[SOLVED] 14.2-beta: Logon console freezes after during long KDE sessions

gargamel · 02-01-2016, 07:21 PM

160+ views, but no reply probably indicates tl;dr, so I rewrite my original post in the hope that it is now clearer what the problem is. The following is reproducable every time on my system.

What I did

Code:

1. Boot to runlevel 3.

2. Login as normal user.

3. $ su -c "init 4"	# Note that the console session 
			# is still running and open.

4. Login to KDE as normal user

5. Strg-Alt-F1		# This takes me from my KDE session 
			# back to the still open console.
			# Strg-Alt-Fn works with n={1..4}

6. Alt-F7		# Back to KDE

After a while (10 min or so) try again:

7. Strg-Alt-F1		# This time I cannot get back in the 
			# console session. Instead all I get 
			# to see is a black screen with _ in 
			# the upper left corner. The console 
			# doesn't respond to any input, except:

8. Alt-F7		# Back to KDE

After a while:

9. Strg-Alt-F1		# Black screen, _ at the upper left
			# corner, no response, at all.
			# Not even Alt-F7 works.

At this point all I can do is hard-reset my machine. The KDE session would probably still be functional, but as the system doesn't respond to keyboard input, I cannot get back to it.

I hope this is more readable than my original post. Thanks for any feedback or hint that helps me to track this down.

gargamel

ReaperX7 · 02-03-2016, 04:57 AM

Have you tried a different session manager like lxdm or gdm?

jrigg · 02-03-2016, 05:55 AM

Is power management enabled for your graphics hardware? If so what happens if you disable it?

Porobu · 02-03-2016, 10:23 AM

Can confirm this issue on a Lenovo G580 (2189) running Slackware current with KDE4. When powering off after using more than 10 or more minutes the laptop no messages will appear. I boot KDE in runlevel 3 by entering my user and doing startx

Drakeo · 02-03-2016, 12:32 PM

Quote:

14.2-beta: Logon console freezes after during long KDE sessions

I wonder if disabling acapi would help you. that would let you trouble shoot it.

Quote:

more minutes the laptop no messages will appear

you mean a blank screen then it turns off. then that is power settings.
Sounds like suspend to disk and you do not a a resume set up.
is this lilo or grub.?
What I would do is create a new user.
open a terminal and do adduser as root. log out of kde then log into the new user and see if you have the same issue.
Long sessions to me are months at a time. On my media machine for the family room.

Tonus · 02-03-2016, 01:56 PM

Did you try to load kde with

Code:

startx &

I was used to do it with AlienBob's kde5 while plasma oftenly crashed and the switch never failed.

gargamel · 02-03-2016, 03:51 PM

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions so far, very welcome!

As most of you point into the same direction, i.e. issues with power saving, I have to say, I doubt that. Because my KDE session continues to work just fine for hours, if I want. Only the console session that I boot to (runlevel 3) freezes. If the issue was about energy saving, I'd expect to freeze any X or KDE sessions to freeze, too.
On the other hand, one of the changes in 14.2-beta compared to 14.1 is the removal of APM support, and 10 minutes is typical default for energy saving. So, I'll check out, what you suggest.

@ReaperX7. No, I haven't tried another logon manager, but good hint. As you mention lxdm and gdm, wouldn't XDM be good enough for the test? XDM is included with Slackware, AFAIK, lxdm and GDM aren't.

@jrigg. I only have Intel graphics as it comes with the CPU (i5-4590), no dedicated graphics hardware. I'll double-check (U)EFI settings for power saving options.

@Porobu. Thanks, good to know, that I am not the only one, but see above. My X or KDE session doesn't freeze, I just cannot back to it with Alt-F7 from the console session, after the latter stops responding to keyboard input.

@Drakeo. Not sure, if the issue is ACPI related, see above, but I'll try to track it down.

@Tonus. I'll try this out, too, thanks, although I wonder, how startx instead of init 4 could make the relevant difference.

So much for now, thanks for your kind support!

gargamel

jrigg · 02-04-2016, 05:17 AM

I had a similar problem a few years ago on a Debian system. I could log in on tty1, then startx and everything was fine until I did Ctrl-Alt-F2 to get back to a tty. Then all I got was a black screen with an underscore character in the top left. It would then need a hard reset. It turned out that the graphics driver wasn't up to date enough for my hardware, and it couldn't reset the video mode for a tty once it had been running X.

The reason I suggested power management was that you seem to be getting the strange behaviour only after some time, so I thought it would be worth checking that it isn't that triggering whatever bug is causing this.

gargamel · 02-04-2016, 07:12 PM

@jrigg. This (what you write about your old Debian system) is a precise description of my problem! I wish I had been able to describe my problem in such clear words that everyone can understand!

Thanks everyone, you were all right: The problem was related to energy saving. The culprit was the acpica package from SBo, which I had installed along with VirtualBox as a dependency. Because the VirtualBox from SBo caused a few problems I de-installed it, but forgot acpica.

I just upgraded to 14.2-beta and de-installed acpica about 2.5 hours ago. Both my KDE session and my first login console (tty1) are still working and responsive. Therefore I'll mark this thread as SOLVED. Thanks to all of you for pointing me in the right direction!

gargamel