KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

[cyrex]

Here i go.
Using Kubuntu 9.04. I inserted the livecd and formatted the hard drive. Made 1 partition apart from swap. My hard drive is a Samsung 1TB so i had a Ext4 partition of about 900GB. After i had my kubuntu ready for use and changed the panel to the classic style and downloaded the updates up to yesterday. All started yesterday. I have another hard drive with the same size of the other one, that is, 1TB Samsung. In this second hard drive i have all my backups in Ext3 format. This is all i did:

1. Copy all the 300GB of data from my second hard drive to my first disk. This with the intention to then format the second drive to change it to Ext4, since it was Ext3 at the moment.

2. The notification window in the lower right corner popped up to show me the progress, the tipical copy speed, how much is been copied and how much is left. I just happen to drag that window to the center of screen to show it to a friend (since it looks pretty cool). After that i moved the window back and even noticed the pause feature where i can pause the copy process on the fly.

3. After the process finished the window did not say finished but stayed there for about an hour and half. I thought maybe there was some unfinished tasks but did not find any so i did a ctrl+alt+esc to kill this window. this is when the problems began.

4. The whole KDE desktop got frozen, i could not open anything, move anything or close anything. I could not even open the openoffice doc i had at the moment to save it. The thing i thought was to kill the kdm from init.d and restart it again. Which i did via another tty. The thing is the kdm did not start. So i had to reset the PC the hard way. First time i had to do this.

5. Here is the weird part. The PC starts and gets stuck in a part about power management. So i run the kernel in recovery mode to find out that the whole /usr sections has been deleted, completely. There was nothing there and i mean nothing.

So i would like to know how in the world do you delete the /usr section by doing the above, which by the way i did again to make sure and sure enough it happened again. Somehow by moving the notification windows you can delete the /usr. Also will like to add that it did not happen with any notification window but only to windows that had the task of copying information to the hard drive, so i needed it to copy for example something from another hard drive to this one and then move the notification window around.

Another less dangerous problem is that when moving other notification windows the kde desktop most of the time failed and i had to reset the whole kde. And when opening the kde menu to go to any program and a notification windows popped at that moment, the kde menu automatically closes itself.

If anybody has any out of this world answer cause i sure don't see the relation.

My PC is a Core 2 Duo 8500 with the DP35DP Intel Motherboard, an Ndivia 8500 and 4GB Ram if that helps in finding out the problem. So as a conclusion, anything i do to the notification windows makes some problem with either the desktop or some weird stuff like the one mention above.

[flarson]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

This sounds like something which will require more information, rather than guessing at possible cures. The first infor we need is in which directory were your backups stored and where were you restoing them to? Are you talking about copying recursively all of the root (/) partition from an older system into the currently running /? Are you copying /usr recursively from your second disk to /usr on your current installation?

Are you copying using Dolphin or Konqueror? As root or as your self?

[cyrex]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

Was copying a folder which was had a size of about 300GB not the root folder. The folder's names is backup2009.

Was copying using dolphin and was using the root account while doing this. The second disk was in /media/disk and the folder i was copying was in /media/disk/backup/backup2009. Being backup2009 the folder i was copying to the desktop folder which was at the moment /root/desktop

Any other info you think is need it please let me know since am bugged with how this problem could come to be. Also would like to add that while copying from one disk to the other the performance of the whole system was slow. Dolphin and other programs like kmess took a little more to open than usual.

[flarson]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

Actually, with what you have now described I would hardly know where to start, unless I could sit at the machine. Nothing in what you have described seems like it should have any effect on /usr/at all. I would say that it is quite easy to upgrade from ext3 to ext4 so this exercise may have been needless. It is hard to ignore once you know that you have a problem like this.

[cyrex]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

ok i know everything i have said has 100% nothing to do with the fact that /usr disappeared, the thing why am asking IF by some chance somebody could repeat again the same thing i am doing to make sure it could also happen to them. Maybe like some weird bug. Just copu stuff from one hard drive to the one running the system, move the copy notification window, wait until it gets haulted, kill the notify windows then reset the pc. Anyway i was really not waiting for an answer to this since this is one of those things you see on the series Fringe. Some crazy stuff really.

[upa]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

I can confirm this in my installation of 9.04

Also would like to add that while copying from one disk to the other the performance of the whole system was slow.

The whole system becomes very slow. In my case it happened when copying from ntfs /home/myProfile which is ext4, about 13GB. My system is dual core 2Ghz, amd64, 2GB RAM, so I rule out it happened because of limitations of hardware.

And this:

4. The whole KDE desktop got frozen, i could not open anything, move anything or close anything. I could not even open the openoffice doc i had at the moment to save it.

When dragging the widgets my system did freeze once. The mouse pointer worked but I could perform no other actions, no CTRL+ALT+DEL nor CTRL+BACKSPACE. The only button that worked was the power one, I pressed and hold down it for 4 seconds to shut down the laptop. After reboot there were no residual effects. All seemed well.

Regards

[kevinc]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

This won't solve your specific problem, but it may help prevent other problems in the future.

One partition for / and one partition for swap is not the best. Having /home on its own partition has many advantages. One - backup. If you have two disks, you can use dd or many ways to copy a partition from one disk to another. Two - re-install or fresh install, you only need to mount /home, while / will be overwritten (and your /home if not on its own partition). With /home on its own partition all of the data and settings are preserved. Three. If your main partition has a problem and /home is there, you loose your data - except for backups, but if /home is on its own partition, you can probably recover it all.

If you have a few hundred G still on your drive, you could resize and add one more partition. Just a suggestion.

[dibl]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

One partition for / and one partition for swap is not the best. Having /home on its own partition has many advantages. One - backup. If you have two disks, you can use dd or many ways to copy a partition from one disk to another. Two - re-install or fresh install, you only need to mount /home, while / will be overwritten (and your /home if not on its own partition). With /home on its own partition all of the data and settings are preserved. Three. If your main partition has a problem and /home is there, you loose your data - except for backups, but if /home is on its own partition, you can probably recover it all.

I once thought a separate partition for /home was the best way to do it, but after gaining more experience, I think there is an even better way, especially if you boot more than one Linux OS -- make a partition (or more than one) just for data. Give it a label if you want, or use the UUID. Make directories on it for "DOCS", "IMAGES", "MUSIC", "MOVIES", or whatever you have. Then use symlinks to link those folders in to your /home directory.

Doing it this way means /home can be on the same 10GB partition as the rest of the root filesystem, yet you have all the same "safety of data" advantages as when /home is on its own partition. If the OS crashes and you need to reinstall, your data are untouched. Plus, if you choose to run another OS with a different desktop environment, or a different version of KDE, there is no problem with your user settings in /home getting overwritten.

Today's two cents' worth ....

[kevinc]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

Thank Dibl. Great idea. I'll try it once I finish downloading the current Jaunty CD image - maybe within a week. (I average an hour by bit torrent each day in the internet cafe.)

I'm dual booting, still using Intrepid for production and recently put Debian Lenny on my other four partitions.
Symlinks will do the job nicely. I'm also using an external hard disk for backup.

[cyrex]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

Am guessing after the performance lose is taking care of while copying and the dragging of notification windows has been taken care of kde will be much better (of course 4.2.2 is outstanding right now)

[Guest]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

It is ext4 - no question. I say this with certainty because I had the exact same scenario on another system. The hangs would occur at different times during the copies, but it always hung (I was usually copying many hundreds of GB). Anyway, I spent quite a bit of time troubleshooting. It finally occurred to me - I had somewhat recently changed to ext4, and the problems started after that. So, I reformatted the drives to ext3 - everything worked just fine from then on - not a single hang.

[geezer]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

Okay - I'm trying to understand the advantages of this.

Adding symlinks from /home on the root file system, it would seem that you would have to update all of those symlinks if you did a clean install.

Now if you have only a half-dozen or so symlinks to establish, then it wouldn't be a problem, or at least much of a problem.

But i just counted - I have 20 separate folders on my home directory. Setting up 20 symlinks, while not overly troublesome maybe, would take some time, given the typing and double checking on my typing to make sure I hadn't typed something wrong.

So what am I really gaining for all of that typing? I guess what I would like to know, what problem are you avoiding with the symlink approach??

I can see if you run another Linux OS and want the same data, but different settings for the desktop, it would be an advantage. How many people run different Linux distros on the same machine? I can see the advantage for them, but if I run a single distro (heck I have enough trouble keeping track of one ), what advantage would I have??

And what is the advantage of leaving /home on the root partition??

I once thought a separate partition for /home was the best way to do it, but after gaining more experience, I think there is an even better way, especially if you boot more than one Linux OS -- make a partition (or more than one) just for data. Give it a label if you want, or use the UUID. Make directories on it for "DOCS", "IMAGES", "MUSIC", "MOVIES", or whatever you have. Then use symlinks to link those folders in to your /home directory.

Doing it this way means /home can be on the same 10GB partition as the rest of the root filesystem, yet you have all the same "safety of data" advantages as when /home is on its own partition. If the OS crashes and you need to reinstall, your data are untouched. Plus, if you choose to run another OS with a different desktop environment, or a different version of KDE, there is no problem with your user settings in /home getting overwritten.

Today's two cents' worth ....

[sithlord48]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

my set up is a bit diffrent ,as the hd is in another computer and i use nfs to mount parts of it.
but what i do i on the remote host i have a docs drive that contains a bunch of folders. i only keep the folders that are pre created in /home (pictures,music,documents, etc) in root of this drive , the other stuff i keep in a folder(i call it archive) that i mount locally as /media/archive.. that way if i need my docs there in the place implied by most program that will use them. so that way if i open amarok it will see my collection cause it's in ~/Music. and having the bulk folder helps me from making the whole bunch of other mounts (and folders that go w/ them locally) and saves me bunches of time on set up of a new os (or to do fresh installs on new relases)

So what am I really gaining for all of that typing? I guess what I would like to know, what problem are you avoiding with the symlink approach??

really for me the only thing i gain from this (and i could be wrong about it) is that if i were to have a /home set i could possiblly have a setting issue like in .kde lets say (that i may try to fix by formating cause idk what it is) and my remounting my /home i will apon reinstall possiblly recreate that issue leading to some confusion when the issue is there on a fresh system.

[geezer]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

I once thought a separate partition for /home was the best way to do it, but after gaining more experience, I think there is an even better way, especially if you boot more than one Linux OS -- make a partition (or more than one) just for data. Give it a label if you want, or use the UUID. Make directories on it for "DOCS", "IMAGES", "MUSIC", "MOVIES", or whatever you have. Then use symlinks to link those folders in to your /home directory.

Doing it this way means /home can be on the same 10GB partition as the rest of the root filesystem, yet you have all the same "safety of data" advantages as when /home is on its own partition. If the OS crashes and you need to reinstall, your data are untouched. Plus, if you choose to run another OS with a different desktop environment, or a different version of KDE, there is no problem with your user settings in /home getting overwritten.

Today's two cents' worth ....

dibl - I re-read another thread where you posted about this idea and described how to do the links using dolphin or Konquerer, that makes it much easier.

Also had some more time to think about it and had this thought:

When doing a clean install of the same distro and you get a clean /home with this method, you also get a clean slate on all of those desktop settings you mentioned. This can be good and bad. Some of those desktop settings should go away and not linger about with a clean install when going to an upgrade, say 8.10 to 9.04.

However, it would also be good to keep some of those desktop settings.

Would there be an easy way, or any way at all, of keeping some of the desktop settings when doing a clean install with /home in the root partition?

For example, one thing I'm thinking of would be the Thunderbird (or Kmail) mail archives. Those are kept in those hidden files in the home directory.

[sithlord48]

Re: KDE 4.2.2 Weird problem

you can always copy those folders to the data partiton and simlink them just like your /home/Pictures or /home/Documents