[Solved] KDE keeps crashing. Freezes and can't do anything.

[t20racerman]

Update:
Booted in windows and despite hours of use, and many hours of being left running, it worked perfectly without crashing.  This probably discounts hardware problems.

Booted PCLOS and set up new user account. logged off and logged on as new user. Opened browser and synaptic and within 10 mins my computer froze again and I had to switch it off.

I didn't have Dolphin or any other file manager open, had not plugged any USB devices in, nor did I have a CD or DVD in the drive.  I'm still running the 280.13 nvidia driver, don't have prelink installed and am getting seriously fed up with this now  as my computer is unuseable in Linux

Terry, what is a DBus problem?

What to try next then - I've run out of ideas? I'm going to leave it with no programs running and see if it crashes when not being used. Other than that ANY advice welcomed......

Thanks, as always for the help.
 

[Archie]

Old-Polack will be the guru that'll get your rig fixed. In the meantime, have you tried fsck?

Try this thread.

[t20racerman]

Archie: I'll study that thread and go through the suggestions when I have a moment.

Froggy: Good point about how long. Actually though I did a fresh install of PCLinuxOS 2010 about 6-8 months ago (changed motherboard and graphics card!) and have upgraded all the way to PCLinuxOS 2011 now. I'm running kernel 2.6.38.6-pclos1.pae.bfs

I just left my computer for over an hour running nothing, and it didn't crash - it normally lasts 5-30 mins max when being used - so something I'm running must be causing it? Only common program I can think of is Firefox. I'll post this and leave it running without any programs for a while longer and then see what happens.

Thanks
 

[j30max]

hi

same thing started happening to me today, when copying files to usb thumb drive, which has never had issues before.  once drive has been removed, problem does not reappear.

cheers

[TerryN]

Good point about how long. Actually though I did a fresh install of PCLinuxOS 2010 about 6-8 months ago (changed motherboard and graphics card!) and have upgraded all the way to PCLinuxOS 2011 now. I'm running kernel 2.6.38.6-pclos1.pae.bfs

i would double check that kernel again ... maybe just have the bfs or pae kernel ... this could be your problem ...

Also 2.6.38.8-pclos3 is the latest kernel.
(If you update the kernel, bear in the mind that the first boot afterwards can take longer if kernel modules need rebuilding)
In addition, I would repeat JohnW_57's suggestion that you run memtest for an extended period of time.  A few times I've spent hours chasing a problem like this only to discover that it was faulty RAM all along.  The fact that Windows runs fine proves nothing, as different OSs have different memory usage profiles.
I would also recommend doing a File System check as recommended in the other thread.

Going on from there, I'm not sure what to suggest.  I still don't have enough info to know whether it is KDE or Xorg or something else that is "freezing".  The mouse pointer still moves so I guess the kernel and at least some of X is still alive.  
Have you tried CTRL-ALT-F1 to see if you can switch to a console?  (CTRL-ALT-F8 to get back)
Are background processes like the task bar clock or any monitors you have still running?
Is there any disk activity?
Can you get ANY sort of response by left/right clicking icons, panel or desktop?

As for logs to look at (they are probably too much to post here in their entirety)  
For KDE problems I would look in $HOME/.xsession-errors.  Good luck with that though because it is very verbose, doesn't have timestamps and sometimes it doesn't even tell you what component/app wrote the message!  Also there is lots of stuff that looks like errors but is quite normal.
For X/Graphics Driver stuff look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log
For kernel/system stuff look in /var/log/syslog

Terry

EDIT: BTW what Graphics card do you have?

[t20racerman]

Thanks again for your patience with me 

I left PC running for two hours - no crash. Opened Firefox and surfed for 40 mins - no crash. Installed a little photo utility through synaptic and again no crash. Closed synaptic and then clicked on desktop 2 icon on toolbar (to swap desktops to one woth firefox on) and it crashed a fraction of a second later! When it crashes, the mouse icon moves ok but everything else is frozen solid. No key configurations work, and there is nothing you can do (other than move the mouse about) other than do a hard crash by turning it off. ie key configs such as CTRL-ALT-F1 do nothing. There appears to be no disk activity and no matter how long you leave it you don't get a 'KDE has crashed' message. Left or right clicking anywhere achieves nothing

I'll update the kernel as suggested and run memtest too. I'll also do the disc checks suggested on the other thread.
On windows again now, but will get back to you when I've done as you suggest. Thanks

Adrian

PS My graphics card is a nvidia GT220

[AS]

t20racerman,

do you have a vmalloc=256M in your grub boot line ? If not, try add it, as I remember Just18 was having very weird issue without that option and a nvidia card...

[t20racerman]

Latest update:

Ok, here's the state of play:

- yes I do already have vmalloc=256M in my grub boot line (although no idea what it means!  )

- I ran memtest for hours and no problems found so I then updated the kernel to the latest one suggested - 2.6.38.8-pclos3.bfs

I rebooted and waited.... and two hours later I'm still here! 


I've been writing my CV, moving files, doing emails and surfing the web and so far no matter what I've done the computer hasn't crashed!  I had already tried running an earlier kernel that was installed to see if that was the problem, and it was still crashing exactly the same, so I didn't pursue that as a possible cause of the problem. Maybe it is now fixed? I really hope so, but only time will tell.

Thanks so much for all the ideas and suggestions from you all - this forum really is superb - and I appreciate so much the time and effort you have made to help sort this out.

Well, I'm not putting 'solved' in the title yet - a little too early for that, but hopefully I can do soon. 

[alpha1]

Hey wait!
I have the EXACT SAME problem.

But before that a little prelude.
Intel P4 3Ghz machine, with 1 GB RAM.
Used to have 865G motherboard, but the board conked and got a "degrade" to Intel 845G chipset (so that I could utilize the Hard disc, processor and ram, and cabinet).
No additional graphics card.

I had PCLOS 10.07 live CD. Ran it via live environment. The live CD ran for two days continuous.
I recovered my data to external disc.
Meantime I thought of updating myself on PCLOS versions.

Saw that PCLOS 11.09 is out. So why not begin with it instead of 10.07
Now the problems started right from the live environment.
Display suddenly freezes.

The mouse pointer can be moved. And I believe the applications can be "minimized" (but you still see them on screen).
Somehow managed to install it on HD.

However, the problem persists.
And it happens every time I use Synaptic, or Appearance settings. (Let me see if there is anything else also triggering).
Just for fun I installed this add-on to firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/macosx-theme-firefox-4-linu/?src=search
AND I got the same freeze EVERY TIME I opened / started FF.
Ultimately had to start FF in safe mode and disable the extension.

The display freezes. The mouse pointer is visible and can be moved though.
Keys don't produce any desired effect.
Ctrl+Alt+Bcksp doesn't work
Ctrl+Alt+F1..F8 doesn't work
REISUB works though

The PC seems to be working though, because once: the display froze in the middle of software update (FF 6 to 9, flash-player update). And after twiddling my thumbs, staring the frozen screen for a while I decided to reboot - and lo! FF had transformed to version 9.

Looks like its a graphics issue. Intel Drivers?

The problem was not there with PCLOS10.07

[t20racerman]

Hi alpha1 - sorry to hear you are having the same issues as me.

I think mine are fixed now though - the computer stayed on all day yesterday and if it does the same for the next few hours I think I can call this problem solved (for me). No doubt you've read through this thread, and seen some of the issues, but it was upgrading to the latest kernel that seemed to fix my problem. What kernel are you using? (type "uname -r" in a terminal to see)

If you can, upgrade the kernel via synaptic to the latest 2.6.38.8-pclos3 one and see if that helps.

[j30max]

hi.  I've finally worked out what causes my system to freeze.  if I am copying files to usb drive and whilst that is happening, i open firefox, then everything freezes.  I copied 4 gig of files to usb today with firefox closed and it went fine.  tried it again but opened firefox in the middle of the copy and my system froze.  funny thing is that when using chromium, there is no issue.

cheers

[t20racerman]

Damn Damn Damn! 

Guess what? Just froze up again.

I was using Firefox to post on a forum when it went.... Do you think Firefox is causing these problems as J30max suggests? I'll try another browser and report back later......

[alpha1]

t20racerman, I have installed the stock PCLOS 2011.09 from the CD - will check the kernel no. (only updated applications like FF, vlc etc)

One thing that I have observed is that prior to the freeze, the fonts somehow screw up. Not in a weird fashion - but just that hinting etc changes a little bit ... and then the freeze.

The funny thing is that the freeze happens even immediately after login. When nothing is opened by me.
Trying to find the pattern ...

[t20racerman]

Still trying to track it down here. I used Chromium instead of Firefox to see if that helped... and it froze again!  This is getting very frustrating to say the least!
 

[kjpetrie]

Have you actually done the fsck? What were the results? Every unclean shutdown needs a following file system check before continuing.

Also, have you tried creating a new user to see if it happens there? That can be useful in establishing whether it's system or user-related.

If it's system related, a re-install might be the way to go (though I realise for alpha1 a re-install caused it). If it's user-related, perhaps renaming .kde4 or .local might help (you'll lose your customisation temporarily). In that case, you're into a laborious half-split process to track down the file causing the problem.

Or you could just back-up your data and re-install everything from scratch reformatting your partitions.