KDE Desktop goes blank

English Applications
1

So I just did a zypper DUP upgrade from Suse 11.4 to 12.1 and after fixing a couple issues I had expected (mainly digital audio pass through) I ran into something strange that I am not even sure how to start trouble shooting. So while im actively using the system the desktop just goes blank, not the active windows running but the underlying desktop. The task manager, system tray, all widgets, the wall papers, etc… I can still move the mouse to the upper left of the screen to easily select between open windows, and the compositing effects still seem to be working. But I cant seem to get the desktop back up and running, I dont see any errors in /var/log/messages that appear to have anything to do with it, and the .xsession_errors file only has messages about gpg in it.


~> uname -a
Linux baaldesk 3.1.0-1.2-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Nov 3 14:45:45 UTC 2011 (187dde0) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Can anyone point me in the direction to start looking for what may be causing this, or does anyone have a resolution for this. It seems to happen after about 20-30 minutes after a login.

2

Alright so I actually timed it this time and it happened to be right around 15 minutes after the start of the kde session.

3

Some additional details. The following is from /var/log/Xorg.0.log but the same info was also written to /var/log/kdm.log seems to point to an issue with the nvidia driver


   947.644] [mi] EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.
   947.644] 
Backtrace:
   947.668] 0: /usr/bin/Xorg (xorg_backtrace+0x26) [0x462396]
   947.668] 1: /usr/bin/Xorg (mieqEnqueue+0x201) [0x45c911]
   947.668] 2: /usr/bin/Xorg (xf86PostMotionEventM+0xa3) [0x482203]
   947.668] 3: /usr/bin/Xorg (xf86PostMotionEventP+0x37) [0x4822f7]
   947.668] 4: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/input/evdev_drv.so (0x7f61f2d91000+0x4b2e) [0x7f61f2d95b2e]
   947.668] 5: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x6f7c7) [0x46f7c7]
   947.668] 6: /usr/bin/Xorg (0x400000+0x11ebfe) [0x51ebfe]
   947.668] 7: /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x7f61fa7b2000+0xfd00) [0x7f61fa7c1d00]
   947.668] 8: (vdso) (0x7fff1d3af000+0x770) [0x7fff1d3af770]
   947.668] 9: (vdso) (__vdso_gettimeofday+0x2b) [0x7fff1d3afa1b]
   947.668] 10: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x8a185) [0x7f61f49d1185]
   947.668] 11: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0xfdfee) [0x7f61f4a44fee]
   947.668] 12: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x47f302) [0x7f61f4dc6302]
   947.668] 13: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x47f4ce) [0x7f61f4dc64ce]
   947.668] 14: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x47b7aa) [0x7f61f4dc27aa]
   947.668] 15: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x435677) [0x7f61f4d7c677]
   947.668] 16: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x44c621) [0x7f61f4d93621]
   947.668] 17: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x1522d6) [0x7f61f4a992d6]
   947.668] 18: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x1585ae) [0x7f61f4a9f5ae]
   947.668] 19: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x15a6ef) [0x7f61f4aa16ef]
   947.668] 20: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x15e4c8) [0x7f61f4aa54c8]
   947.668] 21: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x127f22) [0x7f61f4a6ef22]
   947.668] 22: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/drivers/nvidia_drv.so (0x7f61f4947000+0x43c327) [0x7f61f4d83327]
   947.668] 23: /usr/lib64/xorg/modules/updates/extensions/libglx.so (0x7f61f8021000+0x419feb) [0x7f61f843afeb]
4

I’d try to switch to a console (ctl-alt-F4 for example) and check out which process appears to be stuck…

5

So I downloaded and ran the bin version of nvidia drivers, rather than using the repos. The message went away but the issue didnt. Now I dont see anything in the logfiles that points to anything going on.

Also nothing is showing up abnormal in the running processes, nothing running away with cpu or memory

6

Go here & give this a shot especially the 1st 4 step process maybe that’ll help.
If all goes well after those steps you’ll have 6 hours.

7

I assume the here was supposed to be a link, can you post where to go?

8

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/how-faq-forums/unreviewed-how-faq/469147-how-stop-10-minute-screen-blanking-kde.html

9

Yeah I saw those threads, however I dont believe the issue I had falls under that, as my screen did not blank out entirely and it didnt happen after inactivity. The desktop would go blank (panels, widgets, desktop wallpaper, desktop icons/folders etc…) while being actively used and the applications already open continued to be display, compositing effects were still there. The underlying desktop blanked out not the entire screen.

With that being said I ended up logging in as a different user and it didnt occur (that user had only been on the system since I installed 11.4). Since it didnt occur with that user I figured it had to be something within the kde configuration for that specific user, so I moved the .kde4 directory out and everything now appears to be functioning. I copied back a couple configurations to certain apps so I didnt completely lose all my old settings but it did take a while to set things up the way I like. Since this happened specifically with the one user and not the other im guessing it was something to do with a configuration that was left over from a version of kde from openSuse 11.1-11.3. Yes I probably should have done a clean install but I truly hate configuring a system from scratch.

10

With that being said I ended up logging in as a different user and it didnt occur (that user had only been on the system since I installed 11.4). Since it didnt occur with that user I figured it had to be something within the kde configuration for that specific user, so I moved the .kde4 directory out and everything now appears to be functioning. I copied back a couple configurations to certain apps so I didnt completely lose all my old settings but it did take a while to set things up the way I like. Since this happened specifically with the one user and not the other im guessing it was something to do with a configuration that was left over from a version of kde from openSuse 11.1-11.3. Yes I probably should have done a clean install but I truly hate configuring a system from scratch.

That is a good approach for problems like these, and well done for tracking it down, and reporting the steps that you took so that others might benefit.

11

@ deano,
Thanks for putting in the link. Don’t get how that happened looked right in the preview. I’ll double check the post from now on.
@baaldemon,
I learned how to deal with such a situation if it happens to me, Thanks!

12

So Ive managed to track the issue down to the exact cause. Apparently the issue is with gcaldaemon, when it is running this blanking happens at 15 minute intervals. So whenever I was logging in, my autostart script would kick off gcaldaemon and 15 minutes later the issue would occur.

So I guess I now need to figure out why gcaldaemon is doing this, Ill head off to their support and see if anyone else has experienced this, it makes absolutely no sense.