plasmashell hangs at 100% cpu after startup

[ccin1492]

When I start or reboot the pc, plasmashell hangs at 100% cpu and must be killed and restarted. After restarting however, it’s normal. What could be the cause?

This starting happening after a recent update. I’m not sure what got updated but it’s probably a good guess that plasma did get updated. Anyway else running into this issue?

My system is:
LEAP 42.3
KDE plasma 5.8.7
KDE frameworks 5.32.0
Qt 5.6.2

Thanks.

[dcurtisfra]

From a VT (tty1 through to tty6), without being logged in to a KDE Plasma session:

1. try clearing the user’s ~/.cache/ directory;
2. check for files belonging to the KDE Plasma user in /tmp/ and /var/tmp/ and remove them as needed – leave any temporary files needed by the user’s applications;
3. check and clean-up as needed the user’s KDE4 files and links in ~/.kde/.

Once the user’s KDE Plasma session is up and running again, the user should perform some housekeeping on their Akonadi database:

 > akonadictl fsck
 > akonadictl vacuum
 > akonadictl fsck

[ccin1492]

Thanks. I’ll give that a try. I’ll post my results when I have a chance to work on it (busy this weekend).

[tannington]

@ccin1492

… I’m not sure what got updated but it’s probably a good guess that plasma did get updated. …

You can check what packages were updated by:

YaST -> Software Management -> Extras -> Show History

or looking directly at the log file:

/var/log/zypp/history

In addition to @dcurtisfra’s comments, you may want to check to see if the problem is also affecting a new user, to establish whether it is system-wide or user specific.

As an aside, if you’re not aware, 42.3 is end-of-life June 30 2019 ( Lifetime - openSUSE Wiki ), you may want to consider upgrading.

[ccin1492]

Thanks for the suggestions. I wanted to give a quick update. I tried both suggestions (except the cleaning the Akonadi database because I don’t know what that is) without success. I even removed the .kde folder completely and that didn’t even work. After I updated to 15.1 and still had the issue I went ahead and created a new user. The new user did not have the issue so at least I’ve isolated the problem to the user.

The question is now how can I reset my old user account to new? I guess I can move my personal folders to another location delete the user and then create it again. Is that the cleanest way?

[karlmistelberger]

@ccin1492

Thanks for the suggestions. I wanted to give a quick update. I tried both suggestions (except the cleaning the Akonadi database because I don’t know what that is) without success. I even removed the .kde folder completely and that didn’t even work. After I updated to 15.1 and still had the issue I went ahead and created a new user. The new user did not have the issue so at least I’ve isolated the problem to the user.

The question is now how can I reset my old user account to new? I guess I can move my personal folders to another location delete the user and then create it again. Is that the cleanest way?

You can keep the user and delete storage only.

[mrmazda]

Deleting content of ~/.cache/ and p* and k* from ~/.config/ might be all that needs doing. This smaller deletion would preserve lots of non-Plasma settings kept in ~/.config/. I would try first only deleting ~/.cache/ content and try logging in, then ~/.config/ too only if ~/.cache/ wasn’t enough . All these deletions must be done while not logged into a Plasma session.

[karlmistelberger]

@mrmazda

Deleting content of ~/.cache/ and p* and k* from ~/.config/ might be all that needs doing. This smaller deletion would preserve lots of non-Plasma settings kept in ~/.config/. I would try first only deleting ~/.cache/ content and try logging in, then ~/.config/ too only if ~/.cache/ wasn’t enough . All these deletions must be done while not logged into a Plasma session.

What I actually did several times since 1995: rename home directory and create an empty one. Hunting for stale configuration files can be time consuming compared to copying back from renamed directory when desirable.