Sometimes kickoff menu hangs long time while typing appname

[6tr6tr]

Sometimes I get this weird thing where typing a name into the kickoff menu hangs after a few letters. It hangs the entire computer! Once it happens, I try to close it but have to wait about 20 seconds before I can do anything on the computer. Then everything else works fine (after it’s closed). But if I go back to kickoff and try again, it does the same thing! I can’t seem to find anything in “top” to indicate what’s happening.

openSUSE 11.2
KDE 4.3.4
Linux 2.6.31.8-0.1-default i686
AMD Sempron™ Processor 3100+ 1.8 GHZ
nVIDIA G98 GForce 8400 GS with nvidia driver

Total memory (RAM): 1.4 GiB
Free memory: 541.6 MiB (+ 506.1 MiB Caches)
Free swap: 2.0 GiB

Here’s “top” during a recent issue where konqueror wasn’t opening to show sysinfo and there was some hanging (although this was after it came back from kickoff hanging):

top - 12:50:40 up  2:46,  4 users,  load average: 1.29, 0.50, 0.30
Tasks: 147 total,   4 running, 143 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 46.5%us, 10.2%sy,  0.0%ni, 42.6%id,  0.0%wa,  0.3%hi,  0.3%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1421280k total,  1134956k used,   286324k free,    66576k buffers
Swap:  2104472k total,        0k used,  2104472k free,   740464k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 1249 root      20   0  570m  48m 9780 S 12.0  3.5   5:57.86 Xorg
18647 UserGuy  20   0 99616  27m  10m R 11.6  2.0   0:00.35 kio_sysinfo
 1078 messageb  20   0  3260 1472  724 S  8.0  0.1   0:02.42 dbus-daemon
 3381 UserGuy  20   0  326m  57m  25m R  7.3  4.1   3:18.67 kwin
18650 UserGuy  20   0 95984  24m 9668 R  4.3  1.8   0:00.13 kio_sysinfo
18385 UserGuy  20   0  230m  89m  23m S  2.7  6.4   0:51.01 firefox-bin
18629 UserGuy  20   0  129m  42m  23m S  2.7  3.0   0:00.53 konqueror
 1350 haldaemo  20   0  7184 4876 4084 S  2.3  0.3   0:01.10 hald
 3385 UserGuy  20   0  278m  55m  27m S  1.7  4.0   0:35.93 plasma-desktop
18635 UserGuy  20   0  129m  40m  22m S  1.3  2.9   0:00.54 konqueror
 3361 UserGuy  20   0  2900 1160  652 S  0.7  0.1   0:00.85 dbus-daemon
18622 UserGuy  20   0  129m  42m  23m S  0.7  3.1   0:00.71 konqueror
18651 UserGuy  20   0 73368  22m 8100 S  0.7  1.6   0:00.02 kio_file
 3370 UserGuy  20   0 73048  25m  10m S  0.3  1.8   0:00.19 kdeinit4
 3387 UserGuy  20   0  150m  24m  12m S  0.3  1.7   0:01.01 knotify4
 3401 UserGuy  20   0  259m  38m  20m S  0.3  2.8   0:02.15 krunner
 3407 UserGuy  20   0  111m  36m  16m S  0.3  2.6   0:01.03 konsole
18641 UserGuy  20   0  2352 1024  768 R  0.3  0.1   0:00.02 top
    1 root      20   0  1940  660  576 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.13 init
    2 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd
    3 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0
    4 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.40 ksoftirqd/0
    5 root      RT  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/0
    6 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.05 events/0
    7 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuset
    8 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper
    9 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 netns
   10 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 async/mgr
   11 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kintegrityd/0
   12 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kblockd/0
   13 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
   14 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpi_notify
   15 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpi_hotplug
   16 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd
   17 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd
   18 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod
   19 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kondemand/0
   20 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khungtaskd
   21 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush
   22 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.04 pdflush
   23 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kswapd0
   24 root      15  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0

When I run top while it’s hanging in kickoff, it doesn’t show anything unusual. No high usage of the CPU, no app jumping to the top with 90% (in fact nothing above 7%)

[6tr6tr]

Any ideas?

[6tr6tr]

OK, I discovered a bit more. I went into kickoff’s “Menu Editor” and everything was fine until I clicked to create a new item. Then it hung for 14 seconds! From there, anytime I actually changed something or interacted with the “system” itself, it would hang. It seems that all the hanging has to do with when I’m interacting with the system itself.

PLEASE, Someone help me!

[caf4926]

Thanks for PM’ing me.

IIRC you seem to have quite a number of issues generally. And I’m fairly sure you have already started a new .kde4

I say this because this hanging, seems like a config issue. But I could be wrong.

What I would do is this: Open a terminal and set ‘top’ running and set it so it is always on top.
Now perform the action that brings everything to a standstill and you should be able to watch top as all this is going on.

Then report back here

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

Thanks for PM’ing me.

IIRC you seem to have quite a number of issues generally. And I’m fairly sure you have already started a new .kde4

I say this because this hanging, seems like a config issue. But I could be wrong.

What I would do is this: Open a terminal and set ‘top’ running and set it so it is always on top.
Now perform the action that brings everything to a standstill and you should be able to watch top as all this is going on.

Then report back here

OK, here’s what I notice (only two things seem weird):

1. Nothing in top jumps above 5% of the CPU during this hanging

Here’s the weird
2. There’s 138 sleeping tasks (is that a lot?)
3. It says there’s 4 total users, but when I type “users” at the command line I just get my login name (UserGuy) 4 times! What does that mean?

Other than that I don’t see anything out of the ordinary yet.

[caf4926]

@6tr6tr

OK, here’s what I notice (only two things seem weird):

2. There’s 138 sleeping tasks (is that a lot?)
3. It says there’s 4 total users, but when I type “users” at the command line I just get my login name (UserGuy) 4 times! What does that mean?

Other than that I don’t see anything out of the ordinary yet.

This all sounds OK/Normal to me.

And you are not getting any crashes, so it’s going to be difficult to pin down.

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

This all sounds OK/Normal to me.

And you are not getting any crashes, so it’s going to be difficult to pin down.

Should I try changing .kde4 (i.e. delete that folder, log out and log back in)?

Also, what things should be in the .kde4 folder? For example, why do I have nsplugin.desktop share/kde4/services?

[caf4926]

If you logout and then login with console
http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pXjiNaYg1NAyY_BD_1cW_ER_RoROZ3P9QMLGcPHJ0nUD2MoKCLPyjM1FQuDLO1bq-KleIQ3TYqXQRWgpXhfV_mg/console.login.png

At the CLI enter your user name and password
then at the prompt type the following

mv .kde4 .kde4-oldbak

to start the desktop now type: startx

The above will rename your current folder and when you starx the new .kde4 will be formed. We can always roll back to your oldbak if this doesn’t help.

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

If you logout and then login with console
http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/y1pXjiNaYg1NAyY_BD_1cW_ER_RoROZ3P9QMLGcPHJ0nUD2MoKCLPyjM1FQuDLO1bq-KleIQ3TYqXQRWgpXhfV_mg/console.login.png

At the CLI enter your user name and password
then at the prompt type the following

mv .kde4 .kde4-oldbak

to start the desktop now type: startx

The above will rename your current folder and when you starx the new .kde4 will be formed. We can always roll back to your oldbak if this doesn’t help.

Thanks, I’ll give that a try and let you know how it goes. It’ll probably take a full day before I can tell if it’s working.

[6tr6tr]

Hmmm…now my USB headset no longer works and KMix no longer shows up in the system tray.

[caf4926]

You just started a new .kde
You can always copy over your kmix folder and files from the .kde4-oldbak

Do you need directions

.kde4/share/apps/kmix

.kde4/share/config/kmixrc
.kde4/share/config/kmixctrlrc

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

You just started a new .kde
You can always copy over your kmix folder and files from the .kde4-oldbak

Do you need directions

.kde4/share/apps/kmix

.kde4/share/config/kmixrc
.kde4/share/config/kmixctrlrc

Well, I’ve been using the new .kde4 folder for a while now and as far as I can tell, it fixed it! How do I figure out what it was (so I can keep it from happening again)? Is there a way I can compare differences?

[caf4926]

What I do is keep a backup of .kde4
Do it from outside X

There is no one thing I can say will cause this and equally I can’t really say where to start looking. But as far as I can tell - life can suck and it just happens. Often when there is a big change. Like when you upgrade kde4 from the base install to Factory.

[6tr6tr]

Well, this is weird, but now that I’ve installed openSUSE 11.3, this issue is occurring again! And I JUST installed a few days ago and this has been occurring since then (and it was a clean install). What could it be?

[caf4926]

Have you install video driver yet?
nVidia Driver via Repo in 11.3 - Guide

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

Have you install video driver yet?
nVidia Driver via Repo in 11.3 - Guide

Yeah, that was one of the first things I did.

This hanging is not when I open kickoff, it’s when I type in an app’s name and it starts searching for it, and then, once it finds it, I click the app and then it hangs for a while before finally starting up the app.

[caf4926]

Is it the same with and without desktop effects?

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

Is it the same with and without desktop effects?

Not sure. I’ll check. The problem is it’s not 100% of the time. usually it happens the first time I do it and then the next time it’s ok. But after restart, it’ll happen again (even if I wait 30 minutes after a reboot).

[caf4926]

@6tr6tr

Yeah, that was one of the first things I did.

This hanging is not when I open kickoff, it’s when I type in an app’s name and it starts searching for it, and then, once it finds it, I click the app and then it hangs for a while before finally starting up the app.

But if you are just launching the app without using search, say if you have a launcher on the desktop like this:
ImageBam - Fast, Free Image Hosting and Photo Sharing
Does it still happen

[6tr6tr]

@caf4926

But if you are just launching the app without using search, say if you have a launcher on the desktop like this:
ImageBam - Fast, Free Image Hosting and Photo Sharing
Does it still happen

No. It’s only launching from search.