When I click on the Actives button on the panel or from the peanut, I get a black box appear above the panel and then KDE locks up for about a minute. After that the box will disappear but there is no way to configure the activities.

I'm pretty sure I did something wrong. I was trying to get specific activities to run based on which monitor I have plugged into my laptop. I at one point deleted the activitymanagerrc file. Restoring the backup copy didn't fix the situation.

What can I do now to fix it?

Thanks in advance.

Which KDE SC version do you use?

I'm on kubuntu 11.10


kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.7.4
KDE Development Platform: 4.7.4 (4.7.4)
kde4-config: 1.0

Ok. Deleting activitymanagerrc is not a good idea because there are data about activity in other places (plasma-desktop-appletsrc, Nepomuk's database). If you delete activitymanagerrc you need to remove the entries about all activities from those other places. Deleting plasma-desktop-appletsrc will reset your desktop to Plasma's default state. Deleting the nepomuk database will make it re-index all directories it is configured to index and, if you use kmail2, will re-index all your e-mails too as far as I know. You also need at least one activity to use Plasma Desktop.

I am not sure if it is possible to associate an activity to a monitor.

Do you use Plasma NM? There is a fix for a desktop freeze in the latest version: http://lamarque-lvs.blogspot.com.br/201 ... m-090.html

There is a link for Kubuntu Plasma NM packages in the link above.

I have had a few activity manager crashes the past week as well, in my case on 4.8.1 from kubuntu backports (oneiric). As a matter of fact it just crashed 5 minutes ago
Anyway, is there any way I can install debug symbols for this, can't get a decent backtrace for a bug report apparently.

I do have a feeling this problem is related to the one discussed in this thread. Laggy plasma desktop and so on as well.

Debug symbols for Soprano, Nepomuk and kdelibs should be sufficient to generate a good backtrace.