You're not paranoid if...

[GaryT]

Yes, if they really are out to get you.

Lately I've seen some unexplained happenings.  I'm using 10.04.

One that happens now and then, is that my first three programs will load 
automatically on boot.

1.  A Terminal screen gets created, which I always start it with ^T
2.  Firestarter - yes because it's always handy to see who is connected
3.  Thunderbird.

Actually when this happens, it misses the second one which is Wireshark.

I always kill them all and start at the beginning.  My normal (manual) 
start up routine is:

Terminal (for UFW)...
Wireshark....
Firestarter....
Thunderbird.

The reason I start over is, I didn't arrange for this to happen. 
Something else is causing the event to take place.

(a) could these programs be loaded by some obscure process which might 
take complete control?    I don't know.

(b) Precisely why would such an event miss out on loading Wireshark?

It smells, in fact it stinks and I want to get to the bottom of it.


That is just one of several happenings, and I haven't written them all 
down because it's a damn nuisance and stopping to write notes would 
simply add to the irritating time wasting. And this one is the most 
frequent and is easy to remember and describe.

Anyway, if I run ps aux after a reboot and save the list of processes to 
a text file, does somebody out there know enough about Ubuntu to be able 
to examine the many processes that were loaded on boot and pick out any 
that don't belong?  Or, any that look very suspicious?

Then I want to learn how to trace the process back to its starting point 
and if possible ascertain precisely what it's doing etc.

Any help greatly appreciated.
GaryT