Re: [trinity-users] desktop crashing

said Gerhard Zintel: | On Friday 02 January 2015, dep wrote: | > said Michele Calgaro: | > | On 12/28/2014 08:15 AM, dep wrote: | > | > sorry to be such a bother, but as long as i'm bringing things up, | > | > here's one that has been an issue for a couple of years and | > | > survived into R14. | > | > | > | > my desktop crashes, but in such a way as to not even be noticeable | > | > at first. | > | > | > | > i have in lieu of wallpaper xplanet set up as a realtime moon | > | > phase indicator, updating hourly. the way i tell the desktop has | > | > crashed is that it doesn't update -- in this case it last | > | > refreshed at 10:30 a.m. yesterday. i believe that i was probably | > | > editing pictures at that time, though would not swear to it. | > | > | > | > after it crashes, a right click on the desktop does not produce | > | > the expected menu. as it happens, kicker and everything else | had gone south. | > | > | > | > i thought i'd look in the x error log, bit i see that the one i | > | > have, ~/.xsession-errors, is of an unspecified file type and won't | > | > open in a text editor (it reports its size as 500.0 k). | > | > | > | > any idea if there's a log that might let me see what's going on | > | > here and if so what log it might be? bonus points, how i might | > | > restart the desktop without logging out and back in? extra bonus | > | > points, how i might fix it so it doesn't do this anymore? i'm | > | > running some flavor of ubuntu 12.04LTS -- i say some flavor | > | > because when i sought to upgrade a few days ago the ubuntu | > | > upgrader refused, citing third-party apps or a beta version of the | > | > opsys, or something; it didn't specify. i thought i had bog | > | > standard 12.04LTS on the machine but am apparently wrong. | > | | > | sorry for the late reply. The desktop behavior is controlled by the | > | kdesktop process. When your desktop stops updating, from CLI type: | > | ps aux | grep desktop | > | and see if there is something like: | > | username 8414 0.4 0.7 260192 28956 pts/8 Sl 12:50 0:00 | > | kdesktop | > | > avahi 1973 0.0 0.0 32308 1732 ? S 2014 0:01 | > avahi-daemon: running [dep-desktop.local] | > dep 3200 0.0 0.1 252184 17972 ? Sl 2014 | [kdesktop_lock] <defunct> | > dep 29758 0.0 0.0 9388 904 pts/0 S+ 16:12 0:00 grep | > desktop | produce the expected menu. | > | > | If not, kdesktop has crashed. You can type: | > | kdesktop & from CLI to restart it (or alternatively Alt-F2 and then | > | kdesktop). | > | > dep@dep-desktop:~$ kdesktop is already running! | > | > | If this brings everything back in order, please let us know because | > | we need some more advanced testing to understand why and where | > | kdesktop crashed. | > | > fwiw, top reports 3 zombies. | | have you tried to kill the running kdesktop beforehand (not the | defuncts)? I assume it runns under process number 3200. Thus: | $ kill -9 3200 | | and than launch kdesktop again? this worked. i do not know if we learned anything from its having worked, but work it did. thanks!