Randomly thrown out to login

[MoeNeigh]

Since late jaunty, and now continuing into karmic, I am at any odd moment thrown out to the login screen. The system doesn't totally restart, but just takes me to the login screen. Recently, I was half way through a 484 Mb download, which I had to start all over. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a bug? If so, I wouldn't even know how to begin reporting it. It's annoying, disconcerting, and sounds more like something that would happen on a windoze machine. I am running only kubuntu karmic on this machine.

Another question: is there any way to manage downloads, if this bug persists, so that I don't have to start over?

[vinnywright]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

it sound's like a plasma or kwin crash but hard to tell?

Another question: is there any way to manage downloads, if this bug persists, so that I don't have to start over?

well how were you DL'ing .........Kget will resume DL's if you use it.

I dont think firefoxes will!!

VINNY

[MoeNeigh]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

Thanks, Vinny. Yes, it was a firefox download. When I restarted, I didn't touch anything until it finished.

A good portion of the time when this logout thing happens, I'm working on photo editing using GIMP, and am not downloading anything.

[Adrian]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

The only instance that I've seen something similar was a problem with X (it was restarting) and it had to do with the driver having to be recompiled for the new kernel -- but since Kubuntu uses DKMS I don't think that's the issue. (to me was happening when starting a Wine program)

Question: do you think it's X or a Plasma issue?

[MoeNeigh]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

Question: do you think it's X or a Plasma issue?

Not sure, but a few times the login was at a text prompt rather than the GUI - so maybe it was X that crashed then? But most of the time, it was the regular GUI login screen.

[Adrian]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

Even if it's regular GUI login it might be X, you should look in Xorg logs, maybe you'll find something relevant there, look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

What video card? Do you use the right driver?

[MoeNeigh]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

I think it's the right driver, although it's probably not the latest one. I have an nvidia GeForce 6150SE. The driver is Nvidia 185.18.36. When I login or restart, I always have to click on system settings > display and close it to get rid of a black vertical bar on the far right. Once I do this, the video display expands properly.

The settings in the control panel (system settings) are 1280 X 1024_51. Recommended, though, is 1280 X 1024_60. The only Hz options with this driver applied are Auto, 50 & 51. Auto & 50 produce the vertical black bar on the right -- always. 51Hz expands the display to full, normal proportions. That setting is retained in the control panel (system settings), but I always have to "re-acknowledge" it when I log in.

Oh, the Xorg log identifies my card correctly, but it shows a setting of 1280 X 1024_75. Is it supposed to record anomalies like a crash? I don't see any evidence of this, though I'm not too savvy in these matters.

[Adrian]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

I think you can safely ignore the frequency issue, I think it's a bug that makes it report the wrong frequency.

One thing to try is to use the Xorg NV (the open source) driver and see if you have the same problem, so at least you can isolate the problem to the video driver. (of course the NV driver doesn't have 3d acceleration but this is only for testing purposes)

[MoeNeigh]

Re: Randomly thrown out to login

Thanks for the advice, Adrian. I may wish to try the open source driver at some point. Playing around with video drivers takes me a little bit into new territory.

As I mentioned in my original post, I said that I began experiencing this logout problem in "late jaunty". I installed jaunty in April just after the final release came out. I checked the nvidia website and their linux drivers, and it appears that the driver I am currently using -- 185.18.36 -- was released on July 31, 2009.

So perhaps you're right, there just may be a bug/defect in this current driver, a different driver from the one I was using when I first installed jaunty. I didn't experience this logout problem at that time. It's a little annoying, but not overwhelming.