Upgrade easy, but

[Calgarian]

My upgrade went very easy. I had some, now to be expected, issues with Akonadi/Kontact. I lost my calendar and can't locate it anywhere, even on full backup of my home directory before the upgrade. Two other problems: KRename gets a segment fault immediately. I did an uninstall and re-install and it still faults. I have both xscreensaver and kscreensaver installed. I use a slide show as my screen saver. The transition between pictures seems to be several thousand small squares that take several minutes to resolve. Interrupting the screen saver takes 15 to 30 seconds before I can return to an active screen. Not sure what to do about either issue?

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

krename crash is a known problem, bug reports filed, awaiting fix.

Calendar problem: I don't see any reason for the upgrade to have deleted it. Do you know the name of the calendar file, in which case:

find -name filename

run from your home directory (if that's where your file was) should find it.

Screensaver: you mention you have both xscreensaver and kscreensaver installed. By chance, are you running them both? That could cause real problems.

ps aux xscreensaver

should tell you if the xscreensaver demon is running. If it is, then

pkill xscreensaver

should get rid of it.

[carlof]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

Hi. Here same problem with screensaver (I'll check a.s.a.p. if both kscreensaver and xscreensaver are running... I'm not at that pc now)
I upgraded from 11.04 to 11.10b2 and now I've done every update released.

In kinfocenter I can't find the kscreensaver's configurations' page... does anyone know where it is
I looked at kscreensaver.rc (or something like this ) but it has nothing about my conf (slideshow from a specific folder etc.)

thank you,
Carlo

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

Look at:

~/.kde/share/config/kscreensaverrc

[Calgarian]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

[ScreenSaver]
ActionBottomLeft=0
ActionBottomRight=0
ActionTopLeft=0
ActionTopRight=0
PlasmaEnabled=false
Saver=KSlideshow.desktop

Is the content of my rc file. I used Muon and removed all the screensaver modules that did not cause the removal of most of KDE. You have to be careful and preview the removal process. Then I re-installed just the KScreensaver components. I did a restart in-between the removal and re-install, but that may not be necessary. This did improve things somewhat, but it's still very slow in transition.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

That basically looks right.

One other thing you might check is your display rendering.

SystemSettings > DesktopEffects > Advanced

What you do after this depends on your video setup. If you are using nvidia or ati with a proprietary video driver like nvidia-current, then you can set Compositing Type to OpenGl. Otherwise you need to set it to xrender.

Another experiment to try is to turn off Desktop effects under the General tab and see if this speeds things up. If so, then it's a video problem, and we can go onward from there.


The screensaver configuration page has been moved from where it used to be:

System Settings > Display and Monitor > Screen Saver

[Calgarian]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

I think I may have found it. On my check-list for an update I forgot to look for new NVIDIA drivers. I just activated the post-release update of the 173 driver. I'll watch that for the next screensaver and see how it works.

UPDATE:

No change. The setting is as suggested. I turned off effects and no change. This is odd.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

the 173 nvidia driver is pretty old. I would recommend replacing it with something more recent, if it will support your video card.

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

should install the 280.13 driver.

If you want the most recent driver, which may not be the most stable, but is working on my system, then you will need to install the x-swat repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current

This will install 285.05.09.

You will likely need to reboot for all this to take effect.

[Calgarian]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

I did the apt-get install nvidia-current and got a message that it was already current. I checked the NVIDIA configuration and it is a 173.xx.xx version. I'm running a GeForce 9600 GS 768Gb board and an Acer 223w monitor. I have a long process running right now with an external drive. As soon as it finishes I'll try the very latest as you suggest. Thanks for all the help so far.

[carlof]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

Hi,
I have nvidia driver 280.13 installed, I tried with desktop effects disabled and nothing changed.
I purged kscreensaver xscreensaver systemsettings and their dependencies, then I re-installed them (except xscreensaver) and nothing changed!

cat ~/.kde/share/config/kscreensaverrc
[ScreenSaver]
ActionBottomLeft=0
ActionBottomRight=0
ActionTopLeft=0
ActionTopRight=0
PlasmaEnabled=true
Saver=KSlideshow.desktop
Timeout=180

cat ~/.kde/share/config/kslideshow.kssrc
[Settings]
Delay=5
Directory[$e]=/media/Dati/fotografie
PrintName=false
RandomPosition=false
ShowRandom=true
SubDirectory=true
ZoomImages=true

my systemsettings continues to be without screensaver!!!

[Calgarian]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

It looks like two of us are chasing the same issue. I also managed to get to the 280.xx version and things are a little better. What I am finding is that some of the transition methods go fast and some go slow. It appears to be a transition issue in the kslideshow.kss. Is there a way to set the transition(s) that will be used?

[carlof]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

Yes Calgarian! Same impression here... but I've also the problem with screensaver in systemsettings

I made a test with a new user just created: kslideshow.kss is the same, but I can see screensaver's settings in systemsettings...

Now I'll try to disable some repo...

by the way: systemsettings changed when I added http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-active/ppa/ubuntu/

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

Just to see what would happen, I tried the slide show screensaver.

What I found is that, as you have noticed, some of the transitions are very fast, and the ones that display the little squares are painfully slow. Since some of the transitions do go fast, I am wondering if maybe the problem with the little squares isn't by design.

You might try a different screensaver, particularly one of the opengl ones. If they work, then it's either by design that this is slow, or else it's a bug in that particular saver module.

[Calgarian]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

I tried all the OpenGL ones shown and they all appeared to work. The only issue was that ones like Particle Fountain appeared to be blurry, but that may be by design. I think it's a problem with the transition feature in the kslideshow module. I don't have any empirical evidence, but that's my best guess given the things I've tried.

[carlof]

Re: Upgrade easy, but

Hi,
I tried this:

running kslideshow.kss from konsole I have had a slideshow winowed with slow transition
then "sudo kslideshow.kss" and everything is ok!
Just a message "Error: "/var/tmp/kdecache-carlo" is owned by uid 1000 instead of uid 0."