KDE freezes completely (at random)

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#1

Not sure if this is the appropriate forum for it. I’ve read a few other threads on KDE freezing since installing 11.3, but none seemed to have an appropriate solution.

A little background: I just upgraded from YaST from 11.2 to 11.3. I turned off most desktop effects in KDE (I’ve got a slow computer, don’t really need it to be slower). After installing, I noticed that KDE would slowdown drastically at times. I give it a few seconds, and it’s back to normal. This normally happens during graphical events, such as popups from Filezilla/KVIrc/Chrome.

However, every now and then (I typically notice it at least once every day), the system will entirely hard lock. I cannot Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, I cannot switch to a terminal, I cannot move the mouse or interact with the keyboard in any way.

I can however FTP/SSH/Samba into the machine. If I had music or video playing on the machine before the lockup, the audio will continue as normal, including moving to the next track. I can gracefully restart it from SSH, though I typically just end up jabbing the restart button since the computer I can do that from is even slower than this machine.

lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P Processor to AGP Controller (rev 02)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Processor to PCI to CSA Bridge (rev 02)
00:06.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82875P/E7210 Processor to I/O Memory Interface (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 PRO AGP [Radeon HD 3650]
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Series]
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82547EI Gigabit Ethernet Controller
03:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy (rev 04)
03:02.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs SB Audigy Game Port (rev 04)
03:02.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Creative Labs SB Audigy FireWire Port (rev 04)
03:04.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)

What kind of logs/extra information is necessary? I already looked at https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=615649, but that didn’t look relevant as it refers to an Intel graphics chipset, and I have an ATI video card.

Thanks!

#2

I think you will find a lot of people are going to say that a clean install is the only way to go, though you can save your home area, if you made a separate one, by just not formatting it and creating the same user name again. What I might suggest is to check out some of your log files to see if more information can be found. I happen to have written a script that can automate the viewing of nine log files. Read about it at:

S.L.A.V.E. - SuSE Logfile Automated Viewer Engine - Version 2.00

Now what would I do if I was in your shows? I would go into Software Management and look at all of the installed applications. I would look at the versions tab to make sure everything for which an updated application exists for your new version has been loaded. When the system slows down, but is not dead, I would load the System Monitor and sort by CPU % to identify what might be slowing you down. You know that hitting the reset button is challenging fate, one of those resets will have you doing a full install from scratch anyway.

Thank You,

#3

If you read the comments section of the bug you’ve referenced, you’ll see that David Mills has also had this problem with ATI HD4550 card. Whether he has opened another bug as suggested I can’t say, but you’re obviously not alone.

#4

I had the same Problems with the Radeon-Driver.
Installing the fglrx like discribed here (german) or here, fixed the problem, but i got several other problems like a not working glxinfo.

Christian

#5

This might be related to this bug https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=617530
the case of which has been reopened. Implementing the new kernel does not solve the problem.

#6

It seems that the issue is now resolved, see
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=617530
After installing the new kernel, I did not get any more freeze. I’m crossing the fingers :wink: