[SOLVED] Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

[mhumm2]

Wow. I've been telling people that one of the biggest differences between Windoze and Kubuntu is that the latter doesn't crash to the point of locking up and requiring a reboot or reset. This problem is making a liar out of me.

Kwin crashes a lot and then another app like SuperKaramba or Etherape, etc., but it always starts with Kwin. What is Kwin anyway? I've searched for other occurances of this and they do exist, but I haven't seen a solution yet. Is this a Lucid bug and if so, has it been reported? Last question, is there a work-a-round for this yet? Thanks.

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Okay. I found out that Kwin is the KDE 4 windows manager. That explains why the system is locking up; it's actually only kde that is locking up.

Question: in kde 4, how do I set up the Ctrl-Alt-Bksp hot key to reboot kde? I can't find it in the system settings screen like it was in 9.10.

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Okay, I found out how to enable the Ctrl-Alt-Bksp sequence to reboot the X server in Lucid Lynx 10.04.

Enabling Ctrl-Alt-Backspace for Kubuntu

* Click on the Application launcher and select "System Settings"
*

Click on "Regional & Language".
* Select "Keyboard Layout".
* Click on "Enable keyboard layouts" (in the Layout tab).
* Select the "Advanced" tab. Then select "Key sequence to kill the X server" and enable "Control + Alt + Backspace".

[Telengard]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

I'm afraid I can't offer much help with your problem, but I would like to encourage you to continue on with your investigation. You are doing the right thing by documenting your experience here. When you are done, this thread may become a resource for the next person who encounters similar problems.

FWIW, Kubuntu is a very complex system of many software components working together. If any single component malfunctions it can cause the system to break down. The same is true of of any sophisticated desktop OS. There are many reasons why GNU/Linux systems may reasonably be called better than other systems, but saying that they never crash or lock up is not realistic.

I wish you success in your investigation.

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Thank you for your comments. Your point is taken.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

A couple of points:

You have an nvidia graphics card - are you using the open source nouveau driver or the nvidia one?

Are you running desktop effects?

Perhaps the biggest point - what version of KDE are you running? Unless you are running the latest stable version of KDE (4.4.5) then you cannot rule out the possibility that your problem has subsequently been fixed.

One other point, is that IIRC Superkaramba is/was a KDE 3 application. I'm not sure whether it has fully made the transition to KDE 4 yet. Maybe they are not playing together too well.

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Liquidator;

I'm running nvidia-current driver version 195.36.24 according to my NVIDIA X Server Settings. This is the one my 10.04 live CD selected and installed.

Desktop Effects are enabled which again was the default setting by the 10.04 installation.

Interesting, but it appears that I'm running kde 3.5.10 and Qt 3.3.3b. In Synaptic, there's a pkg named, kde-full which is cited as latest version 5:55ubuntu1. Should I install that package?

FYI, I'm also running the i386 version of 10.4LTS. Perhaps that's why kde 3.5.10 was the default install version. Please advise.

[The Liquidator]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

I'm intrigued......

Kubuntu 10.4 should be running KDE 4.4 and not KDE 3.5.10.

There is, apparently, a "trinity" version that has KDE 3 available but that's not officially supported by Canonical.

Where did you get your CD from please?

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

I downloaded it as an iso from www.kubuntu.org just like I've always done. Then I burn the CD and install from that.

What's the best way to replace kde 3.5.10 with 4.4.?, if, in fact, that's what you're recommending?

[The Liquidator]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

This is totally weird - if you have got 10.4 then unless you have downloaded it from a special location, it should be KDE 4 that you are running

I'm reluctant to simply give you instructions on how to install KDE 4 at this stage - there are enormous differences between the 2 and it might cause you more issues than you have already got.

From within your file manager select help/about kde. That should tell you the version of KDE and the version of kubuntu you are running. For good measure, when you shot down is the kubuntu screen that you see black with a blue bar or blue with white dots?

[Fintan]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

This is totally weird - if you have got 10.4 then unless you have downloaded it from a special location, it should be KDE 4 that you are running

Yes, that is wierd

Are you sure it was the 10.04 version and not 8.04?

I'm reluctant to simply give you instructions on how to install KDE 4 at this stage - there are enormous differences between the 2 and it might cause you more issues than you have already got.

I agree. That can do more harm than good.

What does this give you when you run it (copy/paste)in a terminal (K->system->Konsole):

kde4-config --version

Try it on your DT and post your results.

It should look something like this:

fintan@fintanws2:~$ kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.7.0
KDE: 4.4.92 (KDE 4.4.92 (KDE 4.5 RC2))
kde4-config: 1.0
fintan@fintanws2:~$

Hope that helps

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Okay, I don't know what's going on now. It appears I am using 4.4.2.

mark@AMD-Phenom-II:~$ kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.6.2
KDE Development Platform: 4.4.2 (KDE 4.4.2)
kde4-config: 1.0

All of my SuperKaramba applets report 3.5.10. Is this another example of SuperKaramba not working well with kde 4?

[The Liquidator]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

If you are using 10.4 it makes sense that you have kde 4.4.2.

I recommend that you add the following to your repo list

ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa

You will then upgrade to kde 4.4.5 and it will probably upgrade superkaramba too. Since 4.4.2 loads have bugs have been fixed and you might well find it fixes your problem.

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Liquidator;

After adding the ppa line, I attempted to update and this is the result:

mark@AMD-Phenom-II:~$ sudo apt-get update
E: Type 'ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa' is not known on line 43 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list

What do you suggest?

[mhumm2]

Re: Kwin crashes then other stuff crashes and locks my system up

Okay. I did some research to get a little smarter about the process. Here are the results:

mark@AMD-Phenom-II:~$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/ppa
[sudo] password for mark: 
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /etc/apt/secring.gpg --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv E4DFEC907DEDA4B8A670E8042836CB0A8AC93F7A
gpg: requesting key 8AC93F7A from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key 8AC93F7A: "Launchpad Kubuntu Updates" not changed
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg:       unchanged: 1

Then I updated of course:

mark@AMD-Phenom-II:~$ sudo apt-get update
Hit [url]http://ppa.launchpad.net[/url] lucid Release.gpg
Ign [url]http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/ppa/ubuntu/[/url] lucid/main Translation-en_US                   
Hit [url]http://archive.canonical.com[/url] lucid Release.gpg                                   
Ign [url]http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid/partner Translation-en_US                        
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid Release.gpg                                   
Ign [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid/main Translation-en_US                               
Hit [url]http://security.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-security Release.gpg                                     
Ign [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-security/restricted Translation-en_US                        
Hit [url]http://ppa.launchpad.net[/url] lucid Release                                            
Hit [url]http://archive.canonical.com[/url] lucid Release                                          
Ign [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid/restricted Translation-en_US                            
Ign [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid/universe Translation-en_US                        
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates Release.gpg                               
Ign [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-updates/main Translation-en_US                      
Ign [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-updates/restricted Translation-en_US                   
Ign [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-updates/universe Translation-en_US                         
Ign [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-security/main Translation-en_US                           
Ign [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-security/multiverse Translation-en_US                   
Ign [url]http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-security/universe Translation-en_US                    
Hit [url]http://security.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-security Release                                  
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid Release                                          
Hit [url]http://ppa.launchpad.net[/url] lucid/main Packages                                         
Hit [url]http://archive.canonical.com[/url] lucid/partner Packages                                      
Hit [url]http://security.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-security/restricted Packages                            
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates Release                      
Hit [url]http://archive.canonical.com[/url] lucid/partner Sources                   
Hit [url]http://security.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-security/main Packages                
Hit [url]http://security.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-security/multiverse Packages  
Hit [url]http://security.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-security/universe Packages   
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid/main Packages
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid/restricted Packages                            
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid/main Sources                                
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid/restricted Sources                             
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid/universe Packages                             
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid/universe Sources
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates/main Packages
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates/restricted Packages       
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates/main Sources          
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates/restricted Sources       
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates/universe Packages
Hit [url]http://us.archive.ubuntu.com[/url] lucid-updates/universe Sources        
Hit [url]http://archive.getdeb.net[/url] lucid-getdeb Release.gpg             
Ign [url]http://archive.getdeb.net/ubuntu/[/url] lucid-getdeb/games Translation-en_US
Hit [url]http://archive.getdeb.net[/url] lucid-getdeb Release    
Hit [url]http://archive.getdeb.net[/url] lucid-getdeb/games Packages
Reading package lists... Done

I expected my system to immediately try to update, but it hasn't. Is there something else I have to do manually to download the updated software?