[KDE] Black screen with mouse pointer every now and then

Storm · 2018-02-01 01:05:26

This started maybe a month or two ago. Every now and then in KDE 5 I get a black screen with mouse pointer. Mouse can interact with windows despite them not showing.

This most often happens after exiting Steam for Windows games and/or Steam (via Wine), but can also happen if system is under heavy load, and occasionally it just happens completely randomly as far as I can tell. Just today it happened after rebooting (sysupgrade), and I had to reboot a second time.

KDE 5 + X11
Proprietary nVidia drivers
Everything updated

I don't even know where to look. All I know is that if I switch to tty2 and start htop, plasmashell is still running.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. I'm only a novice Linux users so please be patient with me.

Thanks in advance!

seth · 2018-02-01 08:55:35

Try to toggle the compositor (SHIFT+Alt+F12)

Storm · 2018-02-01 11:09:03

seth wrote:

Try to toggle the compositor (SHIFT+Alt+F12)

Thanks, I'll try next time it happens. But I hope there is a solution to stop it from happening in the first place.

Wild Penguin · 2018-02-02 21:31:52

Hi Storm,

Sounds familiar (black screen, but can still intgeract - yep, it happened). You might be experiencing this bug:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi … -alt-tab-/

Never mind that OP is talking about ALT+TAB:n. Used to happen while doing that, but also with Steam (and not ALT+TAB:n). But after some upgrade, the random crashes went away. Toggling compositor had no effect.

Another thing you could try, is "killall kwin ; killall -9 kwin ; kwin" or similar (actually, the binary seems to be called kwin_x11 - I could swear it was just kwin just recently, seems like there is a Wayland variant now, too!)

EDIT: The thread linked above might not be the most relevant one, forgot how I found one. However, if you are getting Xid error 31s in syslog when this happens, then you definitely are experincing the same bug I used to (symptoms are same, causes are many, restarting kwin "fixes"; try Google search with this). The last time I had it was Jan 8, so no bug for me for almost a month.

kernel: NVRM: Xid (PCI:0000:01:00): 31, Ch 00000030, engmask 00000101, intr 10000000

EDIT2:

kwin_x11 --replace

Should also work (and easier to type while blind or from the VC, and probably cleaner, too).

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2018-02-02 21:44:35)

c00ter · 2018-02-03 01:29:49

Hi Storm. From what I've been reading here, there, and in various other forii, is the suggestion of unchecking "Allow applications to block compositing" in System Settings prior to staring Steam, since you are in Plasma5. I am sorry I can't provide the provenance, since I peruse here and all/most Arch-related forums throughout the day. (Being disabled and unable to work may have its benefits?)

Arch Linux

#1 2018-02-01 01:05:26

[KDE] Black screen with mouse pointer every now and then

#2 2018-02-01 08:55:35

Re: [KDE] Black screen with mouse pointer every now and then

#3 2018-02-01 11:09:03

Re: [KDE] Black screen with mouse pointer every now and then

#4 2018-02-02 21:31:52

Re: [KDE] Black screen with mouse pointer every now and then

#5 2018-02-03 01:29:49

Re: [KDE] Black screen with mouse pointer every now and then

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