plasmashell process keeps writing to the disk

[orbanp]

Hello Everyone,

After logging in the plasmashell process keeps writing to the disk at a rate of 70Mib/s on my system.
While it is doing this the system is virtually unusable, response on the desktop could take about a minute or even longer.
The plasmashell process writing could last from 5 minutes to half an hour after login before it subsides.

Reading up on this in older versions the plasmashell process was writing into the .xsession-errors file.
This is not the case on my system, there is only a single entry of about forty lines in the logfile after a login.

I have updated my system to 24.04 recently and it seems that this behaviour gets worse and worse (meaning longer).
I also keep upgrading my system regularly as the notifications appear.

This my system:
Operating System: Kubuntu 24.04
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.11
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.115.0
Qt Version: 5.15.13
Kernel Version: 6.8.0-49-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 6 × Intel® Core™ i5-8500 CPU @ 3.00GHz
Memory: 7.6 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 630
Manufacturer: Acer
Product Name: Veriton X6660G

Thanks for the help, Peter

[jlittle]

After logging in the plasmashell process keeps writing to the disk at a rate of 70Mib/s on my system.

Are you sure it's plasmashell? That sounds like baloo, the file indexer; it's an infamous failure mode for it. You can disable file search, and see if the writing stops.

I'd check the memory size of plasmashell; "the system is virtually unusable" may be the system thrashing.

If the problem is plasmashell, an early thing to check is to add another user and see if the problem occurs for that user. If it doesn't, there's something in your home directory that's corrupt, and you could try resetting plasma-related files in ~/.config and ~/.local. (I would start with .config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc which often becomes a convoluted mess on my KDE installs.) By resetting, I mean renaming files, to add, say, ".bak" to their names, and logging out and back in; any needed files will be recreated, but some plasma settings may be lost.

If the added user has the problem, absent any nVidia GPU I can only suggest a reinstall.

[orbanp]

Hi John,

Thanks for the help!

Yes, it is the plasmashell process! I have been running System Monitor all the time, the Processes page shows it.
Baloo search is disabled by default on my system.

I will explore the other suggestions, but interestingly, at today's logins the system behaved normally.

It is unrelated, but today Dolphin uses 16% CPU time while seemingly is doing nothing. I have seen that many times before.

Thanks, Peter

[jlittle]

FWIW, dolphin uses no CPU at idle, so to speak, in my 24.10.

[orbanp]

...
If the problem is plasmashell, an early thing to check is to add another user and see if the problem occurs for that user.
...

Hi John,

This is the first time the system started misbehaving again.
As suggested, created another user, and the plasmeshell process was not writing all the time, the system was/is usable.

So what is wrong with the plasmashell process, how to cure it?

Thanks, Peter

[orbanp]

Killing the plasmashell process and then restarting it seemed to have cured the problem, at least for the time.

Peter

[orbanp]

Killing the plasmashell process and restarting it yesterday must have been a coincidence, as that process writing eventually subsides.
This morning the stopping and starting did not help.

Would be nice to find some explanations for the plasmashell misbehaviour.

Peter

[jlittle]

Would be nice to find some explanations for the plasmashell misbehaviour.

Plasma or its predecessors have sometimes failed on and off as long as I've used them; some settings file gets screwed up, and can't be straightened out without resetting it. A cure is to blunder about deleting plasma settings files, or copying them all across from a new user. I can only suggest, as I did in post #2, resetting plasma settings files, or giving up on the user with the problem and using another.

(I accept this instability as a consequence of having so many settings and so much configurability; though I do wish .config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc would be redesigned to be simplified.)