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IsmoHaa n00b

Joined: 25 Jun 2005 Posts: 61
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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2017 7:06 pm Post subject: KDE plasmashell goes nuts with network-heavy programs |
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I held out for the longest time refusing to update my KDE4 desktop, still being traumatized after the KDE3->4 transition, but a few weeks ago I caved and installed kde-plasma/plasma-desktop-5.8.5-r2. The problem I have is that occasionally the plasmashell process slowly goes bonkers and starts hogging one full processor core and then some. (According to top, CPU usage varies between 80 and 125 %)
I've managed to isolate the problem, enough to notice that it seems to occur only when running network-intensive programs, e.g. ktorrent or retroshare. Killing the plasmashell process and restarting it initially brings the usage down to reasonable levels, but within a few minutes its back to 40%, and given some more time it creeps back to the 100+ range. Needless to say that this makes the computer very sluggish and unresponsive - downright unusable for even slightly heavier tasks. Stopping the network-heavy application quickly brings usage back to a normal usage level of ~10%, but that's not really an acceptable solution.
Googling around reveals that I'm not alone with the problem of plasmashell running amok, but in all the other cases I've found, some desktop widget has been the culprit. I don't have any desktop widgets beyond a small number of icons to start frequently used programs with, so that seems an unlikely cause - they are of course also present when plasmashell is not going berserk. I also have a pretty bog standard panel, so again that's an unlikely source for problems.
Any suggestions? I like KDE, but I'm getting pretty f***ing tired of them breaking the most basic things with every major release, and taking ages to get the quality up to usable levels. (KDE 4 was horrible for dual monitor users all the way up to 4.7, WTF?!) |
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asturm Developer


Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8056 Location: Austria
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Posted: Fri Mar 10, 2017 8:22 pm Post subject: |
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Certainly not normal, log out of your session and remove ~/.cache, maybe it helps. _________________ backend.cpp:92:2: warning: #warning TODO - this error message is about as useful as a cooling unit in the arctic |
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IsmoHaa n00b

Joined: 25 Jun 2005 Posts: 61
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Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 9:41 am Post subject: |
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Quote: | log out of your session and remove ~/.cache, maybe it helps. |
It... altered the behavior of the annoyance. Instead of plasmashell going haywire, now it's X.
Code: | PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3748 root 7 0 289948 90680 26424 R 55,8 1,2 103:41.14 X |
The system might be slightly more responsive, but load average still jumps from a normal idle of ~0.4 to ~1.6 I don't quite get this.
*UPDATE*
Actually this is even weirder than I thought. Now when I shut down the network-heavy apps, first things appeared to go back to normal, *and then* plasmashell went bananas. And of course, since there are no more programs to shut down, the only way to get it back under control is to reboot. It's like I'm running flippin' windows.  |
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Hu Moderator

Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 16478
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Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2017 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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If plasmashell is running wild, why not kill it or log out (thereby implicitly killing it)? A reboot should not be required. In extreme cases, it might ignore regular signals, but nothing can block SIGKILL.[1]
[1] Except buggy kernel modules. |
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