[PLASMA 5] Fresh install - plasma s-l-o-w, kwin crashes, opengl gets disabled, HELP

[Laysan_A]

Hi y'all!

This is a fresh install on an old laptop (a Dell e1705) I just upgraded with 4GB of new ram and a used T7400 (64 bit) processor. Except for plasma, everything seems nicely snappy. Plasma is not. Directly after install kwin crashed - kwin crashes without apparent cause, and plasma apps, like network monitor just stop sometimes. Just changing the desktop image takes ten minutes or more, with plasma running near 100% from core to core as the images slowly load and selection slowly registers with the software. Like I said, the system disables opengl and I can run okay on xrender, but that has no affect on plasma. Every time I re-enable opengl, either opengl 2 or opengl 3, kwin immediately crashes (no back trace available) and it's disabled again. Firefox works great, as does Muon, and vlc playing x264 vids, but Discover appears broken. Win xp (32 bit) seems to run perfectly, though I honestly didn't stay very long.

Oh, I replaced the screen a few years ago with a uxga? higher resolution screen than the original (our backlight went out and it was relatively cheap). We've been running 16.04 (actually, now that I think of it, I think it was 14.04) on this machine - it's my wife's.

I've been using Kubuntu for quite a few years now, and I should be better at this than I am. For some reason, I just don't seem to retain the technical stuff anymore. Any help will be appreciated.

I should also say, the system is fully up to date.

Prepare for LOGS!!!

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/attach...1&d=1612705841

There's a lot to go through here - sorry about that - but I don't really know what might be important. I copied these after re-enabling opengl with both opengl 3 and opengl2 successively.

Thank you.

[Laysan_A]

Well, lacking anything really useful to do, I decided to install the 5.8 low latency kernel. Afterwards, I tried the usual things - looked at the logs (nothing very different), tried opening the "configure desktop" dialogue (no change there), and re-enabling glx, which surprisingly seemed to work - maybe - I don't know. I also altered the tearing setting from automatic to "only when cheap".

I tried opengl 3 and there was a definite crash with messages in the system log about reporting crashes in various plasma programs, and everything in the taskbar ended-up open on the desktop, but opengl 2 produces none of this. In fact, it doesn't seem to do anything at all...It's odd. I looked over the glx stats (glxinfo) from when it was shown as disabled in settings, and after I re-enabled it, and they are the same. Both show acceleration active? My cairo dock (I like cairo dock) doesn't appear to be relying on fake-transparency, but it also doesn't produce any showy effects - but that could be cairo dock's fault - idk. Full screen video still works, too. If I had to guess, I'd say the extra babysitting from the low latency kernel is keeping things more stable, but the underlying issue - whatever it is, is still there. This is all very odd. Any ideas...Anyone?

[Laysan_A]

So. I've been reading a lot of posts, logs, konsole outputs, webpages promoting various utilities, and thinking, thinking, thinking - what IS this? Given my limited understanding of things linux, you can imagine my thinking was largely taken up with going over and over the same things again and again. Well, I think I understand now that it's not opengl that's crashing, it's just kwin (and maybe qt5). Opengl is just fine, sitting there doing nothing without its arms and legs.

My hardware is fine. The processor, ram, and as far as I could test it (which was admittedly not very far, the gpu, tested out just fine on a few different benchmark/diagnostics, as did the monitor.

I take back what i said last time - kwin is crashing immediately after boot, every time, and I'm not sure if I'm able to get it back at all. Typing "kwin at the prompt may get it to load occasionally, but usually I get a message that another window manager must be in use and to try the -replace option. I did try -replace once, and I got a message the it was impossible to load kwin (don't have a clue what that was about).

Anything to do with the appearance still creates heavy cpu usage in plasma and slow response - "configure desktop" or the appearance settings in system settings. Anything other than appearance stuff and it's normal.

I did manage to get some information from a coredumpctl, but it's pretty much meaningless to me except that both kwin and qt5 were mentioned a lot in it. If you can read it, here it is.

I'm contemplating installing compiz to see what happens...

I've got a bunch of info from an AIDA64 scan, pretty much along the same lines as the hardware info I already attached, a little more detailed perhaps. If anyone's interested, let me know and I'll upload it.

Any ideas?

[oshunluvr]

Before adding yet another complication like compiz, Have you tried a new user account to see if your user settings are the culprit? They often are. Just add a new user, log in, and see if the crashes still occur. As least you will have eliminated one possible problem source.

[Laysan_A]

Hey! Thanks for the reply!

Well, I didn't really see the need, since this all began on a completely fresh install. I've since added some things, but the central problem remains the same as it was.

Hmm...I've apparently done something to increase logging. I was just looking through the kernel log and found this, "[ 2.851909] i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] not enough stolen space for compressed buffer (need 9216000 more bytes), disabling. Hint: you may be able to increase stolen memory size in the BIOS to avoid this."

i915 is the Intel graphics kernel module (if you're not familiar). This looks promising, although I know nothing about increasing memory allocation in the bios. I'm sure there must be more to it than just typing in some numbers.

[Laysan_A]

Sooo...none of the memory settings are accessible in the bios - but really, I don't even know what "stolen memory" is. I was assuming it was memory allocated for the video, but intel uses a dynamic system that allocates a minimum (8MB on my system), but allows the entirety of installed free ram to be used for video, so I don't really know what this is. Why doesn't the module simply allocate more?

Anyone ever used a tool to hack their bios? I wonder if a setting like this would be a trivial change - even for an ignorant man like myself.

Well, I just searched the error and it appears it's likely related to framebuffer compression. If I disable it (which apparently it should be on these older chipsets), the error will go away. I'm supposed to add i915.i915_enable_fbc=0 to the kernel bootline in grub - but that was in 2013, and I don't think grub works quite the same now, does it? Anyway, I doubt it's the source of my problem.

[oshunluvr]

That error will not be fixable by BIOS. It's related to pre Sandy Bridge CPUs. Add this to your kernel parameters:

i915.enable_fbc=0

Edit /etc/default/grub and change this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"

to:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="i915.enable_fbc=0 quiet"

Then run "sudo update-grub" That should stop the error message. Not sure how that applies to the issues.

[oshunluvr]

That computer may just be too old and low-specs to run modern Kubuntu.

[Laysan_A]

That computer may just be too old and low-specs to run modern Kubuntu.

Nah, she's got a lot of life left in her. She's plenty spry - esp. with the upgrades. No, it's not hw - it's software. Someone broke the part of the i915 module that supports our chipset and there just aren't enough people using it anymore (that's my guess).

Yeah, I don't think the fb compression has anything to do with anything either. The more I look at the logs, though, the more I think it might be qt5 core that's taking kwin down. I have some more (Oh no!) output to post - if you, or anyone else out there can make heads or tails of it.

I really do appreciate your engagement.

[Laysan_A]

Well oshunluvr, you can put this little problem to rest. I just installed the gnome drive health program and my hd is failing, so there's no point trying to diagnose what might be a read/write error. I'll have to get a new hd (probably a used one) and see what happens. This old laptop is just a back-up now anyway. I just wanted it ready to go if it was needed - like for me on the patio in the summer. I just bought my wife a new asus tuff gaming laptop with an eight core Ryzen 7 and an nvidia geforce gtx 1650 (it should be good for the long haul) with our covid money. I haven't set it up yet - I wanted to get this one squared away first - so you may be hearing from me again sooner that you think. Thanks again!

[oshunluvr]

Well, you can get a cheap SSD and give that old girl some life. Still, a circa early 2000s XP laptop isn't going to be much of a plasma machine. I guess if you keep desktop effects off and just using it for internet, it'll be fine. You should should consider something more light-weight DE wise, but that's just my opinion.

[Laysan_A]

I can get by fine without a lot of transparency on the desktop, and we don't really do graphics intensive games. Mostly we just browse and watch vids on them. Moving up to a 64 bit processor and maxing out the ram really made the difference between retirement and a few more years of useful service. Despite the fact that it's really heavy by today's standards I really like the 17" screen (her new one has a 17" screen, too). If for some reason I can't get plasma 5 to work on it I definitely will move on, though I'm loath to do it. I've been using kde since 8.10.

To be honest, I just hate getting rid of something that still works - seems like a waste. As I already mentioned, I replaced the screen on this, as well as the processor. I also replaced a bad screen frame with hinges, the keyboard twice (my wife had the bad habit of prying up the keys to clean under them), the dvd drive, and now the hard drive. Actually the current base with motherboard isn't original either. I don't recall why I changed it out, but I needed something on it and the price for the whole thing was within range of the part I needed (might've been the screen frame, idk). So, you can understand I'm rather attached.

Thank you again for your assistance. I was wasting a LOT of time on this and getting nowhere. I'm a little embarrassed it took me so long to check the hard drive.

FWAFS.
(Fair winds and following seas)

Chris

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like you've got Frankenstein's Monster there, LOL. IMO, The extra weight isn't an issue unless you're actually travelling with it. With all those upgrades, I'd be surprised if you couldn't get some level of Plasma working. Plasma 5 is actually fairly efficient. Much more so than 4 was. You should give it one more go once you replace the drive.

I hate those problems where some dumb and obvious thing is the root cause. Sometimes I'm too "smart" to look at the simple things first, lol. I once spent the better part of three days trying to figure out a complicated sound issue only to discover the darn 3.5mm cable wasn't fully inserted in the socket <forehead smack>.

I first came to Kubuntu at 9.04 so I was right behind you. I had been using PCLinuxOS before then but their forum took a dark turn so I looked for greener pastures. I played around with many distros but the third time I descended into RPM hell I went looking for a deb based distro and found *buntus. I'm actually using KDEneon on my main machine right now but it'a almost Kubuntu. I've been considering jumping ship again but haven't found the right fit.

I started with Linux in 1997 when one of my kids infected my computer with a virus for the THIRD time playing games on some dumb website. I had been using OS/2 Warp before that but IBM cancelled support for none-commercial users. I had bought a new computer with some version of Windows on it and left it on there for less than 3 months before I wiped it and put Mandrake on it. I can't remember the DE at the time but it was probably KDE 1. I have always despised Gnome. I used E17 aka Enlightenment on an HP mini I got for free for awhile and liked it. I've used XFCE and LXDE when the PC called for it. I installed Cinnamon at work because the Windows dummies couldn't break it.

Looking forward to reading about the Monster's (can I just call him Frank? lol) next adventure. See you in the forum!

Stuart