KDE4.3 (ver 155) lockups

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Anyone noticing that plasma just seems to drop off the scene for a bit every
so often.

This is on 11.1 with the latest uptodate KDE4.3

I cannot get any errors or anything but here is roughly what happens.

Start KDE, slowly after a period the plasma starts to eat at the CPU ( this
is on a triple-core ) I can see it slowly creeping up ( hopping between
cores ) up until it reaches around 20-25% ( can take up to an hour ) then it
just stops and disappears off the map goes for a walk and comes back again,
the delay till it comes back could be anything from 30secs to 5 mins ( have
not waited longer).

I have even just left it alone after login and not done a thing and slowly
it creeps up on the CPU, but it is not a runaway as far as I can tell and
the memory stays the same level, which is a shame as I could report a memory
leak.

No errors, crashes, no logs, the screen just stops responding any apps on
screen still function I can still browse with a browser, read news etc as
long as the app is open on the desktop before this happens.

The mouse still moves and can be used on open apps with no delay.

just the desktop is unresponsive, if I right click the menu might appear
after an indeterminate time but can do nothing with it.

It feels like something is hogging all the CPU but it is not I have every
monitor I can open to see and I still can have 80% on all 3 cores free.

I can bring up the Alt+F2 command and execute commands like logout and
stuff.

This is with OR without effects using either kwin or compiz.

The machine is stable in all other desktops/wm, in fact I have taken a shine
to xfce at the moment due to this and have been running it all morning with
no probs, so it looks like it is a plasma thing.

As far as I know I have all updates ( I do know ) and everything else is
stable as a rock.

Funny enough after a lot of messing about on another machine I have got
11.2m5 up and running this morning with the same version of KDE and this
does not exhibit any of these symptoms, so could it just be something I have
done?

Thanks for any thoughts ( even if they are rude )

:slight_smile:

–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum

#2

baskitcaise adjusted his/her AFDB on Monday 17 Aug 2009 15:14 to write:

> Funny enough after a lot of messing about on another machine I have got
> 11.2m5 up and running this morning with the same version of KDE and this
> does not exhibit any of these symptoms, so could it just be something I
> have done?

I finally got round to having a look on this machine today and found the
problem.

I still do not know what exactly was causing it but I started by removing
all the plasmoids from the desktop and all iconised apps in the systray one
at a time to see if any had the desired effect, result with a completely
empty desktop ( nothing at no panels or widgets and plain background ) it
was exactly the same. with only a console open and monitoring with htop the
plasma was slowly eating the cpu, when it gets to about 20-30% cpu on one
core then the desktop becomes frozen the mouse works but no response or a
very very sluggish one where a mouse click is not acknowledged for anything
up to 5 mins even though I still had 2 cores at 0% and one at 35% plasma.

Now I logged in as a new user and all was fine so went back and did what I
should have done at the beginning and renamed the plasma rc`s in
~/.kde4/share/apps/config and voila it all works fine now ( fingers crossed
and touching wood )

:slight_smile:

I looked at the copies of the old plasma rc and applet rc and they were a
mess, it was full of old redundant widget prefs which I have not used for a
long time, it was damn near impossible to track one section to another.

Now I thought that when you delete a widget and then log off the rc file
should be updated and so the old stale stuff would be removed?

I know it does that for some applets because they ask for data when you run
them again, the mail notification one has to have the pop details entered if
I quit it before logging off so something must be written to the rc files on
logout.

But anyway there is the cure, or was for me anyway.

Hope that helps someone else or just proves that sometimes I am as dumb as
the next person and do not follow my own guidelines that I give out to
others.

:slight_smile:

–
Mark
Caveat emptor
Nullus in verba
Nil illegitimi carborundum