Usual KDE crash, or a problem?

HearWa · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 37 Location: Canada, N.B.

Hardware specifications:
Processor: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 64-bit
Motherboard: MSI K8N NEO4
Memory: 512MB DDR
Graphics Card: nVidia GeForce 6200

Software specifications:
KDE version: 3.4.1
Gentoo installation medium: Gentoo Linux Minimal Installer 2005.0
Xorg Version:

Applications I run often (in no particular order):
Konsole (user and super user)
Firefox
Krdc
Kopete
Knode
KSirc

Since I've installed KDE, I've been experiencing an odd sort of crash. At least, I consider it a "crash." The system doesn't necessarily freeze (I can still see and move the mouse, open the menu, open applications, move windows around, etc.), but the display appears what can be best described as "quirky." That is, the taskbar goes white, konsole text dissapears or is covered up by white, the menus go white, the desktop background goes white or appears in many different seemingly random colors and the menu goes white or appears in many different seemingly random colors. Here's a picture I took of what my monitor looks like when the system crashes: http://dustin.quickfry.com/wtfomgbbq.jpg I've tried taking a screenshot with ksnapshit but I only get a screenshot of random colors (probably hinting to the problem, but it's beyond me at this point).

I've tried refreshing the desktop, but that only has an even more disasterous effect. However, when I open up the menu and go to log out -> end current session, kdm appears as though nothing happened and when I log in again, everything is magically back to normal. The crash was also happening before [and after] I set the correct vertical and horizontal sync to my monitor. You should also note I make liberal use of the transparency effects in KDE, but when I turn off everything to do with it the crash still occurs.

I really have no idea why this is happening; the system crashes during seemingly arbitrary events. The crash has happened while I was closing xine, surfing the web with firefox, moving a konsole, chatting in kopete, opening the system menu and many other arbitrary events. At this point I don't even know if this is a problem with KDE, xorg, my graphics card module, my graphic card or [with all things considered] my monitor.

Would this have anything to do with logging in as super user through the konsole?

Can anybody help me here? If you offer even a vague cookie crumb trail to where the problem may have a slim chance of lying I'd still appreciate it!

i92guboj · Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 10:26 pm Post subject:

It is difficult to spot the cause of such problem. Some things that could help us to determinate what is causing that odd problem are these:

1.- Graphic hardware and drivers that you use.
2.- Does it happens only in kde? Does it happen in another wm's as well? Does it happens with kde/qt apps under other wm's?
3.- Version of xorg/xfree
4.- Do you use XComposite/xcompmgr or/and any other fancy experiment feature?

As a tip, deactivate all the fancy features in xorg.conf, deactiva xcomposite. If you are running with a nvidia driver make sure that the following lines ARE NOT or are commented in your xorg.conf:

HearWa · n00b Joined: 15 Apr 2004 Posts: 37 Location: Canada, N.B.

I've figured it out, and it was a simpler solution than I thought. I installed the new nvidia driver, but I forgot to change the driver in my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to "nvidia" instead of "nv." KDE is displaying flawlessly now with the new 7676 driver.
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