Ark failing to extract archives

Just noticed today that Ark is failing to extract any archives for me.

I usually right-click on the archive, go to extract here, then Ark will extract the archive.

But now, Ark just shows up in the application/window list, with the loading icon, then just disappears.

I reinstalled ark, unrar and unzip but still no difference.

I’ve tried other archives apart from rar archives.

** For now, i just hit F4, and use “unrar e nameofarchive.rar” to extract any rar archives.

openSUSE - 13.1 x64
KDE- 4.11.3
Ark - 4.11.3-18.2
unrar - 5.0.11-2.1.6
unzip - 6.00-24.1.2

Does Ark work when you run it from a Konsole?

ark

If not, what error message do you get?

Yes it opens fine launching it from a Konsole window and from the KDE Menu. It also extracts files fine as well.

I did noticed that whenever i closed it, i got this message in the Konsole window

ark(1474)/kdeui (kdelibs) KXMLGUIClient::~KXMLGUIClient: 0x1aac668 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes. 

Can you open and extract your archives then?

You can directly specify an archive on the command line:

ark my_archive.rar

I did noticed that whenever i closed it, i got this message in the Konsole window

ark(1474)/kdeui (kdelibs) KXMLGUIClient::~KXMLGUIClient: 0x1aac668 deleted without having been removed from the factory first. This will leak standalone popupmenus and could lead to crashes. 

That’s “normal”. Just debug output, ark should work fine despite this.

Yes.

Yeah i know.

Ok.

So for now the shortest/quickest way is just pressing F4 in dolphin then either using unrar or ark.

Well, you could just left-click on the archive (to open it with ark) and then extract.

Do the other context menu entries work? (“Extract Archive to…”, “Extract Archive Here, Autodetect Subfolder”)

Are you sure it doesn’t work? It should just extract without opening any window or anything, so maybe you just think it didn’t work because no window appeared?

“Extract Archive Here” uses the following command line:

ark --batch --autodestination my_archive.rar

Does it work if you run this in Konsole? (you have to change the filename though, of course)

Nope, the Ark icon just bounces beside the cursor, also shown in the window list as loading.

Yes i am sure, as no new file/folder containing the archived data is created, plus what has always happened before is the extraction info is shown in the notification area of the KDE bar, like whenever you copy files/folders.

That works, used it there in a terminal window inside Dolphin.

But that is normal behaviour, as long as the files don’t exist already.
That’s why I asked.

Yes i am sure, as no new file/folder containing the archived data is created, plus what has always happened before is the extraction info is shown in the notification area of the KDE bar, like whenever you copy files/folders.

Right, I forgot about that.

That works, used it there in a terminal window inside Dolphin.

Hm. So just the context menu does not work.
Have you tried the others?

Try to run “kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental”, maybe that helps.

Please verify that the “Exec” line for “Extract Archive here” in /usr/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/ark_servicemenu.desktop is exactly this:

Exec=ark --batch --autodestination %F

Maybe there’s a faulty .desktop file in your home directory that overrides this?

ls ~/.kde4/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus

Yes, tried the others like you said before.

Closed Dolphin, ran it, tried “Extract here” still same issue.

Checked this, and it is the same as what you have replied with.

I do not have that directory, i have ~/.kde4/share/kde4/services/
which is a blank folder.

And did they work?

Well, sorry, I’m out of ideas now.
Apparently everything works correctly, just not that context menu…

And it works fine here with KDE 4.11.4.
So maybe there was a problem regarding this in 4.11.3 that got fixed?
4.11.4 should be released as update for openSUSE 13.1 soon anyway, so maybe it will work then for you again as well.

No

Thanks for the help, not a serious issue or anything, i’ll wait patiently and see if an update fixes things.

Did your problem solved? I got the same problem as you.

But I found out that, if I open dolphin with terminal. For example, in konsole, type ‘dolphin’, then extraction works! Try and see if it works for you.

Hello all,

I’m having a similar issue, not sure if it is exactly the same, if not feel free any moderator to split the topic (or just beat me on the head and make me open a new topic ;)).

I upgraded few days ago from 12.3 to 13.1 and ark , from that moment if I use the contextual menu to extract any zip the ark process just hangs. It doesn’t do anything at all. I have to kill it, otherwise at the next restart it will open an empty ark window.
Any other option (as far as I’ve been able to test) works: tar.gz, compress, open and extract, etc.

I tried to re-install some random packages related to zip (sorry, I don’t remember exactly which and I’m not even sure they are related to ark, semi-noob here, interested in learn but with too many other things to do…) but with no results.

Also, from time to time it starts working again, but I can’t find any correlation.

Any suggestion about what to do (even only to narrow the possibilities) would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Emanuele

That doesn’t sound exactly the same to me, since in your case Ark just hangs. And in your case it seems to happen only with zip files, correct?

Anyway, I cannot reproduce that either with KDE 4.11.4 or 4.11.5.

Is it related to certain zip files or does it happen for all of them?

Maybe those zip files are password protected and Ark is asking you for the password, but you just didn’t notice the dialog? (could have been opened in the background)

What happens if you left-click on a zip file to open it in Ark? Does it hang then as well?

Well, it’s not that I would describe with a different word than “hang” what cra1g321 described in his first post.
But probably it’s just because my English is not very good (and/or I’m not really into the terminology), sorry :shame:

Anyway, the full description is:

  • right click on a zip file
  • select any from “extract archive here” or “extract archive here, autodetect subfolder”
  • the process starts, the icon starts jumping close to the mouse pointer
  • nothing happens
  • open “system activity” and see the ark process there doing nothing
  • kill it <= if not at next restart an empty ark window is opened

I did some more testing:

  • zip <= “hangs” (definition of hangs is the one given in the steps above)
  • tar.gz <= works
  • tar.bz2 <= “hangs”
  • rar cannot test
    So… stupid me I didn’t test enough.

Another interesting:

  • right click on an archive file (zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2)
  • select “extract archive to…”
  • <= window freezes
    The only detail I can see is that the path is empty (does it may mean ark is not able to retrieve the path of the file for some reason?? No idea)
  • after quite a while (5 minute? Approx.), finally, comes back to life with the correct path (I just noticed forgetting it open while writing this post).

Funny thing: if I just rename the file from blabla.zip to blabla.tar.gz ark is able to extract it from the menu.

Ops, missed the rar part on the first message. I don’t have any at the moment, so I can’t say.

I didn’t expect many being able to replicate it, otherwise you’d have the forum full of messages I may suppose.
“Unfortunately” I’m running KDE 4.11.3 that I suppose is the one shipped with OpenSuse 13.1 (at least I found that after the upgrade and no notifications of changes).
Could you please point me to a guide/tutorial on installing a newer version of KDE?

As far as I have seen any.

No password protected zip.

As I wrote before it opens and extracts fine.

Well, AFAICR the OP didn’t talk of Ark hanging, just that “Extract here” is not working, i.e. it does nothing at all.

Anyway, the full description is:

  • right click on a zip file
  • select any from “extract archive here” or “extract archive here, autodetect subfolder”
  • the process starts, the icon starts jumping close to the mouse pointer
  • nothing happens
  • open “system activity” and see the ark process there doing nothing
  • kill it <= if not at next restart an empty ark window is opened

And does this recover if you let it run long enough?
As I said, I can’t reproduce that here at all. Neither with .zip nor with .tar.bz2.

Another interesting:

  • right click on an archive file (zip, tar.gz, tar.bz2)
  • select “extract archive to…”
  • <= window freezes
    The only detail I can see is that the path is empty (does it may mean ark is not able to retrieve the path of the file for some reason?? No idea)
  • after quite a while (5 minute? Approx.), finally, comes back to life with the correct path (I just noticed forgetting it open while writing this post).

I noticed this as well right now. But it didn’t take 5 minutes to recover, only a few seconds. Something similar happens when libreoffice opens a file select dialog with the KDE4 integration, so there seems to be some underlying problem.
Do you maybe have some drive mounted that isn’t reachable (network resource maybe) or is slow to access (CD-ROM f.e.)?

I didn’t expect many being able to replicate it, otherwise you’d have the forum full of messages I may suppose.
“Unfortunately” I’m running KDE 4.11.3 that I suppose is the one shipped with OpenSuse 13.1 (at least I found that after the upgrade and no notifications of changes).
Could you please point me to a guide/tutorial on installing a newer version of KDE?

13.1 shipped with KDE 4.11.2. There was an update to 4.11.3 via the standard update repo.
4.11.4 and 4.11.5 will be released as official updates for 13.1 as well, so you would just have to wait. (the 4.11.4 update should be released any day now)

If you do want to upgrade your KDE now, you could use the semi-official KDE repos:
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:KDE_repositories

ATM, there’s 4.11.5 in the KDE:Release:411 repo, and 4.12.0 in KDE:Release:412 (but tomorrow 4.12.1 will be released).

As I wrote before it opens and extracts fine.

I missed that somehow.
So it’s no general problem with Ark.
Maybe something dbus related or similar?
Do you experience other issues (hangs, freezes) as well?

One thing that could cause long freezes in the past was the kactivitymanagerd. Does Ark continue if you kill that when Ark hangs?
But I haven’t had any problems with this any more for quite some time…

One thing I wanted to mention as well but forgot:
Are you using the proprietary nvidia driver by chance?
The current versions (331.20 f.e.) have a bug that cause some interesting problems:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=858421

I had similar problem with 13.1 KDE (clean DVD install + 331.20 NVIDIA driver)
RAR extractions from context menu created additional ark process, which just hanged and didn’t extract anything.
Can’t reproduce the issue on KDE 4.11.3 + 304.117 (recommended legacy release for 400 series)
Not sure if it was driver fault or not, but it’s working fine atm.

Yes, this does indeed sound like that nvidia driver problem in your case, as the 304.xx driver does not have this issue.

Btw, the latest 331.38 should fix it as well, but that’s still only listed in the Beta section.

wolfi323 wrote:

>
> finders;2615923 Wrote:
>> I had similar problem with 13.1 KDE (clean DVD
install + 331.20 NVIDIA
>> driver)
>> RAR extractions from context menu created additional
ark process, which
>> just hanged and didn’t extract anything.
>> Can’t reproduce the issue on KDE 4.11.3 + 304.117
(recommended legacy
>> release for 400 series)
>> Not sure if it was driver fault or not, but it’s
working fine atm.
> Yes, this does indeed sound like that nvidia driver
problem in your
> case, as the 304.xx driver does not have this issue.
>
> Btw, the latest 331.38 should fix it as well, but
that’s still only
> listed in the Beta section.
>
331.38 was released yesterday. I will install after a
system backup later today. Will report back. Hoping it
solves the akonadi problems.

Russ

openSUSE 13.1(Linux 3.11.6-4-desktop x86_64|
Intel(R) Quad Core™ i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz|8GB DDR3|
GeForce 8400GS (NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-331.20)|KDE 4.12.0