KDE very flaky after update

[bobicanprogram]

My Kubuntu has been running fine for some time. I've been getting little notices for the last while that security updates were available. So this morning I decided to update.

Now my KDE interface is very flaky. Sometimes I can login and navigate a few mouse clicks and then everything freezes. Mouse cursor moves, but no clicks do anything. Sometimes the KDE window will just loose its ability to move around on screen and loose the close down X box in corner. Other times I'll go to click on KDE menu and it will simply grey out and freeze everything

I can boot into console mode from the pulldown on the graphical login screen. All the other graphical modes suffer as described above.

In console mode my network is working so presumably I could use apt-get (or aptitude) to install some packages.

Any ideas on how I can recover my KDE? Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[bobicanprogram]

Upgraded my KDE to ppa repository by:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I definitely have a new KDE but the freezing continues. In one case I lost the mouse cursor. In another case the cursor persists but nothing is clickable. Don't know if keyboard is working.

How can I use keyboard to jump out of KDE to console?

How can I use the command line to upgrade from Kubuntu 12.04 to 12.10?

Any other thoughts? Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[oshunluvr]

To console: CRTL-ALT-F1 (or F2 to F6)

To upgrade: sudo do-release-upgrade

[bobicanprogram]

Thanks. I'm on a weather disruptable wireless broadband. I'll try the upgrade at next opportunity. Btw my keyboard and mouse are PS2 because I have a PS2 KVM switch still. Meanwhile I'll see if I can scrounge up a USB keyboard and mouse to try.

Meanwhile in my Google searching it would seem that this has been a problem with Kubuntu for a very long time. My motherboard is ASUS. At least lsmod shows asus_wmi. Several posts pointed to ASUS being a problem particularly with P22 keyboard and mouse. They recommend blacklisting the asus module. However that was for an older Kubuntu version and a different module. Don't know whether to do it with this one.

How can I know if this module was upgraded during my infamous update the other day? If it was, is there any way to go back to the version before which had been working fine?

Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[oshunluvr]

I don't know what module you're referring to, but you can downgrade using muon;

Muon (pick the package) > Versions tab (pick the version) > Click: Force Version > Click: Apply Changes.

[bobicanprogram]

USB keyboard + mouse makes no difference to KDE freezing problem.

Oshunluvr: I can't use anything in the KDE GUI reliably. How do I downgrade using the command line?

Is there any log I can look at which might contain a "hint" as to the cause of the freeze? I checked the syslog but nothing obvious jumped out. When the KDE freezes I can't get to a console because my keyboard is also gone. The Linux magic key sequence does work, but it forces a reboot.

I'm willing to keep looking for a cause here, but I am not experienced enough to generate good ideas on my own. I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[Snowhog]

Get to a console and type:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

See if after this (and a reboot) things don't improve.

[bobicanprogram]

Snowhog: tried these commands and it showed (as expected) that my system was up todate. Afterall it was an upgrade that got me into this trouble at the outset.

I also tried the

sudo do-release-upgrade

that oshunluvr suggested earlier and it reports back "No new release found".

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[Snowhog]

Run:

sudo apt-get install -f

If there are any broken packages, this will attempt to fix them. If there are any, then after it finishes, run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[bobicanprogram]

Snowhog: tried the install -f and it reported that 4 packages (eg. Linux headers, tcl84 stuff) were no longer required. I used autoremove to get rid of them as the install -f command suggested. Then I reran the update and dist-upgrade. Same result. My system is up todate.

Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[Snowhog]

What version of KDE are you using? Open any KDE application (Konsole will do) and click on Help > About KDE.

[bobicanprogram]

OK.

sudo do-release-upgrade -d

did several hours worth of something. Looks like my mouse and keyboard are more stable now. However, Kmail is acting very wierd. It takes several attempts to bring it up. When it finally "latches" it responds to some mouse clicks like it is in quicksand. eg. If I try to click on a folder to flip to one of my other accounts in kmail it takes 30-60sec to flip. Once in a given account clicking on individual emails seems to be faster but still not snappy by any stretch. Any thoughts?

My Firefox seems to be running well enough. I haven't tried too many other KDE apps at this point.

How can I tell what version of Kubuntu I now have running?

Snowhog: with the upgrade above I'm now running KDE 4.10.2 it seems.

bob

[bobicanprogram]

Optimism was premature. Just had 2 freezes with the new system. One where the mouse cursor completely froze. Kmail is essentially unusable in this configuration. It takes 2-3 tries to get it to even come up. Once up switching between folders is very slow.

Any ideas? I'd like to stick with Kubuntu if I can. Will try to secure another blank hard drive to reinstall my original 12.04 which was working very well for several months until I did the "fatal" upgrade.

Thanks in advance for your help.

bob

[bobicanprogram]

Where do I look for kmail errors? .xsession-errors? If so then there appear to be lots of errors in that xsession file.

A grep for kmail in the above error file yields the following:

=====
kmail2(1779)/libakonadi Akonadi::AgentManagerPrivate::createDBusInterface: AgentManager failed to get a valid AgentManager DBus interface. Error is: 1 "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NameHasNoOwner" "Could not get owner of name 'org.freedesktop.Akonadi.Control': no such name"

kmail2(1779)/libakonadi Akonadi::SessionPrivate::socketError: Socket error occurred: "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"

kmail2(1779)/libakonadi Akonadi::SessionPrivate::socketError: Socket error occurred: "QLocalSocket::connectToServer: Invalid name"

kmail2(1779) MessageList::Core::ModelInvariantRowMapperPrivate: :modelIndexRowToModelInvariantIndexInternal: Requested invariant for storage row index 1 not found in history

kmail2(1779)/libkleo QGpgMECryptoConfigComponent::runGpgConf: Running 'gpgconf --list-options "dirmngr" ' failed. Operation not permitted , but try that command to see the real output
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/OCSP/allow-ocsp"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/OCSP/ignore-ocsp-service-url"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/HTTP/ignore-http-dp"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/HTTP/disable-http"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/HTTP/honor-http-proxy"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/LDAP/ignore-ldap-dp"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/LDAP/disable-ldap"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/OCSP/ocsp-responder"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/OCSP/ocsp-signer"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/HTTP/http-proxy"
kmail2(1779) SMIMECryptoConfigEntries::configEntry: "Backend error: gpgconf doesn't seem to know the entry for dirmngr/LDAP/ldap-proxy"




=====

Any suggestions on how to get rid of these errors?

Thanks in advance for your help.

bob