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    Strange behavior, maybe desktop related?

    Starting yesterday, a couple of strange things started happening. First, Amarok started acting very slow, and then not really responding at all. So I restarted it, but it was even worse. So I rebooted, and then it would not even open Amarok. Furthermore, my Kicker or K Launcher, or whatever it is called, became very unresponsive. This was not a resource issue, since my CPU use (among four processors) was just a few percent, and my memory (of 8GB) was less than 30 percent. When I would start the app launcher from the panel, it would take several minutes to open, and the panel was completely dead during that wait. Some apps, though by no means all, will not open either, such as Muon Package manager.

    I tried opening Amarok from a Konsole to see what error messages were thrown, and got:

    DBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
    QDBusConnection: session D-Bus connection created before QCoreApplication. Application may misbehave.
    KGlobal::locale::Warning your global KLocale is being recreated with a valid main component instead of a fake component, this usually means you tried to call i18n related functions before your main component was created. You should not do that since it most likely will not work

    It then froze and the CLI did not return until ctrl-c. Amarok never opens though ps -ejH|grep amarok shows some process is running. Still, no significant CPU or memory use. Oddly, this process cannot be killed from the CLI, but can from some System Activity window that comes from a widget on the panel. While the panel is frozen waiting for the launcher menu, my Cairo dock functions fine.

    I just did a reinstall of Amarok, because I did not know what else to do. This made no difference. I also purged Amarok and reinstalled, but this changed nothing. I don't even know where to start debugging this.

    Anyone have any ideas?

    **UPDATE**

    Very soon after posting this, my screen started flickering badly. Sound like a video card or driver problem. According to lspci, this is:


    VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09)

    **UPDATE #2 (though probably no one cares) **

    I did another reboot and noticed that there was a Kate process that was trying to start but didn't. Using ps I found a Kate process that was not showing up on the screen. After killing it, things seemed to go back to normal. That is very strange behavior.
    Last edited by jds; Jan 01, 2013, 03:02 PM. Reason: another discovery

    #2
    Anyone have any ideas?
    Your description matches how my system behaves if the Blur desktop effect is on.

    Regards, John Little
    Regards, John Little

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      #3
      Hi John,

      I checked, and "Blur" under Desktop Effects was on. I switched it off, but don't really know how to check if that was the problem, since some orphaned process like Kate (or maybe specifically Kate?) needs to happen to see. We'll see if it crops up again with the effect turn off.

      Thanks,
      Jay

      Comment


        #4
        Another thing you may want to consider jds is changing your session management from "Restore Previous Session" to "Start with an Empty Session" under "System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Session Management". With the default setting of "Restore..." KDE will even restart misbehaving programs that you may not know were even running. I found that out the hard way, now it's the first thing I do when I do a new install.
        Computers don't make mistakes. They only execute them.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by Dutchman View Post
          KDE will even restart misbehaving programs that you may not know were even running. I found that out the hard way, now it's the first thing I do when I do a new install.
          Good tip Dutchman! Thanks.

          Cheers,
          Bill
          sigpic
          A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. --Albert Einstein

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by Dutchman View Post
            Another thing you may want to consider jds is changing your session management from "Restore Previous Session" to "Start with an Empty Session" under "System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Session Management". With the default setting of "Restore..." KDE will even restart misbehaving programs that you may not know were even running. I found that out the hard way, now it's the first thing I do when I do a new install.
            The problem has just recurred, and once again it was caused by some misbehaving Kate process that tried to start but did not. This is certainly some strange bug associated with Kate. Maybe I started it last time with gksu privileges and it has problems restarting my session. I will try your suggestion of starting with an empty session. It should solve my immediate problem, but there is still a bug somewhere that needs fixing. I just don't know where to report it.

            Comment


              #7
              You can report a bug at bugs.kde.org or search to see if it's already been reported. You probably already know, Kate also has it's own session management, you may want to check that too and see if it's set to start a new session. Especially if you last started it as the root user.
              Computers don't make mistakes. They only execute them.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by jds View Post
                Maybe I started it last time with gksu privileges and it has problems restarting my session.
                gksu? that is for gnome ......for KDE GUI apps use kdesudo to start one as root .

                VINNY
                i7 4core HT 8MB L3 2.9GHz
                16GB RAM
                Nvidia GTX 860M 4GB RAM 1152 cuda cores

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by vinnywright View Post
                  gksu? that is for gnome ......for KDE GUI apps use kdesudo to start one as root .

                  VINNY
                  True, but kdesudo has been flaky for me in the past, whereas gksu has been more reliable. I haven't checked in a couple of years to see if kdesudo is now reliable.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by Dutchman View Post
                    changing your session management from "Restore Previous Session" to "Start with an Empty Session" under "System Settings > Startup and Shutdown > Session Management".
                    I recommend this as well. Really, it should be the default.

                    Originally posted by jds View Post
                    True, but kdesudo has been flaky for me in the past, whereas gksu has been more reliable. I haven't checked in a couple of years to see if kdesudo is now reliable.
                    gksu is not part of the standard Kubuntu installation and none of the included programs are elevation-tested using that utility.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      This seems to have gotten off-track with gksu. That is not the issue here. However, the real issue went away somehow. I did change sessions to be fresh with each reboot. That did not make a difference for a couple of days, but then the problem went away after that. I have no idea why. Can't really marked this as solved.

                      On the other hand, there are now a few flaky behaviors that do not keep things from running, but are problematic. I can think of two immediately: (1) my sound mutes itself occasionally. Reproducible in the sense that it happens all the time, but cannot pin it to one particular activity. (2) I get a notice for some items crashing and being restarted. For example, plasma-desktop is common. Also unrtf (used by recoll).

                      I have another box whose screen continually froze. This is a common problem, with no solution last I checked. Had to move to Linux Mint on that box. Am thinking of moving to something more stable than (K)ubuntu. Maybe Debian.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Please try and follow forum etiquette and keep threads/posts to a single topic. Adding 'new issues' to an existing thread makes it very difficult to follow. Please consider starting two new threads.
                        Windows no longer obstructs my view.
                        Using Kubuntu Linux since March 23, 2007.
                        "It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." - Sherlock Holmes

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