[SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

Salkay · 2017-11-09 04:30:58

Since yesterday, X has been crashing almost constantly. After a reboot, it'll last 1–20 minutes before crashing. I get dumped into SDDM (I'm running KDE Plasma). There is nothing in journalctl, apart from a whole bunch of applications complaining about X missing/crashing.

I have a single Nvidia monitor port and two Intel monitor ports. In general, I've been using the latter two ports, because it's simpler with my dual-head setup. (It's a work computer, I have no need for the Nvidia GPU.) I thought perhaps it was graphics driver related, so I tried the following. All have failed.

1) Use default drivers: modesetting and nouveau
2) Try linux-lts.
3) Install nvidia nvidia-settings nvidia-utils, select with /etc/X11/xorg.d/20-nvidia.conf, and use the Nvidia port.
4) Tru nvidia-lts
5) Use xf86-video-intel (with nouveau)
6) Use xf86-video-intel with DRI 2
7) Use xf86-video-intel with UXA
8) Revert previous pacman update.

sudo pacman -U device-mapper-2.02.175-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz cryptsetup-1.7.5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz lvm2-2.02.175-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz bluedevil-1:5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kdecoration-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz breeze-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz breeze-gtk-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz gtk-update-icon-cache-3.22.25-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz gtk3-3.22.25-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz chromium-62.0.3202.75-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz discover-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz drkonqi-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz gtk3-print-backends-3.22.25-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kactivitymanagerd-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kde-cli-tools-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kde-gtk-config-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libksysguard-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz milou-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kscreenlocker-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kwin-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-integration-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kuiserver-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-workspace-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kdeplasma-addons-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kgamma5-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz khotkeys-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kinfocenter-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kmenuedit-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz knetattach-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libkscreen-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kscreen-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz ksshaskpass-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz ksysguard-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kwallet-pam-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kwayland-integration-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz kwrited-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz oxygen-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz polkit-kde-agent-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz systemsettings-5.11.2-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-desktop-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-nm-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-pa-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-sdk-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-vault-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz plasma-workspace-wallpapers-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz powerdevil-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz pyqt5-common-5.9-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz sip-4.19.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz python-sip-4.19.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz python-pyqt5-5.9-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz python2-sip-4.19.3-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz python2-pyqt5-5.9-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz sddm-kcm-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz user-manager-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz xdg-desktop-portal-kde-5.11.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

9) Revert previous previous update, which occurred before the crashes started.

sudo pacman -U libfilezilla-0.11.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libdrm-2.4.87-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz filezilla-3.28.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz lib32-util-linux-2.30.1-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libetonyek-0.1.6-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libvisio-0.1.5-4-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz lib32-libnl-3.3.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz libzip-1.2.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz wine-2.19-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

10) Remove Plasma config files: plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc plasmashellrc... Are there any more?
11) Remove all unnecessary USB, etc. connections. (I once had a USB3 hub that crashed my laptop!)

I'm at a bit of a loss. I don't even know what is causing the crash. I'm not doing anything consistent to crash it, although perhaps 1/3 of the time it seems to occur when I type Ctrl+V to paste. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Last edited by Salkay (2017-11-13 09:16:10)

ewaller · 2017-11-09 04:58:06

How about your Xorg logs? As you are using a display manager, your logs should be in your journal. Would you please consider turning off the damn stupid problematic pointless annoying display manager and using startx or xinit until this is solved. This will place your logs in ~/.local/share/xorg where they belong.

Salkay · 2017-11-09 05:04:17

ewaller wrote:

How about your Xorg logs? As you are using a display manager, your logs should be in your journal.

Do you mean accessible from journalctl? There nothing in there from anything at the time of the crash. I also checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log, but this appeared to stop logging soon after the boot process had finished.

ewaller wrote:

Would you please consider turning off the damn stupid problematic pointless annoying display manager and using startx or xinit until this is solved. This will place your logs in ~/.local/share/xorg where they belong.

Good idea. Done.

cfr · 2017-11-09 05:09:06

Does it happen in a clean user account? Tracking down all KDE config is a headache: figure out whether it something in your config is responsible first.

The i915 driver is buggy (or the firmware is buggy). However, I've only seen that cause oopses.

Have you checked both system and user journals?

Last edited by cfr (2017-11-09 05:11:34)

Salkay · 2017-11-09 05:13:29

cfr wrote:

Does it happen in a clean user account? Tracking down all KDE config is a headache: figure out whether it something in your config is responsible first.

I agree that the KDE config appears to be scattered in many places. It's quite frustrating.

The other thing I forgot to mention is that it's rock solid if I don't do anything. I left the computer on overnight and it stayed up for 16 hours. I'm guessing it's only when I do something with the GUI that it dies. So I could certainly try a clean account, but a lack of crash might not be informative. Having said that, I haven't crashed for 40 minutes now, so it might be even harder to track in a clean account.

seth · 2017-11-09 08:22:43

Your old logs in /var/log/Xorg*log* may already contain a crash dump.

V1del · 2017-11-09 08:54:55

SDDM doesn't log X logs to journal, but xorg will likely be root started, so yeah your logs should be in /var/log. And I really don't mean to be condescending here, can you post a complete journal/xorg.log? Some errors might not be obvious and additional pairs of eyes usually go a long way.

Last edited by V1del (2017-11-09 08:55:24)

Salkay · 2017-11-09 09:15:58

It's not condescending at all. I appreciate all the help that I'm getting! Thank you all for your help so far!

When I looked at /var/log/Xorg.0.log after an earlier crash, it looked like it only contained things from the initial boot. That's why I didn't really mention it. I'm happy to post that and journalctl too, at the next crash.

Having said that, X has been surprisingly stable for a while. I changed a few things (reverted the kernel further to 4.13.10-1, removed nvidia and xf86-video-intel, disabled sddm) and it was immediately surprisingly stable. I was waiting for the inevitable crash so those setting could apply, but it took a while longer that usual. I was having other graphic errors, which presumably related to booting and connecting with nvidia, then uninstalling the driver. I decided to manually restart, but X lasted 53:51 that session, which was the longest for ages. After restarting (into linux-lts), it has lasted over 1.5 hours now, so maybe it's fixed? The odd thing is, it's nothing that I hadn't tried before. The novel part was disabling sddm, but that wouldn't really have affected the first 53:51 session. I'll monitor it again tomorrow, and try and provide some more thorough logs if it crashes. Thanks again for all the comments.

==UPDATE==
It seems to be stable again. I'm not sure what the problem was. Thank you for the tip on disabling sddm; it was really quite useless, and just another point of potential failure.

Last edited by Salkay (2017-11-13 09:17:08)

Arch Linux

#1 2017-11-09 04:30:58

[SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#2 2017-11-09 04:58:06

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#3 2017-11-09 05:04:17

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#4 2017-11-09 05:09:06

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#5 2017-11-09 05:13:29

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#6 2017-11-09 08:22:43

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#7 2017-11-09 08:54:55

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

#8 2017-11-09 09:15:58

Re: [SOLVED?] Constant X or Plasma crashes

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