Saturday, February 9, 2013

How to Stop Geoclue on Ubuntu Linux (without losing the clock)

For some reason in Ubuntu 12.04 (and possibly 12.10), the tray clock package (indicator-datetime) for unity has geoclue as a dependency. In other words, if you want to ditch geoclue, you lose your clock.

Here's a workaround:

1. Add the following to your /etc/hosts file (sudo gedit /etc/hosts):

127.0.0.1       geoname-lookup.ubuntu.com
127.0.0.1       videosearch.ubuntu.com
127.0.0.1       daisy.ubuntu.com
127.0.0.1       one.ubuntu.com
127.0.0.1       musicsearch.ubuntu.com

2. Change the permissions of the geoclue libs to prevent it from executing:

sudo chmod ugo-x /usr/lib/geoclue/geoclue-master

3. Restart. No more pesky connections to Canonical servers.