[SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

mcloaked · 2016-08-11 20:43:31

I have updated two machines to kernel 4.7.0-1 this evening with the usual pacman -Syu - the Lenovo S540 laptop works fine after the update, but the desktop ( Intel Ivybridge DQ77KB ) boots up fine and presents the sddm greeter screen as normal - but when logging in the usual splash screen happens with the progress bar but around 90% through the plasma login it seems to hang for some time - eventually the splash screen disappears and I end up with just the background image - but no taskbar. At that point the mouse is active again and I can select the usual options with right click including the logout option. Rebooting makes no difference, and logging out and back in also makes no difference.

Has anyone else seen this after today's updates and if so does anyone have a workaround?

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-09-18 12:26:24)

mcloaked · 2016-08-11 20:58:38

Downgrading the kernel back to 4.6.4-1-ARCH allows my plasma desktop to login normally again - so this looks like a bug in the 4.7 kernel. Will put in a bug report.

Edit: Bug reported at https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/50364

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-08-11 21:06:14)

Buddlespit · 2016-08-12 01:20:21

Wow.... I had to read my own log to see if it looked anything like yours... Nope. I'm no expert, but it looked to me like QT5 just fell apart on your system. I did find a couple of crond errors that I fixed; thank you for that...

Calucinho · 2016-08-12 22:34:39

Same problem. Screen stuck at "starting version 231". Downgrading the kernel did not help. Some dependencies (nvidia and virtualbox-guest) require kernel version >= 4.7. I forced the downgrade of all three packages using the --nodeps option. After reboot still same problem

mcloaked · 2016-08-15 09:34:16

I ran some more tests. If I update to kernel 4.7-1, and then remove the xf86-video-intel package and remove the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf so that the system uses the modesetting driver instead of the intel driver then the system boots to a normal graphical sddm login screen and logging in completes to give a normal plasma desktop including the taskbar. However the Kickoff menu opens in a strange way with it seems items off the left of the screen so that they are not accessible. Also if I start the chrome browser it appears to start but is not on the screen - again possibly it is trying to place the chrome window outside of the screen area. So although the graphics partly works it is not usable. I added some additional comments and log files to the report at https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/50364

mcloaked · 2016-08-15 16:03:00

Now also filed upstream at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97354

Hopefully there will be some progress on this before long.

mcloaked · 2016-08-18 18:11:11

This problem remains with kernel 4.7.1-1

mcloaked · 2016-08-20 08:52:11

The problem remains with plasma-framework (5.24.0-1 -> 5.25.0-1)

mcloaked · 2016-08-22 18:07:35

Problem also remains with the update for xf86-video-intel (1:2.99.917+691+ga77397a-1 -> 1:2.99.917+697+g12c14de-1)

Edit: I ran a test with both drm.debug=0xe and i915.semaphores=1 with kernel 4.7 booted - this also fails to complete the plasma login, and added the journal log following the boot to the bug at https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97354

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-08-24 19:05:23)

dockland · 2016-08-22 18:19:45

You can edit your posts instead of creatiing a new one

mcloaked · 2016-08-25 14:59:26

I tried something new today with this - after booting the 4.7 kernel and entering the login details to the sddm greeter, the usual hang time with the splash on the screen eventually times out and gives just a desktop background image - at that point I used right click to unlock the widgets on the desktop, and added a new default panel which displays and works correctly. If at that point I logout and then log back in, then the splash screen hangs for the same extended period, and when it disappears the panel that I added after the previous login is no longer displayed and again just a desktop background image is on the screen. However, if I then log out using right click and selecting to leave plasma, and downgrade the kernel back to 4.6 which was previously working, and log back in to plasma, which works successfully again, then the login does show the panel that I added when I had booted kernel 4.7 - which I can then remove and the original panel is there and working as normal!

I don't know therefore if this might point to a bug in plasma workspace or kwin that has surfaced with the current version of the kernel 4.7, and which might be fixed in newer versions of plasma, or when plasma 5.8 is released?

Edit: The same bug occurs with kernel 4.7.2-1

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-08-25 21:32:55)

mcloaked · 2016-08-28 10:52:02

It looks like this was a bug in plasma which is reported to have been fixed - see the comment in the upstream bug report at:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367822#c4

saying "It /should/ be fixed now? There were some updates on this area; we hit a major bug with kactivites that was fixed in Plasma 5.7.1? Please report if you still have any problems in the linked report

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 367828 ***"

i.e. https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367828

I will test the new version of relevant packages when they come out of testing to check if it is fixed. At the moment there is the new set of (plasma 5.7.4-1 and applications 16.08.0) packages still in testing. Extra is still on applications 16.04.3-1 so once these two sets of packages is released to extra then hopefully this bug will have been fixed. These went into testing on the 26th and 21st respectively, so hopefully won't be too long before they are released.

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-08-28 10:53:36)

mcloaked · 2016-09-17 08:57:06

After the update to plasma frameworks 5.26.0-1 I still have no panel after login with any kernel beyond 4.6.4-1 so this issue is not fixed for me.

Edit: I have been trying to delve more into this issue today and found something interesting!

My machine has a single HDMI monitor connected - but xorg detects a non-existent eDP1 monitor! See the logs for kwin support info and xrandr output at:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=367828#c13

xrandr shows a connected eDP1 monitor that does not exist, and the kwin support info shows:

Screen 0:
---------
Name: HDMI2
Geometry: 0,0,1920x1080
Refresh Rate: 60

Screen 1:
---------
Name: eDP1
Geometry: 0,0,2048x1536
Refresh Rate: 49.2663

when in fact Screen 1 does not exist! Also if you look at the xrandr output you will see that when either the 4.6 and 4.7 kernels are booted they show the eDP1 monitor as size 0mm x0mm so it is possible that because kwin thinks that there are screens 0 and 1 that it might be trying to place the panel on screen 1 that does not exist! There may have been changes to the Intel kernel drivers in the 4.7.x series of kernels that confuses xorg in this regard when data is then passed to the plasma packages for display.

I also found another bug report where people have had a long history of having problems with the panel being placed on the incorrect screen when there are multiple monitors connected:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356225

So I have added a comment to that report as well as the original asking if these issues might be related.... it is getting to late evening here but one thing I might try tomorrow is to add a section to my xorg config to tell xorg to ignore the eDP1 monitor and then see if plasma will successfully login and give a panel on the desktop with kernel 4.7.4-1 if xorg only knows about a single connected monitor!

Either way this looks like a possible interaction between graphics drivers and xorg and plasma resulting in this bug showing itself by putting the panel on a non-existent ghost monitor!

Edit 2: My curiosity got the better of me so I added some xorg config lines to ignore the non-existent eDP1 monitor - and the login progress strip no longer had the 30 second delay before fading away - but the panel still didn't display once the login completed... so there is still a problem.

Last edited by mcloaked (2016-09-17 21:26:42)

mcloaked · 2016-09-18 12:02:44

I have finally been able to resolve this problem. It turned out that way back in the history of my machine when I originally set it up, I had used a DVI monitor, and then a few days later plugged in an HDMI monitor and had the two monitors connected for a short period whilst I configured the displays, and HDMI monitor after that has been the only monitor on the machine for the following three years until now. However removing the original DVI monitor that was originally plugged in as a second monitor gave a phantom screen, that was presented to KDE4 and then later to plasma as a unified screen output, and the original panel that was assigned to the old DVI monitor had been displayed within plasma just fine on the primary HDMI monitor until the kernel was upgraded to the 4.7 series. At that point the phantom monitor attached to the eDP1 screen was where the panel was being displayed and therefore no longer visible on the primary HDMI display.

So in order to resolve this issue I logged on with kernel 4.6.4-1 running with the erroneously assigned panel still displayed on the primary real monitor. Then unlocking the plasma widgets, and removing the panel using the panel controls, I then created a new default panel, configured it, and locked the widgets again. Logging out and back in displayed the newly created panel correctly on the primary monitor.

Then adjusting the xorg config to include the following lines allowed logging out and back in with no phantom screen detected:

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier             "HDMI2"
        Option                 "Enable"  "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier             "eDP1"
        Option                 "ignore"  "true"
EndSection

Then upgrading the kernel to 4.7.4-1 and rebooting, allows the login from the sddm screen to proceed normally and completes without any problem including having the panel displayed on the only screen detected by kwin.

The xrandr output before and after these changes shows that prior to the steps detailed above there was a phantom eDP1 screen, but afterwards there is only a single HDMI2 screen - and now all is well.

xrandr output prior to the above changes:

cat xrandr-4641-2016sep17.txt 
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1400x1050     59.98  
   1600x900      60.00  
   1280x1024     60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1368x768      60.00  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1024x768      60.00  
   1024x576      60.00  
   960x540       60.00  
   800x600       60.32    56.25  
   864x486       60.00  
   640x480       59.94  
   720x405       60.00  
   640x360       60.00  
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 480mm x 270mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+  50.00    59.94    59.99  
   1920x1080i    60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1680x1050     59.88  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.90  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1366x768      59.79  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1280x720      60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   720x576       50.00  
   720x480       60.00    59.94  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    66.67    60.00    59.94  
   720x400       70.08  
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

xrandr output after the above changes:

$ cat xrandr-4741-2016sep17-noeDP1.txt 
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 480mm x 270mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+  50.00    59.94    59.99  
   1920x1080i    60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1600x1200     60.00  
   1680x1050     59.88  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1440x900      59.90  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1366x768      59.79  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1280x720      60.00    50.00    59.94  
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00  
   832x624       74.55  
   800x600       72.19    75.00    60.32    56.25  
   720x576       50.00  
   720x480       60.00    59.94  
   640x480       75.00    72.81    66.67    60.00    59.94  
   720x400       70.08  
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

So I will mark this thread as solved - but anyone else who has ever plugged in two monitors to their system who might see a similar problem with missing panels might wish to explore along the same lines to resolve the issue. There is clearly still a problem when a second monitor has been plugged in and removed if adjustments to the display have been made prior to removal of the external display and this will need further fixes to possibly plasma code, xorg or maybe udev?

Arch Linux

#1 2016-08-11 20:43:31

[SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#2 2016-08-11 20:58:38

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#3 2016-08-12 01:20:21

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#4 2016-08-12 22:34:39

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#5 2016-08-15 09:34:16

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#6 2016-08-15 16:03:00

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#7 2016-08-18 18:11:11

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#8 2016-08-20 08:52:11

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#9 2016-08-22 18:07:35

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#10 2016-08-22 18:19:45

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#11 2016-08-25 14:59:26

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#12 2016-08-28 10:52:02

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#13 2016-09-17 08:57:06

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

#14 2016-09-18 12:02:44

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma login no panel for any kernel after 4.6.4-1

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