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stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

I work in KDE on a Dell T3600 workstation: XEon/16GB of RAM  and an nVidia Quadro 2000 graphic card
I use nVidia original driver (need to do so because of an app that needs it)

A few days ago, Apache openOffice crashed and brought down the whole system. After restart, KDE has become unusable:

kwin maxes out CPU at 100% on startup  and never comes down, making the system totally unresponsive.
However, if:

1.  I wait patiently for the konsole terminal to show up
2. kill kwin
3. restart kwin from konsole

then the system is back to normal.

The problem is reproducible: every time I reboot I have to go through steps 1-3 above to restore the system to a working conditions.

Perhaps the original crash corrupted some file that kwin/plasma reads at startup?

I checked journalctl after the latest reboot and the only interesting items seem to be a screenful of messages like the following ones:

Sep 11 10:08:01 gorgias kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:03:00): 56, CMDre 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000005 00000007
Sep 11 10:08:13 gorgias kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:03:00): 56, CMDre 00000001 00000080 00000000 00000005 0000000b
Sep 11 10:08:31 gorgias kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:03:00): 56, CMDre 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000005 00000007
Sep 11 10:08:34 gorgias kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:03:00): 56, CMDre 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000005 00000007
Sep 11 10:08:35 gorgias kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:03:00): 56, CMDre 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000005 00000007
Sep 11 10:08:35 gorgias kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:03:00): 56, CMDre 00000000 00000080 00000000 00000005 00000007

Anyone knows how I could find out more about the problem?

Thanks

Stefano

kokoko3k

Member

Registered: 2008-11-14

Posts: 2,394

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

i'd try to enter the kwin configuration and change settings and apply them to rewrite the config files.
I'd also inspect if the graphic card isn't broken, as Xid messages usually comes from something bad that lies at kernel/driver level rather than at application one.
-EDIT-
Is indeed strange that after a kwin restart all works as expected...

Last edited by kokoko3k (2014-09-11 16:01:26)

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stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

kokoko3: How do change kwin's configuration?

with kde's systemsettings?

S.

kokoko3k

Member

Registered: 2008-11-14

Posts: 2,394

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

Yes, in the effects window.
or just Alt-F2 and type "effects" or "effetti"

---

Help me to improve ssh-rdp !
Retroarch User? Try my koko-aio shader !

stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

Yes, in the effects window.
or just Alt-F2 and type "effects" or "effetti"

right. That's what I thought---Desktop Effects

trying now.

stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

Yes, in the effects window.
or just Alt-F2 and type "effects" or "effetti"

right. That's what I thought---Desktop Effects

trying now.

Well, simply forcing kwin to rewrite the config  files does not help.

HOWEVER:

turning off desktop effects at startup seems to solve the issue of 100% cpu usage at startup

This makes me think that there other underlying problems, though, since it was never a problem before

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

Create a new user and try logging in and using KDE as that user. This sill give you all KDE defaults and new configs. If it works fine, it's something in your existing user account. If it doesn't work for the newly created user, then it's probably something at the system level.

---

Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

stefano

Member

Registered: 2011-04-09

Posts: 258

Re: Kwin maxes out cpu (100%) after crash

Create a new user and try logging in and using KDE as that user. This sill give you all KDE defaults and new configs. If it works fine, it's something in your existing user account. If it doesn't work for the newly created user, then it's probably something at the system level.

I get exactly the same behavior with a new user: kwin maxes out at 100%. If I disallow compositing at startup and log in again, everything is fine.

So it seems to be something at system level. Any idea on how to investigate further?

S.