With the upgrade to 11.3 x86_64 I was very disappointed to find that the time it took to log in to KDE once I entered my password skyrocketed. On 11.2, what used to be a speedy two seconds before I would see the desktop has now turned into 30 seconds, or more sometimes: today it was closer to 45.
I found this thread. Among the suggestions was to disable powerdevil or to disable the KDED modules, both located in the service manager.
Disabling powerdevil does bring my login time back down to where it was in 11.2. I have several questions now: Powerdevil is described as a “laptop power management daemon” in the service manager. Is it truly only for laptops? What features does powerdevil provide? If I disable it will my CPU frequency scaling and other power management features still work? Has there been many people with this problem? Any news on it besides that thread I found?
From what I have seen, Powerdevil may be more useful for Laptops, but does have some effect on desktops. For instance, we have seen reports that indicate the kernel level screen saver will kick in on some machines after 10 minutes and it just blanks the screen, no matter if you have selected another screen saver or not, when Powerdevil is disabled.
In KDE 4.5 and above, the CPU speed control has been moved out of KDE. You can only access it with the very stark controls from the YaST power module. The YaST power module is not loaded by default and so you can search on power or YaST and find it so it can be loaded. The YaST module can be used even if Powerdevil is disabled in KDE.
I am using KDE 4.4.4 and keep Powerdevil enabled, but I don’t have a long wait to start openSUSE 11.3. I did upgrade the kernel version to 2.6.35, but not sure if that helped or not with login speed. I did it (kernel upgrade) to properly use USB 3 hard drives.
That’s nice, I spent a bunch of time making a reply only to have the system tell me “you spent to long…and now that you spent too long, you cannot recover what you were working on for so long.” Thanks forum.
Anyways, lots of interesting points in your reply:
From my rudimentary experiments (since it doesn’t appear to be well documented), it appears the neither the display power settings or the screen saver work when powerdevil is stopped, but I didn’t wait long enough for the kernel-level screen saver, so I’ll trust you there. This functionality and the cpu speed profiles are reason enough for me to want powerdevil on my desktop.
[quote=“jdmcdaniel3,post:2,topic:56679”]
In KDE 4.5 and above, the CPU speed control has been moved out of KDE. You can only access it with the very stark controls from the YaST power module. The YaST power module is not loaded by default and so you can search on power or YaST and find it so it can be loaded. The YaST module can be used even if Powerdevil is disabled in KDE. \QUOTE]
What is KDE’s reasoning here? Do they only think they should manage some power settings, or do they not feel that cpu speed policy is “power management”? If I want to save power in KDE 4.5 I’m supposed to select a power management profile and use yast to select a powersaving cpu speed scheme? Yuck.
Are you using x86_64? I am, and so are the people in the thread I linked (and the bug report), so maybe this is the common thread here.
As an update to where I am, if I log out and then log back in, the login time is back to “normal” (about four or five seconds–what I saw in previous versions of OpenSUSE). I disabled powerdevil and then rebooted, and when I went to the service manager and started powerdevil then, the UI went unresponsive for around 30 seconds and then an error about no response was displayed. Also, the following was appended to .xsession-errors at this time:
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/bin/systemsettings
Invalid D-BUS member name 'idle-hint' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'is-local' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'x11-display-device' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'x11-display' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'display-device' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'remote-host-name' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'session-type' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'unix-user' found in interface 'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib64/libkdeinit4_kbuildsycoca4.so
<unknown program name>(3467)/ KStartupInfo::createNewStartupId: creating: "host;1286826282;627476;3467_TIME0" : "unnamed app"
kbuildsycoca4 running...
plasma-desktop(3487)/kdecore (services) KServicePrivate::init: The desktop entry file "/usr/share/kde4/services/sysinfo.protocol" has Type= "Application" but no Exec line
If I stop and start powerdevil again, there is no delay and no .xsession-errors appends.
Is there any way I can get a better log of what powerdevil is doing (and apparently failing at)? Any ideas here?
There are lots of places to look for errors including the xsession-errors you were looking at. So there are lots of potential issues including the video driver used. Just how one issue reacts with another is kind of hard to figure out. Even the installation source, such as a LiveDVD verse the 4.7 GB DVD seems to make a difference because of the number of files that are loaded changes. I do have a better script file for viewing errors here online if you are interested:
While I would stick with KDE 4.4.4, a new kernel update is something else one can try (Such as going up to kernel 2.6.35), but I don’t really know what the issue is.