Desktop "stickiness" under Fedora-16/KDE

[Rick Sewill]

On Saturday, December 31, 2011 07:36:56 AM Timothy Murphy wrote:
> My desktop siezes up every hour or so;
> I can continue in the current desktop,
> but cannot change to another desktop
> or go to another application by clicking on an icon in the panel.
> 
> The problem cures itself in 20-30 seconds,
> so it is not life-threatening.
> 
> I killall-ed upowerd, but that didn't do the trick.
> There is nothing untoward in /var/log/messages.
> 
> The problem could be to do with Firefox or KDE or Fedora;
> I'm not sure which.
> 
> I've seen a few comments on this,
> but has anyone found a cure?

I'm still on Fedora 15, not sure when I will upgrade.
I run KDE, kontact/kmail, pidgin, alternate between Firefox and google-chrome.

My reason for not upgrading, so far, my desktop has only 1 G of ram.

Even on Fedora 15, if I try to run Firefox + kmail + all of the friends,
(the friends being Nepomuk, Akonadi, and what they call in), 
my system starts to swap.  

Depending what I'm doing in Firefox, Firefox and it's friend, 
the plugin-container, take lots of ram.

I will upgrade to Fedora 16 eventually, either when I can afford a new desktop,
or when I work up the courage to install on this desktop.

If possible, can you see the disk light on your desktop?
Is the disk light flashing when your desktop freezes up?

People may suggest reducing the memory footprint of Firefox.
I did a google search, found things to change in about:config,
disabled ram caching -- don't remember the change so do your own search,
disabled a number of Firefox plugins, all to control the memory footprint.

I actually created 2 scripts, use them at your own risk.
If my scripts are "bad" or "wrong", hopefully someone will tell us.

One script stops a number of services, including kontact (kmail).
The other script starts those services.
I always stop services before using Firefox or google-chrome.

rsewill at rsewill:~ <3:3> $ more bin/stopmemoryhogs 
#!/bin/bash

declare -i sleeptime=30

# qdbus im.pidgin.purple.PurpleService /im/pidgin/purple/PurpleObject 
PurpleCoreQuit

qdbus org.kde.kontact /MainApplication quit

# qdbus org.kde.kopete /MainApplication quit

sleep ${sleeptime}

declare printerapp=$(qdbus | grep printer-applet)
[ ! -z "${printerapp}" ] && qdbus ${printerapp} /MainApplication quit

akonadictl stop
# qdbus org.kde.kmix /MainApplication quit

sleep ${sleeptime}

qdbus org.kde.NepomukServer /nepomukserver quit

qdbus org.kde.korgac /MainApplication quit

rsewill at rsewill:~ <3:4> $ more bin/startmemoryhogs 
#!/bin/bash

declare -i sleeptime=30

nepomukserver &
# pidgin -f &

sleep ${sleeptime}

akonadictl start
# kopete&
# kmix&

sleep ${sleeptime}

kontact&