Mysterious crashes, kmail?

=X¥®µ§= · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2002 Posts: 53 Location: Belgium

When I had KDE 3.0.2 for like 2 weeks, when I was writing a mail it all locked up. I couldn't use my keyboard (ctrl+alt+del, ctrl+alt+tab, alt+f1,... nothing worked) and I could only move my mouse, clicking didn't do anything, and going over things that normally change size (icons in the taskbar) didn't give any reaction.
So I rebooted the system with the reboot button, but while writing that same mail, it went wrong again. And so did it a lot of times after that.
So I updated to 3.0.3, but yesterday, while in kmail and reading some mail, it locked up again.

Now I don't know what this is causing... I assume kmail?
But it's strange that something like that can crash the whole system, so I can't even use my keyboard to reboot X, and that my mouse (USB, unlike the keyboard) is still working!

It can't be a gentoo/kde/hardware problem, can it?

Any solutions/explanations/... or should I consider switching mail client?
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fkurth · Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:52 am Post subject: same

i have exact the same problem with kde 3.0.4
No Idea what it is.
Seems to be related to gcc3.2.
The same kde on debian/unstable
(gcc2.95) is rock solid.
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schutten · Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 7:16 pm Post subject:

I do use kmail, and I do not have the problems you mention.
Currently my kde is at 3.0.4 and also with previous version there were no problems.

I still use the 1.2 system (gcc 2.95 based).

Maybe your gcc optimizations are too agressive.

/edit: typo...

phong · Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 7:39 pm Post subject:

I'm using kmail (3.0.3 and now 3.1_beta2) with gcc 3.2 and have not had problems. It gcc version might not be the only factor. I wish kde had a bugzilla.
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AlterEgo · Veteran Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 1619

=X¥®µ§= · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2002 Posts: 53 Location: Belgium

I'm not running gcc3.2 but 2.95...

I was hoping future versions of kde to solve it, but apparantly they didn't

(I'm using sylpheed now, but to tell you the truth: kmail is a lot more mature)
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schutten · Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2002 8:56 pm Post subject:

Since you are still using gcc 2.95, and others do not have any problems with kmail, I would think the problem is either in some of the more basic system packages (Xfree/glibc) or with your kernel configuration.

- Try recompiling Xfree (since that is the one that locks up).
- Or even do an "emerge -e xfree" or an "emerge -e kde".
- Take a good look at your kernel configuration.

Do you remember what might have changed on you system just before you started to have problems (maybe an ugrade of a certain system package)?

In the end it also might be a hardware problem (bad memory)....

=X¥®µ§= · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2002 Posts: 53 Location: Belgium

why would I have to recompile xfree when it's kmail that crashes?
where should I look in the kernel config? (no fancy options enabled there...)

I think the problems were there from the beginning... it happens most of the time when I select a link (but can also occur when I'm only reading a mail or when I'm using another program and kmail is running in the background...)

the moment I stopped using kmail (or when it wasn't running), I never had these crashes anymore, so I doubt it's bad memory...

I'm guessing just a little bug that only occurs with 0.0x% of all people using it, a bad hardware/software combination (for kmail) or something :/
_________________
unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;unmount;sleep

schutten · Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2002 4:52 pm Post subject:

I suggested xfree recompilation since that is the one that locks up (you describe that your machine does not respond to keyboard/mouse input anymore). Your machine probably hasn't really crashed (if you have another unix machine try logging into the "frozen" machine with ssh (if you have sshd setup on your machine...)). I have had these type of problems (xfree freeze), usually when using realplayer (the native lunix version, can't solve that since this is a binary only package).

I have had other problems (when I still used gnome; some of the capplets in the gnome control center used to crash). Later this has been resolved by updating other system packages (I suspect that a new glibc version fixed this for me).

You are probably right that an incorrect kernel config is far fetched. Also bad memory is probably not the case (since the crashes can always be linked to using kmail; bad memory would let the system crash randomly).

I still do not think that this is a bug in kmail itself (too may people use kmail without having these problems). I really think that it is related to one of the libraries that kmail uses. Full recompile of kmail including all its dependencies might solve it (this will recompile glibc/xfree/qt). I know this takes a long time

No guarantees though...

phong · Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2002 5:16 pm Post subject: