KDE crashes over and over
 

Hi,

I have Kubuntu-desktop installed on Linux Mint (Daryna). I just love the KDE desktop, much more than Gnome that I had been using for the past 6 months.

Only problem is, KDE has a very, very high propensity to crash. About once an hour. It can happen at any time, when browsing, clicking on an icon, there doesn't seem to be a clear pattern. The screen goes black and I am taken back to the login screen.

I wish I could find the crash report to post here but... I don't know where to find it. Probably stored somewhere in a file, but where? Then I'll probably need help to understand what's wrong, but first how do I get this report??

Thanks!
Paul

Maybe try looking at /var/log/Xorg*.log and /var/log/messages.

Do you mean to say that you have installed KDE desktop on Linux mint?? Please clarify :-}

That actually doesn't sound like a 'crash' but rather some sort of (mis)configuration problem. A crash would more likely lock up KDE or lock up the app you were using. Sounds more like something's amiss with X and is throwing you out to the login screen.

Check that your system clock is correct, first, and that it matches the hardware (BIOS) clock in your machine (to within a minute or so at least). An incorrect clock can, interestingly, cause very odd behaviour, particularly with X screensavers and KDE's internationalization & timezone components.

I haven't any advice just yet, but:

1 - can you determine EXACTLY how long between episodes? Is it really random, or is it happening at precise intervals?

2 - Did this start after installing or upgrading a certain component? Such as when you installed KDE? If not, what has changed before this all started?

3 - If you have a screensaver daemon running, disable it. See if the issue still happens with no screensavers running.

Most error logs are stored in /var/log/... So you might want to examine the xorg.0.log file, as well as any KDE-specific log files, for some indication of what is really going on.

Good luck; if you get any further info, please post it for us.

:)

Ok, I may (but only may) have been too quick at blaming KDE, since I just switched to XFCE and the same thing happened.

GrapefruitGirl: I meant that I have Linux Mint (daryna) and installed KDE via sudo aptitude install kubuntu-desktop. The crashes have been starting ever since I installed kubuntu-desktop, I believe.

Ok, so I looked through the messages in /var/log, as you guys recommended, but found no new message after the crash in most of these, so I won't post them, except for syslog, the interesting one. The reason I say I still think it's related to KDE is, if you look at 11:24, the culprit seems to be kdm. (Why is kdm still running even though I logged into XFCE...??)
('ps -e' yields:
5237 ? 00:00:00 kdm
16430 ? 00:00:00 kdm
)


Oh, I forgot, could it have to do with "Not loading blacklisted module ipv6"?

No guarantees, but I venture to guess that the IPv6 module (or lack thereof) is not causing the problem. That said, I wonder why the system is trying endlessly to modprobe it... In any event, I doubt that X is trying to use the module.

KDM is running because that is the desktop/login manager that you are using. You can use others including XDM (X desktop mgr) and GDM (Gnome desktop mgr) to manage the login functions, regardless which desktop environment you are actually using.

The culprit may not yet be KDM. KDM appears to simply be reporting the crash (it DOES look like a crash now, but of X, not the KDE desktop environment itself).

Have you checked the xorg log? Nothing of interest? Check a couple of the previous X logs too, assuming you have a couple archived in /var/log.
Check /var/log/dmesg for the last operations recorded before the crash, if any.

Keep us posted-- no further ideas yet.

Thanks a lot, Grapefruitgirl. I include below all the relevant stuff I could think of... the outcome of the code is pasted below each line of code (click on the link).

I'm not sure how to read dmesg (i.e., are these numbers times?)
http://pastebin.com/m5c75917b

Potentially useful:
http://pastebin.com/m69dc10b3

http://pastebin.com/m1071a57c

http://pastebin.com/ma9baf0d

(the only other Xorg.log there is)
http://pastebin.com/m3cb64f4c

http://pastebin.com/m6dec76ff

http://pastebin.com/m32759486

Thanks!

I have highlighted a few lines & areas of the xorg.0.log file you posted. I am not really sure they are relevant to the problem, but they are stuff that I have never seen in an X log, and might be indicative of part of the problem.

What I am leaning towards is a problem with the video driver you are using or a module it is loading, and/or an issue with the video card or video BIOS. The card and/or driver might be causing the crash.

It looks from the log that your xorg.conf is rather complex-- lots of modules, multiple video devices (some of which are not being used) etc.. Can you simplify the configuration? Maybe comment out some modules you can do without for a while (like int10 in particular), and switch from whatever driver you are using, to the 'vesa' driver?
Performance will not be the same, but if the problem persists after these changes, we can eliminate the aiglx driver as the cause.


Your KDM log is also showing the Signal 11 (I think it's segmentation fault) and the last thing in the backtrace is

11: /usr/bin/X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x1e1) [0x8076241]

and I don't know what that means. Maybe another user has an idea??

Thanks a lot, Grapefruitgirl. Your pointing out the backtrace (what's a backtrace anyway?) in kdm.log led me to do a little bit of googling, and other people are having EXACTLY the same problem. e.g.:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+b...93/+viewstatus
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-354697.html

There seems to be some agreement that it only happens when Compiz is enabled (my case), AND potentially related to Yakuake (which I use all the time). Also, just like them, the crashes occur when I use a lot of applications, and never when the computer is idle.

So I'll try disabling Yakuake for a while (though how exactly am I supposed to live without it??), and see if the crashes still happen.

A backtrace is a record of what an application was doing (what code was executing) before it died, and is generally the type of stuff debugger people like to have with submitted bug reports so they can attempt to nail down a particular area of code that is causing a problem.

Good work @ finding a few reports from others who seem to have the same issue! Disabling the stuff (really as much stuff as possible) in question to narrow down the culprit is a good plan :-) keep us posted as to what you discover.

Sasha

I noticed one odd thing: the crashes only seem to happen when I use emacs+tex (well, haven't tried emacs alone). Since the error message mentions something about "font" (11: /usr/bin/X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x1e1) [0x8076241]), could it be that emacs is related to this?

Don't quote me, but Emacs is AFAIK a pretty stable application of long standing. While *anything* is possible, I wouldn't suspect Emacs itself.

You may be onto something though, and the way to figure that out is to test it: Just do what you would normally do with Emacs & Tex, and see what happens :-)

I really don't know how to decipher that error message, except for what seems obvious: Something to do with X, and something to do with fonts.. I did just now Google that: "/usr/bin/X(FontFileCompleteXLFD+0x1e1) [0x8076241]" and lots of stuff:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%2Fus...ient=firefox-a

was returned with the exact error message, so that would be where I would start :-) as the search results all seemed to do with X, aiglx, compiz, and Ubuntu.

Sasha