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App launcher widget freezes after 4.6 upgrade

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scotto74
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Since upgrading to 4.6 (kubuntu 10.10), the app launcher widget in the panel (i.e. the "K" menu) seems to freeze after popping up for about 20 seconds.

Hovering over items doesn't highlight them as normal, and clicking an item does nothing during this time (although after the menu evenually unfreezes, the clicked app does still launch...so it is buffering the mouse click).

In fact it may be that the entire panel is frozen, as popping up the launcher then trying to switch between open apps by clicking them in the panel also does nothing during this time.

It only seems to occur when the launcher menu pops open. Once it's open and becomes responsive again, everything is fine until the next time the menu is opened.

Previously did not experience this with 4.5.x.

Does anyone else have this issue after upgrading to 4.6?
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google01103
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if you login as a different user does the problem happen? if not you have a bad config file


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scotto74
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Alas, I've just tried with a fresh new user account and the problem is the same there (so it's not a ~/.kde/ issue.

Thanks for the suggestion though.
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google01103
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not a solution but an alternative launcher would be the Lancelot widget/plasmoid http://userbase.kde.org/Lancelot, should be in the plasma-addons package


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bcooksley
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If you can, try switching to a virtual terminal and using tail to monitor activity to ~/.xsession-errors before, during and immediately after the unfreeze.

Also, can you associate these freezes with any tab in particular?


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scotto74
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Thanks for the ~/.xsession-errors tip.

There are a couple of entries in there that look suspicious (although I'm not sure if all of them relate to the launcher, some may be as a result of switching between vt's):

QMetaObject::invokeMethod: No such method LauncherApplet::toolTipHidden()
klauncher(3311)/kio (KLauncher): SlavePool: No communication with slave.
QGraphicsLinearLayout::removeAt: invalid index 1
QColor::setNamedColor: Unknown color name '4279505682'
QTextHtmlParser::applyAttributes: Unknown color name '4279505682'

It doesn't seem to be any particular tab of the launcher (they're all affected).

In the meantime, I've tried switching to Lancelot, and I have to say that I like it...so I might just stick with it. But for the benefit of anyone else that might have similar problems with Kickoff, I'd still be interested in getting to the bottom of what is causing this issue.

Thanks again.
anderlia
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I have exactly the same issue on my T400 with KDE 4.6.0. I have the following message in ~/.xsession-errors every time the K Application Launcher applet freezes > "klauncher(1663)/kio (KLauncher): SlavePool: No communication with slave."
Also this problem appears after some while: after a clean reboot, the K Application Launcher works fine and then freexes some time later (in the range of an hour).

The Lancelot Launcher works fine. This could be a temporary yet helpful fix.

Do you know if there is any bug open for this issue?
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bcooksley
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The "no communication with slave" messages are likely unrelated. Do you try to do any particular activity (hover over a certain item, right click, launch a particular item, etc) which causes it to freeze?


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anderlia
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@bcooksley: Not really. For instance, I open KLauncher, which displays the correct favorites applications as usual, but then if I hover over let us say <computer> or <application> tab, or if I try to select a given application among my favorites ones, nothing happens: KLauncher is frozen. I have also noticed that a few widgets of my desktop are no longer refreshed when Klauncher is frozen. I cannot switch desktop either, but I can still focus on some open window and interact with them. I have to wait some time (about 5 minutes) before the desktop resumes its correct behaviour. If I re-open Klauncher, the problem re-appear exactly as before. Also, this problem is 100% reproducible so far, even after upgrading to KDE 4.6.1: I could not complete one Ksession without Klauncher hanging, meaning I had to shut down my session from the terminal. There is no issue if I use Lancelot as application launcher. Last, this problem does not appear immediately: it takes a few tens of mn (e.g., an hour) for the first hanging to appear. If you want me to open a bug or make some trace, please let me know.

Last edited by anderlia on Mon Mar 14, 2011 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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einar
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Please check (via terminal, perhaps) the CPU usage during the freeze with a program like "top". You may also want to check the disk activity in a similar fashion, with "iotop".


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anderlia
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As advised, I checked the top most active processes during a freeze of K Launcher, and the most active one is kwin (around 20% of CPU load). Typically (I mean during normal operation), kwin only ranks 3 or 4, far behind Xorg and plasma processes. Hope this piece of information will be helpful.
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einar
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You should also check the I/O load with "iotop" (it's available in most distros). I get hangs every now and then on my netbook exactly due to I/O (in my case because my own drive is not that good).


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bcooksley
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Can you reproduce under a new user? Seems like it is waiting for D-Bus or network...


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anderlia
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Indeed you are right, it is very much related to my Samba network drive entering some kind of deep sleep mode (from 11h00 pm till 8h00 am). I did not realize the correlation beforehand.
I made the following test to confirm the bug:
open K Launcher > works fine; Trigger my NAS to go into deep sleep mode manually > K launcher freezes; Switch my NAS back to operational mode > K launcher unfreezes and resumes operation correctly.

My NAS is mounted as follows in fstab:
*//192.168.1.2/Public /media/LaCie-d2/Public cifs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0
*//192.168.1.2/Share /media/LaCie-d2/Share cifs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777 0 0

Hope this will help.
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bcooksley
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It is likely that this is the problem. Removing shortcuts you have placed to the external drives in the various categories of the launcher may fix this.


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