Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

[marvo]

I have used Maverick for some time now, and everything worked perfect until i decided to upgrade to Natty last week.
Now, Plasma-Desktop is never using less than 40% cpu with 100% spikes, and after a while Xorg is also using a lot of cpu and everyting freezes shortly after.
To make the computer any usefull i have to suspend the plasma-desktop process, and "continue it" only for short periods in order to open another program(s)
Any one else having this problem?

My computer is an Acer laptop with -you guessed it- Intel graphics

[GreyGeek]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

Intel's graphics isn't intrinsically bad. My Intel chip is behaving perfectly on my Lucid Lynx. It behave well on your Maverick installation. Try turning off your desktop effects.

[marvo]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

Desktop effects are turned off -forgot to mention that. They are suspended automaticaly when i turn on the computer. It says that they "run to slow".
I have also tried to remove all the plasmoids/widgets on the desktop with no effect.

[dibl]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

You said you "upgraded" to Natty. One experiment that might be worth doing would be to make a Natty Live CD, and boot that, and see if the behavior is the same. If it is not, then that would suggest that there is something about your system configuration, possibly related to the upgrade process, that is not quite optimal. You could examine the video configuration of the Live CD session, and see how that compares to your installed configuration.

Intel has been building GPUs for quite a few years now, and there are multiple generations of them deployed -- i810, i815, i830, i845, i855, i865, i915, i945, and i965, with many models. There have a been a series of drivers too. Some chip/driver combinations work great, and some, not so much. Have you searched Ubuntu Forums, using your exact GPU model? Someone else has surely posted something about how he/she made it work.

[marvo]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

Yes, i did a apt-get dist-upgrade last week and it asked me if i wanted to upgrade to natty, whitch i did.
I tried doing a dist-upgrade a few hours ago to see if any bugfixes wold fix the problem but no difference.

I remember that when i started the upgrade from Mav to natty, it said that some packages (9 i think) was not compatible with natty. Not sure if that was some of the programs i've installed, or if it might be some of nattys drivers that is not compatible with my hardware.
By the way, my graphics card is a Intel MobileExpress 945 i think.
As i mentioned earlier, everything worked fine with Maverick and Windows 7 that i had before Maverick, so i'm sure it's not a hardware problem.

I'l try to download a live-cd and see if it works.

[marvo]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

It actualy DOES work with a live cd, i\m running the live cd as i type so I Wonder what have gone wrong with the upgrade
The plasma-desktop is running at a steady 0-2% cpu load with just VERY few spikes of maybe 5%

So now, the question is: Is any one else experiencing this problem, and is there any way to re-install natty without loosing my files and installed programs -just like windows' ''Repair windows installation'' ?

[Snowhog]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

Ensure that the upgrade to Natty was actually done 'to completion.' Open a console and type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If any packages are identified with the second command, the the upgrade 'failed' partially. Repeat the three until no errors are reported.

[dibl]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

While running in Live CD mode, open a terminal and

lsmod

to list the loaded kernel modules, and find a way to paste the output (perhaps with kate or kwrite) into a text document that you can save on a USB stick or something.

Then, when running your installed system, do the same thing, and compare the loaded modules, with particular attention to the video-related modules for your Intel GPU. I'm guessing you'll see a difference, which may point to the performance difference.

[marvo]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

To be honest, right after i wrote the post from the live-cd, i braced my self, and formated the whole thing and installed a fresh copy of Natty.
The first thing to meet me, was a CPU usage between 40 and 70% all the time, but this time it was Kwin.
I though "DAMN! All this for nothing...!" >

But as it turned out, i just disabled 'Blur' and vóilà, everything worked perfect! (At least for now...)

Its obvious that something had gone wrong with the upgrade, the question is what...?
Anyways, i did make a backup of my home before the re-install so i only had to install the aplications again.
I'm just happy that it's working again, Thank you for all your help guys!

[Snowhog]

Re: Plasma-Desktop is eating CPU after upgrade to Natty

My computer is an Acer laptop with -you guessed it- Intel graphics

Yup, blur effects, if they work, can/will slow things down a lot. High CPU usage would not be unexpected.