First I would like someone to tell me a clean way of ending a KDE session without the init 3 command. I have some minor problems with KDE and init 3; init 5 is a bad work-around…
Having weird KDE, dbus-daemon and Libre Office problems? Are you are a KDE/Suse dev member looking to fix a users bug? Just plain curious? Read-below…
The long rambling…
I have two computers running OpenSuse 11.4. The difference is hardware. Let me list the problems…
I get this strange error with KDE from time to time (about once a week) where I go to open a window and the klauncher icon by the mouse pointer is stuck bouncing and bouncing and bouncing… so basically the program is crashed or something. The funny thing is if I close an already existing application all of a sudden all the applications I started open up immediately. It is as if it was waiting for the other applications to end to start. This is a thread synchronization error. This problem only occurs on the computer with the new hardware (more on that later). The fix is to run init 3 and init 5 in root from a tty terminal (press ctrl+F1 to get tty1, then ctrl+F7 (or ctrl+F8) to go back to KDE).
Another problem is from time to time “dbus-daemon” is running with 100% CPU utilization. There is no apparent reason, the fix in this case is from the terminal run init 3 and init 5 in root again… I do not understand this problem. This problem will occur on both computers… I know there are fixes for this problem (ie find the application that is driving dbus-daemon to 100% and kill it update it etc.) however I am not aware of an approach to tracking down the offending client program.
So you get the picture I am using init a lot to deal with KDE bugs. This has some strange consequences, for example if there is an unsaved Libreoffice document will attempt to give a “do you want to save…” window after the init 3 command. Since X is shutdown that window never appears. Then there is this weird state where the LO application is open and running but nothing is happening. Furthermore when init 5 is called. For some reason the system knows that the old kde session has some left-overs and starts in the ctrl+F8 tty instead of the ctrl+F7 tty. In the new session a kill command needs to be issued to stop the old LO, to allow a new LO session in the new KDE session. If you do not give that kill command to the old LO, your call to LO will quit immediately because it knows there is a hanging LO session. That hanging LO session will execute the command but because it is operating with a stale X session no window will ever appear…
Hardware dependency?
The first problem is strange because it only effects the one computer. This one computer does have some hardware issues See Below. I know it seems strange… but I think differences in HW can affect KDE. For example lets say that the driver fix I posted below or some other HW issue causes some thread blocking behavior. This may result in a semaphore being locked and then lead to thread locking issues for other threads. So possibly the threads that open windows might get locked in this weird way because some other thread is locked in a driver? I do not know just speculating…
Sorry to hear of your problems pilotmm. You did not mention if you are using a 32 or 64 bit system and just what version of KDE that you are using. The original KDE version for openSUSE 11.4 is KDE 4.6. Just a few thoughts on the subject. Its sounds like a hardware issue, but its odd to happen on two different systems. You need to know that your video hardware and the video driver loaded can often cause such problems. In openSUSE 11.4, using the kernel load option nomodeset often can stop such issues though you may lose 3D support unless you install a proprietary video driver such as those from nVIDIA and AMD. Also, consider that we are creatures of habit and if one of our actions causes a problem on one PC, we likely did the same thing on the other and having similar problems on two different computers might just indicate we created the very same problem twice. Since in general no one is expressing such an issue with KDE, at least not with version 4.6, lets think about any other setup things we might have done identical on both computers as it might be important to this problem. We do want to help so please hang in there and give us a chance.
I feel like calling you James... but not completely sure what the J really stands for...
First off want to thank-you for the fast and friendly reply... I need to clarify a couple things. In the grand scheme these problems are infrequent and minor... as in once a week or so... problem 1) I suspect is a hardware problem because that only occurs on the newest computer that had an earlier driver problem (see the linked post on that driver problem). Problem 2) is much more rare and I think I have only found it once or twice on both computers... I know I am not alone on this problem and from what I understand the root cause is an offending client program I just do not know a good way of tracking that down. Problem 3) is just a consequence of the other two when you use init 3 ; init 5 commands to fix the problem....
Because problem 1 and 2 are overall minor but intermittent I feel the reward vs. effort ratio is low so not so enthusiastic about solving the root cause. However, I like to avoid zombie applications... I use this machine for running long and large simulations and cannot afford to restart just because I have a silly bug... yet too many zombies and those simulations start thrashing hard-drives because of limited RAM. So I would like to know some clean ways of restarting KDE.... I guess I could log out then run init 3... any other thoughts would be appreciated...
The long rambling had multiple purposes... but really just wanted to report about my experience. I figure that newbs with the problem want to know about the init 3 and init 5 approach to fixing some of these problems... For the experts maybe there is something they know that will be the perfect fix... For developers I wanted them to know about these issues so they could built better code... ie... init 3 should kill all child processes regardless....
So to answer your requests.... here is the info on my machines...
On 10/06/2011 04:56 AM, pilotmm wrote:
> For developers I wanted them to know
> about these issues so they could built better code…
Hi Pilot Mike,
unfortunately “developers” seldom venture into these fora (primarily
populated with volunteer users helping needy users)…
for your purposes of informing ‘newbs’ and (some) ‘experts’ this forum
is a good place to do that and i encourage you to continue…but, to
actually have an impact with the developers and foment “better code” you
need to (please!) raise your observations/questions where the developer
do congregate to discuss and work on solutions to problems raised…
to reach the developers of openSUSE then the place(s) to do so are
listed in the wiki
<http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Communication_channels>, use that URL
as a stepping stone the mailing lists, and the IRC channels.
to recommend a new feature or other improvement to openSUSE, then the
place to do so is in openSUSE FATE <https://features.opensuse.org/>.
pilotmm I must agree with the observation made by stakanov in that down grading KDE to version 3.5 when the original distribution version is 4.6 can cause all kinds of problems and is very unlikely to raise any concerns by our developers. Are you aware that it is possible to run some KDE 3.5 applications while maintaining the KDE version 4.6 as your base? Can you explain why you have downgraded KDE to version 3.5? Now I have no reason to change QT, but I do run several games from KDE 3.5 and Kaffeine from 3.5 to play movies. At least with openSUSE 11.4, that is still a viable option.
Yeah… I do not know why kded --version spits out 3.5… when dolphin and everything else is 4.6. This is a default install of KDE just like the openSuse 11.4 developers insisted. So I cannot explain the differences in the version. Truth is I pulled the kded command from the forums of another 11.4 user and their result was the same… maybe some #define was missed in the update? I do not know…
Just for fun I checked the versioning on several KDE commands…
It seems that I have the 4.6 version of KDE but the individual commands have their own version. That may be the source of the confusion? Either way I am quite sure I have the default install of KDE. I would not subject myself to downgrading…
user@host:> kate --version
Qt: 4.7.1
KDE Development Platform: 4.6.00 (4.6.0) "release 6"
Kate: 3.6.0
user@host:> konsole --version
Qt: 4.7.1
KDE Development Platform: 4.6.00 (4.6.0) "release 6"
Konsole: 2.6
user@host:> kontact --version
Qt: 4.7.1
KDE Development Platform: 4.6.00 (4.6.0) "release 6"
Kontact: 4.4.10
user@host:> konversation --version
Qt: 4.7.1
KDE Development Platform: 4.6.00 (4.6.0) "release 6"
Konversation: 1.3.1
Just for fun I checked the versioning on several KDE commands…
It seems that I have the 4.6 version of KDE but the individual commands have their own version. That may be the source of the confusion? Either way I am quite sure I have the default install of KDE. I would not subject myself to downgrading…
So I guess that the program kded is at 3.5 which does not matter. You then appear to be using KDE 4.6. Next, tell us about your video hardware. What GPU do you have and have you loaded any special video drivers?
The dbus daemon claiming all of a CPU’s cycles is mentioned in several threads. I have the problem, probably more than once a week. Fortunately, running the 32-bit version of openSUSE 11.4 on a Toshiba laptop, the twin 64-bit cores (Intel i5) show up on the System Monitor as four cpu’s and dbus maxes out only one at a time. Thus I’m always able to do some business, but the machine is slow. Other specs: KDE 4.6.00; Linux 2.6.37.6-0.7-default i686; Intel’s video driver. Almost always have open LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, and DOSemu (running ACT2 for DOS). Probably have a PDF open in Okular and System Monitor (which I use regularly to kill processes).
Sure would like to have dbus behave better.
The dbus daemon claiming all of a CPU’s cycles is mentioned in several threads. I have the problem, probably more than once a week. Fortunately, running the 32-bit version of openSUSE 11.4 on a Toshiba laptop, the twin 64-bit cores (Intel i5) show up on the System Monitor as four cpu’s and dbus maxes out only one at a time. Thus I’m always able to do some business, but the machine is slow. Other specs: KDE 4.6.00; Linux 2.6.37.6-0.7-default i686; Intel’s video driver. Almost always have open LibreOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, and DOSemu (running ACT2 for DOS). Probably have a PDF open in Okular and System Monitor (which I use regularly to kill processes).
Sure would like to have dbus behave better.
Still grasping at straws here. How much memory do your have? What is your swap partition size? Have you looked to see if the swap partition is being used? Any particular reason to use 32 bit these days?
RAM is 4G (nominal), but SysInfo says 2.9 GiB (about 1/3 used in SysMon). Swap is 2 GB, of which none is used at the moment (from SysMon).
Using the 32-bit version to support DOSemu–haven’t taken the time to test the 64-bit ll.4 (which is running on another machine on my desk) for the 32-bit extensions needed to run DOSemu. Which begs the Q: why? ACT2 holds about 5000 contacts, which I’m reluctant to try to migrate (again–failed last time). AND I’ve not found a Linux app with comparable functions to ACT (specifically, the ability to keep unlimited notes associated with a contact, calendering, and a really fast search capability by name, company, key word, or by any field plus customizable drop-down menus for each field). ACT also generates reports that I can customize. The apps I’ve found separate address book, calendaring, and notes. I may have missed it, so suggestions of Linux apps are solicited
