Several major issues with Plasma 5 + other issues

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi,

Recently (more than a week ago) I made an upgrade (zypper dup) to get the latest but this turned out to be not so good choice unfortunately:
[ul]
[li]Task bar freezes time to time for undefined time and suddenly wakes up[/li][LIST]
[li]Freezing means that none of the icons respond to mouse click until strange freeze is over[/li][li]After freeze is over the task bar responds fine until it freezes again[/li][/ul]

[li] HPLib doesn’t work but this is a known issue - hopefully gets fixed [/li][li]By default there is lock screen enabled which locks the screen with some password I don’t know[/li][ul]
[li]I tried changing the password for the user - no luck [/li][li]Only way to get forward was to kill X and start it again [/li][li]At some point locale setting stated under Configuration Afganistan or something similar. Changed that to Finnish but didn’t help (tried changing the password again after this change). [/li][/ul]

[li]Small annoyance… time icon at task bar is now really small. Date information (dd.mm.yyyy) shows really small. Even I got good eyesight it’s still difficult to see the date info. [/li][/LIST]

Today I made another update (zypper dup) in hopes to get these annoying issues but things got really worse - don’t know how to solve these actually so please, help is needed:
[ul]
[li]Task bar is now completely frozen - does not unfreeze at all[/li][LIST]
[li]Tried killing X and restarted it but remains frozen [/li][/ul]

[li]Cannot start terminal on local machine which makes the solving of this issue troublesome… (via remote machine I can fix these if someone can point me to right direction). [/li][/LIST]

Furthermore another annoyance which I don’t know how to solve nicely:
[ul]
[li]Each time there is an update that affects /etc/ssl/certs/ dovecot.pem file gets deleted and I have to copy it from the backup before the service can be started[/li][LIST]
[li]Is it not allowed to have custom cert files under mentioned folder? If not, then where these should be stored “officially” (of course I can place it under /opt/xxx if no other place is found) [/li][li]If it is allowed then why does this file get deleted and how to stop it? [/li][/ul]

[li]Maybe related to task bar freezing but the power consumption increased quite much compared to before today’s update (from 68 to 76 watts). Have to recheck this once the Plasma issue get solved. [/li][/LIST]

I hope someone can give me quick help on this freeze issue!

edit: after 10-15min the task bar unfroze. Most likely it’ll freeze again at some point so help is still needed.

2

https-connections don’t work anymore with squid (Secure Connection Failed e.g. to Google.com)

  • access log states: TCP_TUNNEL/200 0 CONNECT www.google.com:443 - HIER_DIRECT/2a00:1450:400f:805::2004 -

Folder access via GUI has become very slow at times

  • When saving a file via browser it can take 1-2 minutes to open up a folder - usually timeouts first
  • Same happens with other SW too (e.g. Kate)
  • Task bar is frozen when this happens usually
3

I cannot answer all the problems at the moment, but this:

This is most likely a problem with your pam config.
The old, deprecated, pam_unix2 doesn’t work with Plasma5’s screenlocker at the moment.
Make sure that you only reference pam_unix.so, not pam_unix2.so, in the files in /etc/pam.d/common-*, then unlocking should work.

A fix for this depends on some review from the security team which takes time unfortunately…

See also 931816 – KDE 5.2 plasma unlock failed .

edit: after 10-15min the task bar unfroze. Most likely it’ll freeze again at some point so help is still needed.

Not sure about this, but some suggestions:

  • do you have some network mounts? They might cause such freezes.
  • is it better if you disable desktop effects (Shift+Alt+F12 or systemsettings5->Display and Monitor->Compositor)

As you see freezes with the file open/save dialog too, it’s rather the first, or maybe some DBUS issue.

Your certificates problem doesn’t seem to be related to Plasma5 at all though, maybe start a new thread for this?

4

paju2000 donned his tin foil hat and penned:

>
> https-connections don’t work anymore with squid (Secure Connection
> Failed e.g. to Google.com)
>
> - access log states: TCP_TUNNEL/200 0 CONNECT ‘www.google.com:443’
> (http://www.google.com:443) - HIER_DIRECT/2a00:1450:400f:805::2004 -
>
>
> Folder access via GUI has become very slow at times
>
>
> - When saving a file via browser it can take 1-2 minutes to open up a
> folder - usually timeouts first
> - Same happens with other SW too (e.g. Kate)
> - Task bar is frozen when this happens usually
>
>

Just a guess but how are you for space on / ?

Not full of snapper snapshots is it?

–
Mark
Nullus in verba
Caveat emptor
Nil illigitimi carborundum

5

I’m sorry but now I don’t fully follow what you mean. Can you open up your question a bit more, thx.

The snippet from the access.log didn’t include IP addresses nor time but I don’t think that really matters.

Regarding squid.conf: do I need to set something extra for SSL? My original config is from 2013 and has worked fine until now.

6

Yep. pam_unix2 was there. Now changed but I don’t need screen locked so it can stay disabled. But this is good info for those who use it.

Not sure about this, but some suggestions:

  • do you have some network mounts? They might cause such freezes.

I have one NFS mount to NAS which haven’t caused previously any freezes. There was an issue with NFS mounting but this was related to shutdown of the NAS due power cut. I’ll try to take this out to see if it has some effect (except that Yast refuses to start for some reason… from terminal yast2 started fine. And in the end stopped nfs service :)).

  • is it better if you disable desktop effects (Shift+Alt+F12 or systemsettings5->Display and Monitor->Compositor)

Done. No freezes for few minutes. Pity but not a show stopper for me.

As you see freezes with the file open/save dialog too, it’s rather the first, or maybe some DBUS issue.

Your certificates problem doesn’t seem to be related to Plasma5 at all though, maybe start a new thread for this?

Any pointers regarding DBUS issues what to look for?

I’ll create own thread for squid.

Thx so far!

7

Not in particular, no.
But such hangs can be caused by trying to communicate via DBUS with something that doesn’t respond. The FBUD timeout is 30 seconds, so a hang of 30 seconds or 1 minute is typical for this.

But again, this could also be caused by an unreachable nfs share or similar. The file dialog does read information about all devices shown in the “Places” panel when you open it.

Anyway, if it still happens now, you could try to run some application in Konsole and reproduce the problem. Maybe there’s some output that might give a clue.

8

paju2000 donned his tin foil hat and penned:

>
> baskitcaise;2713143 Wrote:
>> paju2000 donned his tin foil hat and penned:
>>
>> >
>> > https-connections don’t work anymore with squid (Secure Connection
>> > Failed e.g. to Google.com)
>> >
>> > - access log states: TCP_TUNNEL/200 0 CONNECT ‘www.google.com:443’
>> > (http://www.google.com:443) - HIER_DIRECT/2a00:1450:400f:805::2004 -
>> >
>> >
>> > Folder access via GUI has become very slow at times
>> >
>> >
>> > - When saving a file via browser it can take 1-2 minutes to open up a
>> > folder - usually timeouts first
>> > - Same happens with other SW too (e.g. Kate)
>> > - Task bar is frozen when this happens usually
>> >
>> >
>>
>> Just a guess but how are you for space on / ?
>>
>> Not full of snapper snapshots is it?
>>
>
> I’m sorry but now I don’t fully follow what you mean. Can you open up
> your question a bit more, thx.
>
> The snippet from the access.log didn’t include IP addresses nor time but
> I don’t think that really matters.
>
> Regarding squid.conf: do I need to set something extra for SSL? My
> original config is from 2013 and has worked fine until now.
>
>

It was just an observation, I had exactly the same symptoms here and it was
because my / was full using btrfs and snapper (look in Yast) had filled
nearly 20gigs of space with restore points.

However wolfi is more likely on the right track :slight_smile:

–
Mark
Nullus in verba
Caveat emptor
Nil illigitimi carborundum

9

PS:
https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=126250#p335879 would suggest to turn off the “Free Space Notifier” and the “Remote URL Change Notifier” services in systemsettings5->Startup and Shutdown->Background Services (or “kcmshell5 kded”) if you have freezes related to network shares.

10

NFS definitely seems to slow things down but there is more. I’ve stopped those services now and we’ll keep on playing with GUI to see if this helps. And after several minutes these freezing events start to occur. NFS service is not stopped. I don’t understand why NFS service have to affect GUI in any way. If Dolphin or similar is trying to access NFS folder and there are issues then hour glass and cancel would be nice feature while GUI still keeps on operating at full speed. Current approach is similar to MS Windows where GUI can freeze completely as well.

Plasma itself (assumingly) decided crash interestingly just before I was able to write this message. Task bar was not frozen which was good thing but after many Alt-Tabs it stopped showing preview windows and finally crashed window framework (if that is what it’s called). All window frames were gone. I was not able to resize windows, not able to change to different window, virtual desktops were not working (neither mouse or CTRL-F1/F2/F3), task bar didn’t work except few icons etc. Inside a window things seemed to work fine (at least that was how things appeared). Window decorations have changed as well. Now they are almost white thus rather difficult to see edges.

Had to log out and log in before managed to get windows working again. But, now task bar is frozen again - and woke up after 10min or so (didn’t bother to wait) :frowning: And it froze again… (now NFS service is stopped)

Further more a small issue but still:

  • notification of updates (zypper related) is missing
  • added widget: System tray to be able to access Vuze when I close window (sw keeps on running but not possible to open up anymore because icon is not visible in task tray) but now I have icons duplicated and still no vuze
  • HPLib icon is now in the system tray and seems to work except HP Device manager is not able to get printer status anymore
  • Digital clock icon suddenly became even smaller. Now the date is shown with font size 4 or 5. I cannot see the date from 30-40cm away from 24" monitor…
  • Terminal started requesting su - password twice before allowing to log in. Is this related now to the pam-common-* fixed (pam_unix2 -> pam_unix change)?

One could say that there is a room for improvements :slight_smile: At least now I can use my workstation & server to basic stuff.

11

Current? It was not much different in KDE4…
The problem is that Plasma (or some plasmoids) talk to kded, but if that is blocked (by accessing a non-responding network share e.g.) it cannot answer, and Plasma gets blocked too.

Plasma itself (assumingly) decided crash interestingly just before I was able to write this message. Task bar was not frozen which was good thing but after many Alt-Tabs it stopped showing preview windows and finally crashed window framework (if that is what it’s called). All window frames were gone. I was not able to resize windows, not able to change to different window, virtual desktops were not working (neither mouse or CTRL-F1/F2/F3), task bar didn’t work except few icons etc. Inside a window things seemed to work fine (at least that was how things appeared). Window decorations have changed as well. Now they are almost white thus rather difficult to see edges.

That means that kwin (the window manager) crashed.
This would rather sound like a graphics driver issue.

Was this with desktop effect activated or deactivated?

Can you reproduce the problems in recovery mode?
What graphics card driver? Maybe installing a proprietary one might be an option/might help…

notification of updates (zypper related) is missing

That is totally unrelated to zypper.
But yes, there is no updater in Plasma5 (yet).

added widget: System tray to be able to access Vuze when I close window (sw keeps on running but not possible to open up anymore because icon is not visible in task tray) but now I have icons duplicated and still no vuze

The system tray should be there by default. Now you have two it seems, so remove one again.

But Plasma5 dropped support for old-style system tray icons.
Depending on the application you can install some additional package to make it show up.
See also: Where are my systray icons? – Martin's Blog
You can run wmsystemtray (as suggested in that blog post) or icewmtray to show old-style icons.

I don’t know vuze, but it seems to be a GTK application. So installing libappindicator3-1 might help.
Or you could try ktorrent instead. That is a KDE4 application and does support the new style system tray.

HPLib icon is now in the system tray and seems to work except HP Device manager is not able to get printer status anymore

No idea, but that doesn’t sound related to Plasma5.

Digital clock icon suddenly became even smaller. Now the date is shown with font size 4 or 5. I cannot see the date from 30-40cm away from 24" monitor…

Font settings for the digital clock have been reimplemented recently and will probably be in 5.4.
At the moment it uses a font size that makes the text fit. So maybe try to change the date format to something shorter, or make the panel bigger.

Terminal started requesting su - password twice before allowing to log in. Is this related now to the pam-common-* fixed (pam_unix2 -> pam_unix change)?

Hm?
Which terminal?
Why should the terminal ask for the root password at all?

If you mean “su” is asking twice, maybe you did an incorrect change?
pam_unix.so has slightly different arguments than pam_unix2.so.
The default line for common-auth is:

auth    required        pam_unix.so     try_first_pass

and accordingly for common-session, common-account.
common-password has this:

password        required        pam_unix.so     use_authtok shadow try_first_pass
12

On Tue 02 Jun 2015 08:26:02 PM CDT, wolfi323 wrote:

> HPLib icon is now in the system tray and seems to work except HP
> Device manager is not able to get printer status anymore
No idea, but that doesn’t sound related to Plasma5.

Hi
Just an observation, the HP toolbox (Device Manager) runs fine in
GNOME with my P1102W printer including status etc… Could be printer
driver related…

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SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-default
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please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!

13

I see. Now it makes sense why Plasma freezes. Maybe kded needs to be threaded or have internal scheduler for requests in pre-emptive manner. Well, don’t really know how it’s built so just random thoughts. Still quite strange that before update there were no such issues but now I have.

That means that kwin (the window manager) crashed.
This would rather sound like a graphics driver issue.

Was this with desktop effect activated or deactivated?

Haven’t had these kind of issues before update. I’m using H77Pro4/MVP board with integrated Intel HD graphics (HD2500/4000 - whatever that means i.e. which one it is actually).

Desktop effects were deactivated. Now NFS is stopped and effects are activated. No freeze so far.

Can you reproduce the problems in recovery mode?
What graphics card driver? Maybe installing a proprietary one might be an option/might help…

Intel is well supported and I’m using pretty much only the basic functionalities. I’ll leave the server untouched for night time and get back to it tomorrow to see what’s the situation then. Are issues still present i.e. there are more than NFS client related issues regarding freezing and kwin crashing.

That is totally unrelated to zypper.
But yes, there is no updater in Plasma5 (yet).

OK. I was assuming this. I can live without it for a while. Hopefully it comes in near future (in weeks).

The system tray should be there by default. Now you have two it seems, so remove one again.

I was not able to remove any of the icons - disable yes but not remove. So, I removed whole panel, added new default (at top - didn’t want to move down), added new default and deleted top panel. No duplicates anymore - and no Vuze either.

But Plasma5 dropped support for old-style system tray icons.
Depending on the application you can install some additional package to make it show up.
See also: Where are my systray icons? – Martin's Blog
You can run wmsystemtray (as suggested in that blog post) or icewmtray to show old-style icons.

Installed wmsystemtray and looks ugly and steals screen space but at least shows missing icons. Forgot one software actually but now it came visible.

I don’t know vuze, but it seems to be a GTK application. So installing libappindicator3-1 might help.
Or you could try ktorrent instead. That is a KDE4 application and does support the new style system tray.

libappindicator3-1 was already installed but didn’t help. Vuze is actually java sw.

KTorrent is not as good as Vuze in my opinion thus I prefer to use Vuze.

No idea, but that doesn’t sound related to Plasma5.

Not really no. Just a side note.

Font settings for the digital clock have been reimplemented recently and will probably be in 5.4.
At the moment it uses a font size that makes the text fit. So maybe try to change the date format to something shorter, or make the panel bigger.

Making panel bigger increased the font size but now the panel steals precious screen space. Unfortunate compromize.

Hm?
Which terminal?
Why should the terminal ask for the root password at all?

If you mean “su” is asking twice, maybe you did an incorrect change?
pam_unix.so has slightly different arguments than pam_unix2.so.
The default line for common-auth is:

auth    required        pam_unix.so     try_first_pass

and accordingly for common-session, common-account.
common-password has this:

password        required        pam_unix.so     use_authtok shadow try_first_pass

“su -” in Konsole (bash?) asks password twice.

pam-common-* were incorrect regarding those. Fixed them and now works are before i.e. single password prompt for “su -” command.

Thx a lot for the support and gettings issues solved!

14

There were several packages missing when I ran the “doctor” application. Installed those but still didn’t work fully because hpaio package is missing from Tumbleweed repository. The doctor itself reports that this version of the distro is not yet supported.

15

Well, this was just one guess of a possible cause for your freezes.
As mentioned, the principal problem already existed in KDE4.
The actual problem in this case is that a process (kded5) can get frozen by accessing a network share.

Haven’t had these kind of issues before update. I’m using H77Pro4/MVP board with integrated Intel HD graphics (HD2500/4000 - whatever that means i.e. which one it is actually).

There were/are some problems with the intel driver in TW currently AFAIK.
See here e.g.: 931917 – xf86-video-intel driver needs an update for Kernel 4.0 (although that one would apparently make Xorg not start at all)

I can only say that kwin5 is rock solid here on two different systems (but I run 13.2)…

Desktop effects were deactivated. Now NFS is stopped and effects are activated. No freeze so far.

Ok, so it seems that indeed NFS is the reason.

Intel is well supported and I’m using pretty much only the basic functionalities.

This doesn’t mean that there cannot be (temporary) bugs/problems, especially in a rolling target like Tumbleweed.
Might not even be a problem in the intel driver itself, could also be a bug in the kernel module.

I was not able to remove any of the icons - disable yes but not remove.

You can do it the same as in KDE4: click on the panel toolbox on the right end.
As long as the tool box is open you can remove plasmoids by right-clicking on them and choosing “Remove xxx”, or by clicking on the ‘X’ in the mouse-over popup.

Vuze is actually java sw.

Ok, sorry.
I must have confused it with something else.

I think with a java app you’re out of luck unfortunately.

KTorrent is not as good as Vuze in my opinion thus I prefer to use Vuze.

KTorrent is the best of them all IMHO… :wink:

16

I believe now it is confirmed. NFS client service has been stopped since last night and no freezing issues anymore. Alt + Tab is a bit sluggish and feels like it’s about to crash any time. This is different case.

This doesn’t mean that there cannot be (temporary) bugs/problems, especially in a rolling target like Tumbleweed.
Might not even be a problem in the intel driver itself, could also be a bug in the kernel module.

Sure. These things happen but apparently it’s not the issue in my case.

You can do it the same as in KDE4: click on the panel toolbox on the right end.
As long as the tool box is open you can remove plasmoids by right-clicking on them and choosing “Remove xxx”, or by clicking on the ‘X’ in the mouse-over popup.

Didn’t see the mouse over pop-up before. Thx. Toolbox doesn’t exist in my case for some reason.

I think with a java app you’re out of luck unfortunately.

Q: is this generic Java issue or is it an issue per java application?

KTorrent is the best of them all IMHO… :wink:

It’s good that we have choices :wink:

17

Ok.
And disabling those services I mentioned does not help?
Maybe try the “Network Watcher” service too.

This won’t help with the open/save doalog though, that one does try to get the free space for all mounts when it is opened. Again, the same as in KDE4.

Regarding Alt+Tab, I can only suggest to try a different window switcher. (systemsettings5->Window Behavior->Window Switcher)
Which one are you using now? The default “Breeze”?

Didn’t see the mouse over pop-up before. Thx. Toolbox doesn’t exist in my case for some reason.

Hm? If you don’t have the toolbox open, you won’t get that popup either… :wink:

Q: is this generic Java issue or is it an issue per java application?

It’s a general issue with Java AFAIK.
But that also means that if it is fixed in Java, it will work in all Java applications.

It’s good that we have choices :wink:

Yes.

18

Network watcher has been disabled as well - don’t know how this has happened but it is not running.

Regarding Alt+Tab, I can only suggest to try a different window switcher. (systemsettings5->Window Behavior->Window Switcher)
Which one are you using now? The default “Breeze”?

Breeze seems to be in use.

Hm? If you don’t have the toolbox open, you won’t get that popup either… :wink:

Then I misunderstood a bit. The toolbox is open but there is no remove option except the pop-up closing.

It’s a general issue with Java AFAIK.
But that also means that if it is fixed in Java, it will work in all Java applications.

OK. Hopefully fix arrives soon for this as well.

19

The “Remove” option is there (as long as the toolbox is open).

But in the case of the systemtray plasmoid, you have to make sure to right-click on the plasmoid itself, not of any of the plasmoids that are part of the system tray like network management or the device notifire. The easiest spot is probably the “up” arrow for displaying hidden icons.

20

Ah, your right. I was looking at wrong place.