How to Clear Crash Notifications--(K)Ubuntu 11.10, KDE 4.8) from System Tray

[StewartM]

Greetings,

I posted this to this thread ("New Users") even though I've been using Ubuntu for over 4.5 years, because I'm new to KDE. I've backported the latest release (4.8 ) via ppa.

My problem is that I have been experiencing Plasma crashes whenever I insert a USB drive. I've added my experience to an existing bug report at bugs.kde.org.

The immediate thing I'd like to know is--after filing the report, how do I clear the crash notifications which get added to the system tray? I'm attaching a screenshot of what I'm seeing. I can hide them and get back the panel space, but after reporting the crash I think I'd like to clear them and I don't see any way to delete them. If anyone can tell me how, I'd appreciate that.



StewartM

[SecretCode]

So these aren't items under the Notifications and Jobs widget, they are all separate icons in the notification area? Odd. I've never seen that. And I've had plenty of crashes.

[StewartM]

So these aren't items under the Notifications and Jobs widget, they are all separate icons in the notification area? Odd. I've never seen that. And I've had plenty of crashes.

Unhidden they take up a lot of panel space on the bottom taskbar--which is why I end up hiding them. If I remove the USB drive and re-insert it, I'll have another crash, and add yet another set of items, which in turn have to be hidden to reclaim the space.

Logging out and starting a new session is the only way I have found to clear them.

If killing the system tray and restarting it from the command line might do the trick, I'll give that a shot, if anyone knows the command. (Using an analogy to GNOME-panel misbehaviors, sometimes I would have to do that).

-StewartM

[Snowhog]

Are you 'unmounting' the USB drive before removing it?

[bra|10n]

Have you checked for coresponding entries in /var/crash?

[SecretCode]

Not sure about killing the system tray alone, but you can restart the whole Plasma Desktop: open a console or Alt-F2 and

kquitapp plasma-desktop
# wait a few seconds
plasma-desktop

In my experience this has no impact on other running apps and preserves all your plasma settings and state ... but you should be careful the first time you try it.

It would be better, of course, to find the reason for the crashes and stop them from happening!

[StewartM]

Are you 'unmounting' the USB drive before removing it?

Yes. Via either the Device Notifier in the System Tray or via Dolphin.

But that does not matter, I get the crash as soon as I plug it in and use Device Notifier to open the files with Dolphin. Ergo;

a) Insert USB drive;

b) Device Notifier asks if I want to open it with Dolphin or to browse pictures with Gwenview;

c) I tell it that I want to use Dolphin;

d) Dolphin opens it and Plasma crashes.

Now, it could be that if I remove Device Notifier from the System Tray (or just ignore it) and mount/open the USB drive via Dolphin directly that I'll not have crashes and hence not have crash notifications I can't clear. I'll try that tonight (the laptop is at my office; I'm typing this from my home Desktop (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS).

(As an probably-unrelated aside, with KDE 4.7 and 4.8 and with GNOME 3.2 USB devices don't power down like they once did under GNOME 2.3 and earlier. Earlier, I would see a message saying that it was safe to remove the device, and the light on the device would power off, signaling that the USB port had been powered down (as it should). But with KDE and with GNOME 3.2, it gives me the "safe to remove" message but the device light flickers).

Googling this says that there is no universally accepted signal from the hardware itself when a device is safe to remove. I thought possibly that this was a difference in the way that the Linux kernel itself handled the action, but that can't be as Ubuntu's Unity powers it down the old way.

Just thought I'd throw that in).

-StewartM

[Snowhog]

Is this happening with any brand of USB drive? What brand of USB drive(s) do you have?

[StewartM]

Have you checked for coresponding entries in /var/crash?

I'll do that, and will post them here when I drop by my office.

Mind you, I did add this to a current bug report, Bug 294759, with my backtrace. Two other users are experiencing the same problem.

-StewartM

[StewartM]

Is this happening with any brand of USB drive? What brand of USB drive(s) do you have?

It's a 2 GB drive, which means its file formating is FAT. I have two other USB drives (a 4 GB FAT, and an 8 GB NTFS). I'll try them when I drop by the office later today.

-StewartM

[bra|10n]

Looking at the thread title I'm presuming you have installed a Kubuntu-desktop on top of Ubuntu...

Now, it could be that if I remove Device Notifier from the System Tray (or just ignore it) and mount/open the USB drive via Dolphin directly that I'll not have crashes and hence not have crash notifications I can't clear. I'll try that tonight (the laptop is at my office; I'm typing this from my home Desktop (Ubuntu 10.04 LTS).

Have you tried this and if so what was the result?
It might be an idea to clear the contents of /var/crash prior to trying this and check /var/crash again for new entries afterwards.

[StewartM]

Oh, and a few more things:

a) I have tried a 2 GB USB drive (FAT), a 4 GB USB drive (FAT), and an 8 GB US drive (NTFS). They call cause the crash, even after a fresh boot.

b) I can avoid the crash altogether by simply not using Device Notifier to open the USB drive with Dolphin, but by opening Dolphin first and opening the drive directly;

c) The output of /var/crash is empty, even after I deliberately cause a crash.

d) Restarting plasma-desktop does not clear the entries.

StewartM



-StewartM

[StewartM]

Here are some outputs that a poster in the KDE forums suggest I post:

I hope I'm doing this right; I'm doing this for each crash entry (qdbus .x) where 'x.x' is the first two numbers of each crash entry in the system tray.

net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.2
/
/KBookmarkManager
/KBookmarkManager/kfilePlaces
/KDebug
/KIO
/KIO/Scheduler
/Layouts
/MainApplication
/Mixers
/Mixers/0
/Mixers/0/alsa_output_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo
/Mixers/1
/Mixers/1/alsa_input_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo
/Mixers/2
/Mixers/2/restore_sink_input_by_media_role_event
/Mixers/3
/MuonNotifier
/NotificationHelper
/StatusNotifierWatcher
/kbuildsycoca
/kded
/modules
/modules/StatusNotifierWatcher
/modules/bluedevil
/modules/device_automounter
/modules/dnssdwatcher
/modules/favicons
/modules/freespacenotifier
/modules/kcookiejar
/modules/keyboard
/modules/khotkeys
/modules/kmixd
/modules/ktimezoned
/modules/kwrited
/modules/nepomuksearchmodule
/modules/networkmanagement
/modules/networkstatus
/modules/notificationhelper
/modules/obexftpdaemon
/modules/powerdevil
/modules/randrmonitor
/modules/remotedirnotify
/modules/solidautoeject
/modules/soliduiserver
/modules/statusnotifierwatcher
/org
/org/freedesktop
/org/freedesktop/PowerManagement
/org/freedesktop/PowerManagement/Inhibit
/org/kde
/org/kde/Solid
/org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement
/org/kde/Solid/PowerManagement/PolicyAgent
/org/kde/networkmanagement
/org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable
/org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/1
/org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/2
/org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/3
/org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/4
/org/kde/networkmanagement/Activatable/5
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1
/org/kubuntu
/org/kubuntu/restrictedInstall

net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.100
/
/KDebug
/MainApplication
/org
/org/kde
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1
/printer_applet
/printer_applet/MainWindow
/printer_applet/MainWindow/actions
/printer_applet/MainWindow/actions/file_close
/printer_applet/MainWindow/actions/refresh

net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.72
/
/KDebug
/MainApplication
/ac
/org
/org/kde
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1
net@stimpy-laptop:~$


net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.77
/
/Actions
/KDebug
/MainApplication
/org
/org/kde
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1


net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.84
/
/KDebug
/MainApplication
/klipper
/org
/org/kde
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1


net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.91
/
/KDebug
/MainApplication
/Mixers
/Mixers/0
/Mixers/0/alsa_output_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo
/Mixers/1
/Mixers/1/alsa_input_pci_0000_00_1b_0_analog_stereo
/Mixers/2
/Mixers/2/restore_sink_input_by_media_role_event
/Mixers/3
/kmix
/kmix/KMixWindow
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/file_quit
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/options_show_menubar
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/options_configure
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/options_configure_keybinding
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/launch_kdesoundsetup
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/hwinfo
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/hide_kmixwindow
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/toggle_channels_currentview
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/select_master
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/save_1
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/save_2
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/save_3
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/save_4
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/load_1
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/load_2
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/load_3
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/load_4
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/increase_volume
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/decrease_volume
/kmix/KMixWindow/actions/mute
/org
/org/kde
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1

net@stimpy-laptop:~$ qdbus :1.8
/
/KDebug
/MainApplication
/org
/org/kde
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem
/org/kde/statusnotifieritem/1

StewartM

[SecretCode]

Odder and odder. It sounds like a bug in Device Notifier.

Do you get any relevant messages in ~/.xsession-errors?

I'm sure where in general a plasmoid should / ought to / might log its errors.