I have been trying to figure out this issue where, sometimes, fluidsynth process starts automatically at boot. When it does, I can't end the process in System Monitor. I have to pull a killall -9 fluidsynth in the terminal.
Some time ago I left this post (viewtopic.php?t=25032) on LinuxMusicans about QSynth not shutting down after I had used it. At that time, what I was seeing was that, after closing QSynth, the QSynth entries in QjackCtl weren't disappearing. I hadn't yet realized that this fluidsynth process was auto-starting and couldn't be closed normally. So I think what I thought was QSynth not closing was actually this fluidsynth-auto-start issue.
This issue started with Ubuntu Studio 22.04 and didn't occur in Kubuntu 20.04 (which used the Ubuntu Studio wrapper over it).
I posted a very long post about the issue here (https://askubuntu.com/questions/1446116 ... -how-to-so) at AskUbuntu, which explains everything in detail and contains some system outputs, but I'm wondering if any Linux Musicians might know what's happening. It's obviously pretty strange to have one out of a dozen synths (or any synth) auto-start at boot - stranger still that it doesn't always happen. Nowhere that I can see - in the system settings or in systemd - is fluidsynth marked to be auto-started. And as I mentioned, it only happens on some boots.
After leaving that post at AskUbuntu I noticed something else: in the post, I point out that the auto-started fluidsynth seems to be using /usr/share/sounds/sf3/default-GM.sf3. So I took a look at that soundfont file... or what I thought was a soundfont file. This is actually a link, which points to
/etc/alternatives/default-GM.sf3
This, in turn, is also a link, which points to
/usr/share/sounds/sf3/MuseScore_General_Lite.sf3
Notice that following the links brings me back full circle to a different soundfont file in the original folder. Another interesting thing is that, when I use QSynth, I don't actually use a .sf3 soundfont. I load a .sf2 soundfont of the same name. So this file which fluidsynth is opening when it auto-starts is not one I have ever used. I have also never opened MuseScore.
Does anyone have an idea what might be the cause of this and how to stop it? As I said, there are more details in the post I linked to, but I can post additional info here is anyone wants.