I’ve been experiencing a strange problem with Plasma locking up. Running system monitor it shows the KDE4 process using 20% CPU time, and Plasma around 10-15%. This seems way too much since on my six year old Laptop the cpu load of both processes is barely noticeable. My Laptop is an old single core 3000+ AMD Athlon 64, while my Desktop has a Quad core Xeon 2.33Ghz chip, so the fact that the KDE4/Plasma system load is many times higher than on the Laptop, indicates something is wrong.
I’m not sure what else to look for troubleshooting wise, any suggestions?
*Actually, thinking about it, the KDE4 process is timing out one CPU core, which indicates to me something is really not right.
Not that unusual to experience things like this.
You didn’t explain what version of openSUSE or version of kde4?
Perhaps you could post result of:
zypper lr -d
Yep. It’s probably some older settings, or a widget that’s causing this. Quickest solution, is to rebuild the plasma desktop. This will keep all program settings, just returns you to the default plasma-desktop appearance (mind, even desktop effects etc. are safe).
To get a clean plasma-desktop do this:
Logout
Hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 in login screen, it throws you to the console.
Login with normal username and password
do this:
rm -r ~/.kde4/share/apps/plasma && rm ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma*
Hit Ctrl-D to logout
Hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to login screen
Login, and find a default plasma-desktop
From here you can re-apply your personal preferences for it.
Good luck, let us know how you got on.
Apologies, and thanks for the quick response: I’m running OpenSuse 11.2 and KDE 4.3.5 on both Laptop and dektop.
I’ll just reboot the desktop and post the zypper output in a sec.
EDIT:
| Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service
—±----------------------±----------------------±--------±--------±---------±-------±------------------------------------------------------------------------------------±-------
1 | ATI Repository | ATI Repository | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://www2.ati.com/suse/11.2 |
2 | KDE:KDE4:Community | KDE:KDE4:Community | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/Community/openSUSE_11.2/ |
3 | Libdvdcss repository | Libdvdcss repository | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://opensuse-guide.org/repo/11.2/ |
4 | Packman Repository | Packman Repository | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/packman/suse/11.2/ |
5 | google-chrome | google-chrome | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://dl.google.com/linux/rpm/stable/x86_64 |
6 | kde-desktop | kde-desktop | Yes | Yes | 10 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/STABLE:/Desktop/openSUSE_11.2/ |
7 | openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss | openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/repo/non-oss |
8 | openSUSE-11.2-Oss | openSUSE-11.2-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/repo/oss |
9 | repo-debug | openSUSE-11.2-Debug | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/ |
10 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/repo/non-oss/ |
11 | repo-oss | openSUSE-11.2-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/ |
12 | repo-source | openSUSE-11.2-Source | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/11.2/repo/oss/ |
13 | repo-update | openSUSE-11.2-Update | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.2/
Thanks for the suggestion Knurpht!
It started off well, but sitting here watching the process table, KDE4 and plasma-desktop are slowly climbing back up to 25% :(. Started off at about 5% each, now climbing toward 20%, and getting less responsive.
You should try applying the switch to kde repos if you didn’t already. No need to have the priority set that way either - default 99 is ok.
This is what I mean
ImageBam - Fast, Free Image Hosting and Photo Sharing
You obviously didn’t read this guide for multi-media
Multi-media and Restricted Format Installation Guide - openSUSE Forums
Indeed it doesn’t look like it, but the libdvdcss repository mentioned above only contains
libdvdcss
libdvdcss-debuginfo
libdvdcss-debugsource
libdvdcss-devel
So no harm done. I believe people are getting this multimedia information from here:
openSUSE 11.2 | SUSE Linux | Beginner’s guide multimedia MP3 DVD codecs 3D nvidia ati wireless wlan wifi rpm kde howto
Which is basically what I do with any new install, except without the one-click. I use packman for all that and instead of the libdvdcss repository I just browse the videolan repository and only install libdvdcss, without adding the videolan repository to my list of repositories.
Take Care,
Ian
Ok, I’m running that now. Though the problem has gone away again after shutting down and leaving it awhile (it is intermittent), so I’ll have to wait and see how it goes. Thank you :).
No… I sort of muddled through…
I’ll give it a look through, and it’s now bookmarked so XMarks will ensure it’s always on hand ;).
If not I might give a complete re-instillation a try and try and setup everything properly from the off, rather than jut poking around until it sort of works…
Thanks for all your help thus far.
Please let us know how it goes over time…
Hi.
So far so good, no more problems, so fingers crossed. Thanks very much for everyones help :).
One more tiny hint: you have added the oss and non-oss repositories twice each.
@gropiuskalle: That’s because I’m some kind of Jeanyus :p.
So it happened again today. I managed to kill the Plasma-Desktop process and things cleared up, so I guessing it’s something to do with that. It also seems to happen when I suspend compositing and run Blender.
I might give a rebuild a try once I get some time.
I’ve stumbled across a possible cause, though why it might be so, I have no idea. It happens when I have a USB storage device plugged into my USB Hub, but not when it’s plugged into the back of my machine directly. Plug it in, Plasma starts to take more and more CPU time until it locks up, but the moment you unplug the device it seems to go back to normal. It must be some conflict with a device plugged into the USB Hub?
USB Hubs are a no go area. I would never have myself anyway.
You could monitor /var/log/messages while plugging the device.
Either run
dmesg
in a terminal right before and after plugging, or run
tail -f /var/log/messages
before plugging.
This will show the last 10 lines of the message file everytime there is a change in it.
I think you have to run it as root (use the su command). Probably there is a way to do this with normal user privileges (as the normal user can run dmesg), but I don’t know how.
I’ve had problems accessing pen drives through the front panel USB slots that wouldn’t happen on the back panel. Something similar may be happening with your hub.
I have problems with my front panel USBs, but I did under windows as well. Oddly if I plug anything into them, the usb mouse stops working :S.
I’ll give that a go brunomcl and see what I get, thank you.
The only reason I’m using a hub is because I’ve litterally run out of ports. Only got four and I have a USB Mouse, a USB Keyboard, Wacom Tablet, a USB HDD for backups, a USB webcam and a dozen little devices that get swapped in and out on occassion. Given that the front panel USBs simply don’t work, I have to use a hub :(.
Having said that, I think the mouse, the Wacom and the cam are in the hub, which is, I admit, a really stupid way to go about things. I’ll have a look at swapping devices around and see if that helps any.
Thanks again all for your help.
With so many peripherals you have to mind the power limits in a hub without an external power source. And sometimes even if the hub has a tiny/cheap one.
Note that a desktop front panel usb (two slots) plug in ONE two-port usb connector in the main board, so that they share the same power supply. I understand the same happen at rear panel connectors, i.e., with adjacent slots, although they may be wired differently.
The power limit was, IINM, 500 mA for each pair of ports, but I’m not sure.
In addition, front panel usb slots come in all qualities (or lack of). Some rust in a few months, and your devices start trowing r/w errors, initially when writing, which takes more power I presume.
I’ve condemned a few pendrives before learning the very basic trick of trying them in the back panel ports, which are usually of better quality (as those on laptops).
Hi
Thanks for all suggestions. Its been awhile with no reoccurances when not using pendrives in the hub. I’m guessing theres a device conflict there. I’ll probably rewire everything at some point.
Thanks all again.