Weird screen behavior when power saving engages

[oshunluvr]

New PC and monitors; I went from a single to dual monitors.

When the "Screen Energy Savings" kicks in and I come back to the computer, the left monitor has a black and unresponsive desktop. I can still use the space - windows will move on an off that screen - but right-click on it does not bring the desktop menu up. THe only way I can fix it is to log out and back in or reboot. When I do that, this results in my panel being moved to the right screen.

I don't know where to start troubleshooting. Nothing in the logs that I can find yet and xrandr looks normal.

[claydoh]

You are probably hitting the numerous Plasma Multi Monitor Woes of 2022.


Have you tried restarting plasmashell via krunner? plasmashell --replace
Have you kicked out kscreen on this system yet?

I don't think it really has anything to do with energy saving or anything per se.
My dual monitor setup has similar bugaboos. When idle for some time, I lose my custom wallpaper settings - one static and one slideshow, or sometimes just the slideshow, and the static wallpaper is now on the wrong screen. I lose my panel completely, sometimes.
restarting Plasmashell brings it back
Before deleting my kscreen configs, and eventually turning it off, my left wallpaper would go back to the stock one, as if screen configs were being lost or changed.
I tested with no power saving at all, no lock screen, I even switched back to x11 for a bit , all the same. Nothing in any logs.

KDE's bugzilla is fairly well filled with reports, and Reddit has numerous complaints as well. No solid fix or workaround, until Plasma 5.27

What I do is save a good copy of my plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and created a short script to copy it back over, which restores my layout and wallpapers. I have a short stubby vertical panel on the bottom left of my right-side monitor, plus my custom wallpaper settings.
It seems to work to fix for that once or twice a day it dies on me.

#!/bin/bash

## Kill Plasmashell
kquitapp5 plasmashell

## Delete sh***y config
rm ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

# Copy good backup config
cp ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrcBAX ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

# Restart Plasmashell
kstart5 plasmashell​

Semi-related: https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...ons-on-desktop

Def related:
https://pointieststick.com/2022/12/1...-multi-screen/
https://notmart.org/blog/2022/12/multi-screen/

[oshunluvr]

Thanks for the info Clay - I just needed someone to 'bing' for me. Oh sorry - or is it 'jeeves'? lol

Anyway - plasmashell --replace does indeed bring back the desktop, but changes it to 'folder view' instead of 'desktop'. I'll follow your suggestion and see how that goes.

Somewhat related question - for years I've noticed that plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc seems to grow but never diminish. Even on this new install there are widgets listed in the file that I tried and removed or crashed (disappeared) never to return. Yet they are still mentioned in the above file. Seems untidy at best. In the past, I've attempted 'clean up' the file but often ended breaking my desktop and having to start over. I suppose one could add a new user set it up the way you like, then copy that file over to your current user.. blah blah blah. Just wondering if there was some established way to clean up this file?

[oshunluvr]

BTW, I read through those links. The news is encouraging. Thanks for that also

[claydoh]

Anyway - plasmashell --replace does indeed bring back the desktop, but changes it to 'folder view' instead of 'desktop'. I'll follow your suggestion and see how that goes.

The default is the Folder View, so I think some things are getting reset back to these defaults somehow, That is why I keep a copy of my config file.

I can't find the reference to it, but I was having some sort of issues with using the Desktop layout over Folder View in the past, and the fix, if you will, is to....not use Desktop layout. ie, simply not put files/folders in your Desktop dir.
So I did switch back to 'folder view' after using Desktop view since KDE 4 came out, and have had no ill effects or annoyances fwiw
EDIT: reference found: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=450326

I for the life of me cannot recall the issue I was having at the time that prompted me to find or come across this bug/proposal

I have no clue about it growing or anything. It was messy af when I was using latte dock and multiple layouts per activity, but since that is unmaintained and broken now, my setup is much simpler and tidy(er). But I think I know what you mean. i have a decent number of backups going back to June, and it seems to save every little tweak and change, or something, maybe. I can't tell yet.
I may at some point just recreate my setup from scratch, and compare, since it is nothing overly complex or time consuming

[Bings]

I also have the dual monitor problems. Come back from power saving to find widgets moved, applications on the wrong screen, wallpapers changed back to default. I did have the one black screen also but not any more. I have plasmashell --replace as a keyboard shortcut as a result

[jlittle]

On my work laptop with two extra monitors, one on an HDMI port the other via a USB C "dock", I had no problems for over a year. Then, the dock started failing so it recently got replaced, and now if "screen energy saving" switches of the monitors all windows on the monitor on the dock are moved off it, as they are sometimes after suspending. No other issues, but I don't use folder view or widgets on the desktop. Maybe I'll try a script that records all the windows' positions on suspending, and another that checks their positions on resuming and moves them if they're wrong...

[jlittle]

~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc

IMO that file is a convoluted mess, with what looks like a mixture of serialization methods, that accumulates junk over time. On my desktop at home there's window positions going back to working from home during a lock down in 2021. A few years ago I was having various plasma problems and clearing out that file was a resort I'd use.

[oshunluvr]

So immediately after posting this the behavior changed somewhat - of course, lol. I have not attempted what Claydoh suggested or any other changes.

As of late, I no longer get the black desktop on monitor 1 or the change in Desktop/Folder view. Most of the time, it returns to normal. Occasionally, the windows have all moved to the right monitor regardless of where they were initially. A lesser annoyance to be sure.

The only difference is there have been several updates to mesa and AMD drivers and I have an AMD card. I wonder if that's helping?

[ShadYoung]

I believe this is where XrandR comes to the rescue. This is caused by SDDM. I had all these issues and solved them by adding a line to

/usr/share/sddm/scripts/xsetup

first though, type

xrandr | grep ' connected'

to find the values used by a properly running desktop (IE, as set by System Settings).

The entries most critical are

--output (eg: DP1)
--mode (eg: 1920x1080)
--pos (a single monitor will be 0x0, the "0s" represent the top right corner of the first monitor. A second positioned to the right and level would be 1920x0)
--primary (set to the screen you want the cursor to appear on during login)


so it would be

xrandr --output DP1 --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal --primary --output DP2 --mode 1920x1080 --pos 1920x0 --rotate normal

I am not sure if this is read automatically or not, but you can add a line to /etc/sddm.conf to call it if not.

[XDisplay]
DisplayCommand=/usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup

This should keep things tidy when resuming and when logging in. Widgets will not change. Screens will not move.

[claydoh]

BTW, I read through those links. The news is encouraging. Thanks for that also

I manually 'upgraded' my PC to neon Testing, for Plasma 5.27 beta-ish. Using that for the past 7 days, I have had zero monitor issues at all. They stay put and keep their configurations.
I sort of like the new tiling/snapping feature, too.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Great!

Although I normally only have one monitor attached to my desktop computer, two people, for whom I manage the systems, have multiple - and they have the usual monitor issues with Kubuntu LTS from time to time…

Plasma 5.27 Beta (5.26.90) is also in Debian testing/Bookworm now, and I really, really hope that there will be backports of Plasma 5.27 for Kubuntu 22.04 !
Otherwise I possibly will have to transfer their systems to Debian 12 as they earn their money with those computers…

[claydoh]

I really, really hope that there will be backports of Plasma 5.27 for Kubuntu 22.04 !

at is difficult to say.
Historically, this would be a hard NO for LTS to get any sort of major version bump, even via PPA
However, they have been confusing things in recent years -- LTS used to NOT not see packages in the backports ppa, just the updates one, since 'backports' is new versions backported from a newer release.And LTS would not see these.
But my memories may be fuzzy.

But they have hinted at possibilities of newer bits in LTS. However, this can't happen until 22.10 becomes EOL as this breaks upgrades for those not sticking to the LTS path .
Qt versions are also a stumbling block, since Ubuntu still seem tied to their builds, so this means Kubuntu need to do their own -- and break some Qt things in the process. Same as neon can see.
I have also heard mention of this being a possibility via a separate PPA perhaps. But this of course would just be neon anyway lol.
And neon being run by the original Kubuntu developer team makes things even blurrier.