Plasma Crashes

[TheSupremeVizier]

Thank you for your response, claydoh. I finally got the time to dive back into this.

Yesterday I changed from Desktop to Folder view. Yesterday I removed all widgets/icons from ~/Desktop and repopulated the applications (widgets/icons) onto the Desktop within the Folder view, so all widgets/icons are "new". I exercised all applications on the Desktop with no issues.

Today the plasma desktop experienced a crash while I was using Chromium in Incognito mode while viewing a video on a news site. The video did not crash. Chromium did not crash. Only the plasma desktop crashed.

I think I will stop using Chromium for a while and instead use Chrome. If the issue still occurs, I will move away from Chrome and try Firefox or Opera. Then if the issue still occurs, I might consider yet another fresh install.

[Buddlespit]

Same thing here. System runs for a bit, then plasmadesktop freezes. I have to ctl-alt-del to get a reboot screen. I have currently changed to oxygen from sweet global theme AND I made sure I was logging into plasma-Wayland over x11. Good news is that my clock widget also freezes at the same time. Bad news is that the system keeps freezing during journalctl in yakuake.

I thought it was an Nvidia thing because it cleared up after I threw ubuntu-drivers at it. I also don't think it's a browser issue because I use Firefox and the same thing happens.

--break--

ok, my system ran alright until I changed my icons to something other than Breeze. I've changed back to Breeze-Dark as my global theme. Everything is set back to Breeze(-Dark). I will monitor.

My system is currently in the process of freezing. Firefox hasn't frozen yet. I guess we can discount a theme issue. this is journalctl -r. My clock is frozen at 10:24:50

Sep 14 10:24:52 Pats-Main wpa_supplicant[1028]: wlp5s0: CTRL-EVENT-SIGNAL-CHANGE above=1 signal=-28 noise=9999 txrate=0
Sep 14 10:24:50 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kf.plasma.quick: location should be set before showing popup window
Sep 14 10:24:50 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kf.plasma.quick: location should be set before showing popup window
Sep 14 10:24:49 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kf.plasma.quick: location should be set before showing popup window
Sep 14 10:24:49 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kpipewire_logging: PipeWire remote error: -2 unknown resource 5 op:7
Sep 14 10:24:49 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kpipewire_logging: PipeWire remote error: -2 unknown resource 4 op:7
Sep 14 10:24:49 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kpipewire_logging: PipeWire remote error: -2 target not found
Sep 14 10:24:49 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: kpipewire_logging: PipeWire remote error: -2 target not found
Sep 14 10:24:49 Pats-Main firefox[3666]: [GFX1-]: RenderCompositorSWGL failed mapping default framebuffer, no dt
Sep 14 10:24:45 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: MESA: warning: zink: PERF WARNING! > 100 copy boxes detected for 0x76619442a0c0
Sep 14 10:24:41 Pats-Main plasmashell[1701]: MESA: warning: zink: PERF WARNING! > 100 copy boxes detected for 0x7660ec75d600
Sep 14 10:24:30 Pats-Main wpa_supplicant[1028]: wlp5s0: CTRL-EVENT-SIGNAL-CHANGE above=1 signal=-28 noise=9999 txrate=0

My name is Pat, btw...

-break-

OK my system is freezing due to Wayland. Or Nvidia and Wayland. So now I've been logging in plasma-x11 and haven't lost my menu bars or firefox.

[TheSupremeVizier]

Hi, Buddlespit. I'm running kubuntu with x11 and seeing plasma display crashes. These do not lock up or freeze my system. Plasma gets restarted automatically by the OS.

Today I ran using Chrome instead of Chromium and I witnessed another plasma crash. The crash was subsequent to placing the system in "sleep" mode, then awakening the system, then working on the system for a while, then witnessing the crash while running Chrome and performing other tasks. This is not the first time I've witnessed a plasma crash after a sleep-then-wakened cycle, but the crash never immediately follows the awakening.

Tomorrow I will use Firefox instead of Chromium or Chrome.

I don't know if there is a crash-dependency on the browser in use or not. I'm just trying to be methodical in my approach.

[Buddlespit]

Two different problems means I shut up now.

[TheSupremeVizier]

That's OK, Buddlespit. The problems might not be different. They might have different symptoms but the same root cause. Here's what happened today:

Running Firefox. Put the system into "sleep" mode. Woke up the system around 2 hours later. Plasma crashed almost immediately. What do I mean by "almost"? The plasma crash occurred within a few seconds of awakening the system, and after it occurred I logged into this site and began entering this post inside Firefox. It was at this time that the Firefox display froze and became unresponsive to keyboard entries. The mouse cursor could be moved all over the two desktop monitors, but when the cursor was moved over the Firefox window, the cursor could no longer be seen. I went to a Konsole window and entered "top" and observed a Firefox process in the "S" state. I then stopped "top", entered "ps uax" and observed that Firefox was given an "S" status, which I assume means "swapped out". I knew of no method to recover Firefox to a running state, so I performed "kill <Firefox PID>". Firefox closed. I restarted Firefox and entered this information at this site.

deadsplash skyfishgoo Snowhog Cincinnatus claydoh @Buddlespit

ETA: I will now return to a recently created new user account and see if I can somehow generate a plasma crash. If I cannot generate a plasma crash during the next 6 hours, I will assume that the issue is in my personal account. If the issue is in my personal account, then I must assume that the issue has to do with configuration files within subdirectories of my account.

Even if I perform a fresh installation, how do I keep from possibly corrupting correct operation when I use tar to restore my data to my account? Exactly what subdirectories within my personal account must not be restored? If someone can tell me this, I can write a shell script to avoid installing the allegedly problematic configuration subdirectories. Or am I to assume that the problem has nothing to do with the configuration subdirectories that are contained within my personal account?

Thank you all very much in advance!

[TheSupremeVizier]

I have been in contact with a KDE developer on discuss.kde.org who I quote:

I’d recommend upgrading your system to Plasma 6, or switching to a product that offers faster OS updates of no upgrades are possible. The reason is that you’re using Plasma 5.27, which was released two and a half years ago, and went out of support from KDE a while ago as well.

So normally I’d ask you to post a backtrace of the crash so it can be debugged, but in this case, even if you did, it’s not likely any Plasma developers would be in a position to debug it, having long since moved to Plasma 6. Probably the best we could do would be to identify it as a known bug that was fixed years ago, in which case the advice would be the same: “please upgrade!”

My response to the KDE developer on that forum:

I greatly appreciate your insightful response. I read an earlier post here where a backtrace was requested, but that involved Plasma 6.x. I now understand why a backtrace would be useless given my OS version.

I cannot directly upgrade my system from KDE Plasma 5.27 on Kubuntu 24.04 LTS to KDE Plasma 6 because Plasma 6 requires a new Qt library set that is not compatible with the base OS, and it was not included in the 24.04 release. To get KDE Plasma 6, I will need to wait for a Kubuntu upgrade to a newer non-LTS release, such as Kubuntu 24.10 or 25.04.

It certainly appears that I must leave LTS in order to solve this issue (unless I want to keep experimenting with moving everything other than the configuration/control files/directories from my old user account to a new user account). Even if upgrading Plasma to 6.x doesn’t fix the issue, at least I can get debug support.

Thank you very much!

I have some decisions to make now...and probably a lot more work.

[TheSupremeVizier]

I took the plunge and loaded Kubuntu 25.04 yesterday, so the discussion in this thread is now moot.
The Plucky Puffin has not provided smooth sailing, so I will be looking into this forum to address multiple issues.
If I need help, I will spew in another thread.
Thank you much for your suggestions and your patience.