xorg hang?

[personman]

After some recent updates, one of my machines seems to be choking on a process called ksplashx during KDE's boot. KDE hangs at the loading screen and consumes one core of my processor, along with 2 ksplashx processes, one running as root, and one as my user.

Killing the process running as my user allows KDE to continue booting.

Anyone else getting this?

-Andy

[dibl]

Re: xorg hang?

No such problem here. I just finished two rounds of updates -- I didn't notice that the one last night triggered the "need to restart" notification, so this morning I rebooted and did another dist-upgrade. This morning's update included a new Amarok and GoogleEarth, so I'll have to check those out.

Running "top" here shows no ksplashx process running.

dibl@karmic:~$ sudo locate ksplashx
/usr/bin/ksplashx
/usr/bin/ksplashx_scale

So I have it installed. Interestingly, looking for the package in synaptic, I find nothing under "ksplashx" nor "libksplashx" -- I wonder what the name of the package is?

Google turns up a couple of threads -- especially for SUSE -- regarding the location of the splash theme files.

If I were you, I would reboot into recovery mode, and run apt-get dist-upgrade and apt-get autoremove a time or two, then reboot into your user login. The problem might just go away.

[tnorris]

Re: xorg hang?

you can use "dkg-query --search <filename>" to find the name of the package that installed a particular file.

[dibl]

Re: xorg hang?

Aha -- yes, I'd forgotten that one.

OK, here we go:

dibl@karmic:~$ dpkg-query --search ksplashx
kdebase-workspace-bin: /usr/bin/ksplashx_scale
kdebase-workspace-bin: /usr/bin/ksplashx

So, personman, you might want to consider (after the dist-upgrade that I recommended) a re-install of kdebase-workspace-bin, just to make sure it's all still there.

[GreyGeek]

Re: xorg hang?

Or,

jerry@SonyK910:~$ whereis ksplashx
ksplashx: /usr/bin/ksplashx

jerry@SonyK910:~$ locate ksplashx
/usr/bin/ksplashx
/usr/bin/ksplashx_scale
/var/tmp/kdecache-jerry/ksplashx
/var/tmp/kdecache-jerry/ksplashx/Default-1600x900-background.png
jerry@SonyK910:~$

but dpkg-query --search <filename> will give more specific results, whereas the whereis command just gives the name of binary executables and the locate command may turn on the firehose.

[Rog131]

Re: xorg hang?

The KSplashX is > KSplashX README:

This is a splashscreen which basically depends only on libX11 and libpng.
It includes few sources from Qt which have been modified to work without
QApplication. Due to almost no link dependencies and no QApplication
initialization this splashscreen has a very fast startup....

The Plan with the Karmic is > Kubuntu Karmic Xsplash:

Use ksplashx as our splash, it has minimal dependencies and is already available to all Kubuntu users.

Have KDM start ksplashx as the first thing it does. Have KDM signal to ksplashx to fade out when the greeter is ready to display.

There has been > [ubuntu/karmic] kdebase-workspace 4:4.3.1-0ubuntu3 (Accepted)

[ Jonathan Riddell ]
* Add kubuntu_96_pre_kdm_xsplash.diff for
https://wiki.kubuntu.org/KubuntuKarmicXsplash
* Remove kubuntu_10_turn_on_kwin_compositing.diff, KWin has good
detection now

More > Re: Karmic Release Schedule, Plans, KDE 4.3 (Waiting for Alpha 6)

[personman]

Re: xorg hang?

I have done the updating and autoremove and reinstalling, and still having issues. Probably just a side effect of the on-going development. No biggie, for now I'll kill the process and if an update seems to fix it I'll post back.

Thanks for the suggestions and info.

-Andy

[GreyGeek]

Re: xorg hang?

Probably just a side effect of the on-going development.

You running Karmic?

I am, and since the first day I installed it my video and 3D has been working fantastically. Then, about a week or two ago, an update caused SecondLife to hang, forcing me to use MagicKeys to recover. GoogleEarth will, when I close it, kill the xserver and kick me back to the user login screen. The configuration icons in Stellarium are messed up and undecipherable.

Then, about a week ago, everything started working beautifully again. SecondLife was giving me more fps than it ever had, Stellarium's config icons were clear again, as were the dialogs, and the fps went up from about 30 to about 58! GoogleEarth was rock sold again.

The day before yesterday the next update also restored my 3D problems again.

Now I am just waiting for the next update to fix everything again. Meanwhile, I posted a bug report.

[personman]

Re: xorg hang?

Yes, Karmic with a GeForce 6600GT plugged in to a TV. Running latest 185 series drivers. 190 series fails to initialize properly.

-Andy

[GreyGeek]

Re: xorg hang?

Because I sensed that the xserver-video-intel drivers were going through another cycle of improvements where regression was possible, I logged into my rarely used Jaunty partition and locked the video driver to prevent upgrade.

Meanwhile, I continue testing the latest updates and filing bug reports. I could revert back to the driver which had been so stable for most of my Karmic's life, but that would defeat the purpose of running an alpha or beta release. "Release early, release often" only works if users do their part and file bug reports to the bugzillas.