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

[alpha1]

2.6.38.8-pclos3.bfs
is my kernel.

Re-install? Gulp!

[Archie]

Hard reboots (pressing the power button to close then open the machine) is never a good thing and would require a filesystem check (fsck).

Often there are stuff buffered on RAM and written on temporary disk space. If these are not cleared or logged, it could create problems such as what you are experiencing now. Moreover, this method of shutting down your machine then rebooting can be hazardous to your hard drive and will most surely lead to kernel panics.

Be aware please.

[oldschool]

t20racerman,

I had a problem similar to yours (KDE crash when inserting CD or thumb drive to USB -- black screen, must do a hard reset). I traced the problem down to the use of  a particular set of plasma applets. If you use either the plasma-applet-devicemanager or the plasma-applet-devicenotifier-automount with certain nvidia cards, you are going to have crashes like crazy.  Remove those particular applets (whichever of the two you may be using) from your system. Use the default devicenotifer (not the automount one) instead.  This made a night and day difference for my system.

oldschool

[t20racerman]

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.

Yes, have just done fsck and this is what I got: [N.B. sda1 is a windows partition, so irrelevant, sda5 is where PClinuxOS is installed, and sda7 is my separate /home partition]

[root@localhost root]# e2fsck -fy /dev/sda5
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 3A: Optimizing directories
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/sda5: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
/dev/sda5: 200108/1324512 files (1.9% non-contiguous), 1605034/5289393 blocks


[root@localhost root]# e2fsck -fy /dev/sda6 [N.B This is the swap partition, so as expected?]
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
e2fsck: Superblock invalid, trying backup blocks...
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda6

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2
filesystem.  If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
    e2fsck -b 8193 <device>


[root@localhost root]# e2fsck -fy /dev/sda7
e2fsck 1.41.14 (22-Dec-2010)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 3A: Optimizing directories
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/sda7: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
/dev/sda7: 55003/5668864 files (7.6% non-contiguous), 11155431/22657666 blocks

Seems some errors there! Also, I have tried seting up a new user and just using the standard settings as they were, it crashed within 15 mins!

Hard reboots (pressing the power button to close then open the machine) is never a good thing and would require a filesystem check (fsck).

Often there are stuff buffered on RAM and written on temporary disk space. If these are not cleared or logged, it could create problems such as what you are experiencing now. Moreover, this method of shutting down your machine then rebooting can be hazardous to your hard drive and will most surely lead to kernel panics.

Be aware please.

Archie - I am aware, but I have no choice - it freezes solid and NOTHING will unfreeze it other than the power button, sadly.

oldschool - I'm not having that problem, just the crashes. I checked, and I don't have the applets you mention installed.


I'm currently writing this via the live disc, and at least that hasn't crashed (yet!). I'll keep this running for a bit and see what happens before rebooting and seeing if the fsck check/repair helped...

As always, your help is very much appreciated - thanks for bearing with me. 

[Archie]

I really can't think of anything else other than for you to back up your most important data files, and do a complete reformat. I hope it is not a failing hard disk as it is one of the likely culprit. Good luck.

[alpha1]

Well the REISUB works during the freeze.
and so does the mouse movements.
but not mouse clicks!

why?
how?

looks more like a graphics problem to me ...

[kjpetrie]

If by graphics problem you mean the GUI isn't fully functional, that's pretty self-evident, but unfortunately it doesn't get us much closer. REISUB is always preferable to a reset for restarting the machine as, providing you wait a few seconds between each step, it will write out buffers and unmount the file systems (technically remount read-only,  but that's just pedantic) so you get a clean reboot.

The problem is, after all the unclean shutdowns and random failures, there's really no way to know what damage has been done to the system and the quickest way to recover would be to backup your data and reinstall. The good news is that the other OS seems unaffected so it shouldn't be a failing drive (unless it's the disc surface where your pclos partitions are stored - you can format with a surface scan if you want but it'll take a lot longer).

As for how, who knows? Could be any number of random things - power or lightning problems, vibration etc. We don't know enough about what you've done or where you use it. Sometimes things just break and we'll probably never know. The main thing is to get it going again. It's why every computer user needs full backups so they can recover if something like this happens.

[johnmart]

t20racerman,
Maybe you will have reinstalled by now, but I wanted to ask if you tried restarted your stalled system with at+sysrq REISUB as mentioned by alpha1 & expanded by kjpetrie?
As mentioned all the file checks & restarts required by a hard power down could add to your problems.
By any chance have you done a remaster when your system was stable?
It is always nice to get to the root of a problem, but if a reinstall sets you right, it is not a bad solution. 

[alpha1]

How would I format with surface scan?

I believe ?I have some problems with my HD (perhaps some bad sector).
Because two years back Win XP just stopped working all of sudden.
and it wouldn't re-install, no matter what.

That's when I installed Mint and PCLOS.
Few files also got corrupted (came to know while copying to USB drives).
However the OS were working absolutely fine.

But due to some motherboard problem had to reinstall everything, recently (few days back).
That's when I put PCLOS 2011.09 and the problem started 

[djohnston]

How would I format with surface scan?

When you select a partition to be formatted in the PCC GUI (PCC>Local disks>Manage disk partitions), you will be asked if you want to check for bad blocks. Select YES to do a surface scan.

[Archie]

How would I format with surface scan?

When you select a partition to be formatted in the PCC GUI (PCC>Local disks>Manage disk partitions), you will be asked if you want to check for bad blocks. Select YES to do a surface scan.

That would take time ... a while ... but that would be good because the FS can mark the bad sectors (if any) so it wouldn't be used. Good luck.

[t20racerman]

Well I have done a reinstall with a full format of the sda5 drive which included a surface scan for bad blocks as djohnston suggested. My home files were on a separate partition and I left that as it was.

After a reinstall and getting all my /home/user  files back to where they should be, all is back to normal and running fine    I'll not put 'solved' in the title yet, as I thought it was solved before and it started crashing again!

However, after several hours, all is working perfectly and a reinstall seemed to solve things. My guess is that the original problem with the nvidia driver caused a crash or two, and that something on the HD must have been corrupted by that.
Thanks for all the help everyone, and I'll post back in a few days to (hopefully!) change the thread status to solved - if Archie has his solved by then too.

Thanks folks
Adrian

[Archie]

Heya Adrian,

Maybe you meant alpha1.

I have no issues with KDE crashing ... did I give you that impression. I haven't had a crash since I installed the Test4 64 bit.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

[t20racerman]

Heya Adrian,

Maybe you meant alpha1.

I have no issues with KDE crashing ... did I give you that impression. I haven't had a crash since I installed the Test4 64 bit.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

Oops yes!    That is who I meant. 

I confused myself! 

[t20racerman]

Ok, officially this problem is solved. Reinstall with full disc scan seemed to do the trick. Has been used for many hours since and no more crashes.

Thanks so much for all the help and suggestions guys - much appreciated.

Adrian