plasmashell freeze (no plasma widgets respond, including control panels, menus)

sunito · July 12, 2015, 6:25pm

Hello,

the plasma shell freezes sporadically on one machine
that I upgraded from Netrunner 15 to 16 (using the upgrade script).

Symptoms:
The control bar behaves like a static image, but kwin stuff (like Alt+Tab, Alt+F2) still works,
applications continue to run normally.

It may be the same problem as the one I had on another machine two weeks ago:
http://forums.netrunner.com/showthread.php?tid=17793

In all cases I was able to restore the normal functionality by restarting plasmashell:
killall plasmashell ;sleep 2 ;DISPLAY=:0 plasmashell

It seems to be the same bug as this one on Fedora:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1193742
which, apparently, has not yet been resolved.

Or does anybody know of any fixes?

Or even workarounds?
I already thought about setting up a cronjob that will periodically restart plasmashell.

Regards
Sven

leszek · July 13, 2015, 2:29pm

It seems to be an issue with the intel driver.
I hope intel will fix that soon.

If you have it on another graphics card that would be another problem I guess.

AJSlye · July 13, 2015, 5:49pm

This is related to SNA.
You could edit your xorg config file to use uxa instead.

However, another option would be to edit the file ~/.config/plasma-workspace/env/intel_fix.sh and add this line:

export KWIN_USE_INTEL_SWAP_EVENT=0

then logout and back in for the change to take effect.

sunito · July 14, 2015, 8:28am

The system uses the nouveaux driver.
Is this the same as the intel driver that you and Leszek are refering to?

Just checking this, before I try to apply a solution.

leszek · July 14, 2015, 8:39am

Nouveau is a different driver for a different kind of hardware.
So the main problem is completely different.

It might be the gpu lockup error experienced by some with the nouveau driver. Can you check the syslog file in /var/log (you need root rights to open it so use kdesu or sudo) and check for Nouveau GPU Lockup error messages.

To open the file as root do

kdesudo -c "kate /var/log/syslog"

sunito · July 14, 2015, 10:32am

Well, I am able to read the syslog file as a normal user.

At 12:10 I did this:

egrep -i "nouv|GPU" /var/log/syslog Result: Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.044630] nouveau [ DRM] suspending console... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.044640] nouveau [ DRM] suspending display... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.044701] nouveau [ DRM] evicting buffers... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.044703] nouveau [ DRM] waiting for kernel channels to go idle... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.044767] nouveau [ DRM] suspending client object trees... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.045750] nouveau [ DRM] suspending kernel object tree... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.976792] nouveau [ DRM] re-enabling device... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.976840] nouveau [ DRM] resuming kernel object tree... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37526.976859] nouveau [ VBIOS][0000:01:00.0] running init tables Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37527.136830] nouveau [ VOLT][0000:01:00.0] GPU voltage: 850000uv Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37527.136842] nouveau [ PTHERM][0000:01:00.0] fan management: automatic Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37527.156890] nouveau [ CLK][0000:01:00.0] --: core 202 MHz memory 324 MHz Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37527.157716] nouveau [ DRM] resuming client object trees... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37527.157801] nouveau [ DRM] resuming display... Jul 14 11:09:54 jumbo kernel: [37527.157863] nouveau [ DRM] resuming console...
This does not look like error messages, but, OK, the freeze did not happen
within the period of the current syslog file.

So, then I took a look at the time around when the the freeze occurred.
But the only entries over the course of two hours were:

Jul 10 15:18:17 jumbo org.kde.kglobalaccel[11905]: Registering key "Ctrl+Alt+R" for "plasmashell" : "repeat_action" Jul 10 16:14:56 jumbo kernel: [42437.524331] usb 4-1.3: USB disconnect, device number 10 Jul 10 16:17:01 jumbo CRON[13279]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jul 10 16:29:47 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper) Jul 10 16:29:47 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' Jul 10 16:37:17 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper) Jul 10 16:37:17 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' Jul 10 16:44:47 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper) Jul 10 16:44:47 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' Jul 10 17:17:01 jumbo CRON[13791]: (root) CMD ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Jul 10 17:27:04 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Activating service name='org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper' (using servicehelper) Jul 10 17:27:04 jumbo dbus[902]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.kde.powerdevil.backlighthelper'

leszek · July 14, 2015, 10:35am

Ok the backlighthelper is very often activated in your syslog code.
Do you use a laptop ? Can you try if the freezes go away if you have powermanagement turned off.
Click on the battery Icon to choose to disable power management

AJSlye · July 14, 2015, 2:47pm

Have you also tried using the proprietary Nvidia driver instead.

sunito · July 14, 2015, 8:16pm

Yes, the system is on a laptop.

When I right-click on the battery symbol I get the same thing as when I click on “Energieverwaltung” (power management) in the systemsettings.
There, I have not found a global “disable” option. Have I overlooked anything? Or did you mean that I should disable every single option???

leszek · July 14, 2015, 8:17pm

There should be a simple checkbox on a simple left click. If it isn’t maybe I mistook it for the plasma 4 version which definitely has it.

sunito · July 14, 2015, 8:21pm

Yes, I have tried it once, but it seemed to make things worse,
so I quickly moved back to nouveau.
It was the recommended one (version 346.59 nvidia-346).

Would you advise to try it again?

sunito · July 14, 2015, 8:27pm

Ah, left-click !!!
I only tried a right click, because the battery symbol was not immeditaly visible in the control panel.

Thanks.

AJSlye · July 15, 2015, 7:14pm

No the battery widget is hidden by default, click on the arrow in the system tray to see it in the list, then left click on it. If you want to see it in the system tray all the time then right click on the system tray > System Tray Settinings > Entries > then change Battery and Brightness to shown.

sunito · July 15, 2015, 9:52pm

Yes, yes, thanks for taking the time to explain it in such detail.
It seems that I did not make it clear enough that after Leszek’s post
I had indeed found the option and successfully managed to disable it.

I had wondered how I could have been so stupid not to try the normal (left) click. And my
explanation was, because after I had clicked on the arrow, I was in a sort of “right-click mode”.

Anyway, talking of disabling the power management,
can you tell me in which file this setting is stored
or how I can change this option on the command line?

Thanks
Sven

AJSlye · July 15, 2015, 10:18pm

The file would be ~/.config/powermanagementprofilesrc.

sunito · July 21, 2015, 6:47pm

I have not found it in that file.
The file contains three groups of groups, I have not found anything besides that.

The file does not change, after I disable the option “Energieverwaltung aktivieren” (left click on the battery symbol in the system tray).

The option “Energieverwaltung aktivieren” will always be enabled again after relogin.

Please comment.

leszek · July 21, 2015, 6:49pm

I don’t think this is configurable at all. So if a battery is detected it automatically turns on power management. I am not aware of an option to auto disable it

AJSlye · July 21, 2015, 7:13pm

yea, I think this would need to be done using TLP, laptop-mode-tools or some other utility to manipulate the kernel configuration options for power management.

These maybe helpfull:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Power_management/Guide
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management

sunito · July 21, 2015, 7:59pm

Hm, this looks like it would take some time to work into.
Probably not worth doing it, just to answer Leszek’s question:

Or:
Leszek, how important (for debugging this issue) do you consider trying this?

leszek · July 22, 2015, 9:33am

Its only one suspect I have currently besides a faulty nouveau driver.

Also did you try turning off effects ? Maybe its related to a not supported effect.