:

Cjs-Message: 15:52:56.604: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
cinnamon-session[1214]: WARNING: t+21272.92036s: Detected that screensaver has left the bus
Cjs-Message: 16:07:58.317: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:22:58.701: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 15 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:22:58.701: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:23:14.111: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 15 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:23:14.111: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:23:29.338: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 30 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:23:29.339: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:23:59.660: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 45 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:23:59.661: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:24:45.048: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 60 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:24:45.049: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:25:45.467: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 75 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:25:45.467: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:27:00.714: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 90 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:27:00.715: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:28:31.057: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 105 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:28:31.057: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:30:16.411: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 120 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:30:16.411: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:32:17.062: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 135 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:32:17.063: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop

(cinnamon:1479): St-CRITICAL **: 16:34:27.980: cr_parser_new_from_buf: assertion 'a_buf && a_len' failed

(cinnamon:1479): St-CRITICAL **: 16:34:27.980: cr_declaration_parse_list_from_buf: assertion 'parser' failed
Cjs-Message: 16:34:32.439: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 150 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:34:32.439: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:37:02.843: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 165 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:37:02.843: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: App is currently refreshing, refresh skipped in main loop
Cjs-Message: 16:37:26.164: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:37:33.733: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Retrying in the next 15 seconds...
Cjs-Message: 16:37:38.727: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:37:57.198: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:38:12.322: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:38:26.045: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:38:26.569: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:38:48.345: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Error received caused by User, Pausing main loop.
Cjs-Message: 16:38:51.368: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Error received caused by User, Pausing main loop.
Cjs-Message: 16:39:02.806: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:39:22.925: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/error] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Error received caused by User, Pausing main loop.
Cjs-Message: 16:39:24.334: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Weather Information refreshed
Cjs-Message: 16:43:27.071: JS LOG: [LookingGlass/info] [weather@mockturtl#13]: Removing applet instance...
cinnamon-session[1214]: WARNING: t+27118.01923s: Playing logout sound '/usr/share/mint-artwork/sounds/logout.ogg'
cinnamon-session[1214]: WARNING: t+27118.23723s: Finished playing logout sound
cinnamon-session[1214]: WARNING: t+27118.23731s: Resuming logout sequence...
cinnamon-session[1214]: WARNING: t+27119.18509s: Requesting system restart...
cinnamon-session[1214]: WARNING: t+27119.18545s: Attempting to restart using systemd...
Gdk-Message: 17:39:15.793: cinnamon-session: Fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server :0.

[SMG]

Thanks. It shows that the applet was struggling to refresh, but I'm not sure it gives any clue why.

I do not know enough about the code to know exactly what is happening, but reading the info on the prior link I supplied, I would guess it is making a call to the specific provider you have set up. If there is an issue with that provider (supplying the weather info), I could see where the applet would be set up to retry.

I do not know if there is some kind of default value put in place if nothing is found or it needs to keep trying? I did some quick searches on the name to see if there might be some significance to it and after reading the resulst I still have no clue whether there is significance to it.

If you have (or want to create) a GitHub account, here linuxmint /cinnamon-spices-applets is where you could post to have the issue investigated.

[mintbird]

Hey, thanks for looking into it, SMG. Your help is much appreciated. Yah, it occurred to me that maybe the weird text "Republic of Frank Mortenson" might be a placeholder of some kind that the developer dropped in there. Dunno