Apologies if you've already seen this note which I previously sent to the general Fedora list.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't use Fedora in a conventional way. But it suits me -- or it did until things started misbehaving a few weeks ago. Now I'm finally disgusted enough to write some notes and hope for good advice.
I run F23 with the KDE desktop in what used to be called runlevel 3. I delete rhgb and quiet from /etc/default/grub and start X using startx because I like to see what happens during boot. I hate systems that try to hide what is really happening. Once KDE is running, I use eight desktops with several windows on each one, most of them XTerms with active SSH sessions to other machines. When I leave my desk, I lock the screen (using the default KDE locker as configured with System Settings) but I disable locking based on inactivity. As long as this works, I'm happy.
But it doesn't work reliably for the last few weeks. If I'm away from my desk for more than a few minutes, the lock screen is frozen when I return. I can't unlock. I can switch to a different virtual terminal and kill X, but if I then try to restart X using startx again, it doesn't come up properly. No windows appear, no panels, and neither the keyboard nor the mouse do anything except move the cursor. I have to fall back to rebooting.
When I reboot and startx again, things start up as they should. Except that all my previous windows are on the first desktop, overlapping like crazy. Moving them where they should be is very annoying and tedious. I have to do this at least once per day, sometimes more often. It's not just a matter of rearranging the windows, I also have to re-establish all the SSH sessions. And, of course, any active commands that were running were terminated so I may have some clean-up to do, also.
My machine is completely up-to-date with the latest Fedora. Even the kernel is up-to-date due to the frequent reboots. The F23 was not an upgrade, it was originally installed fresh using the workstation image (but choosing KDE, not Gnome).
Am 16.06.2016 um 03:25 schrieb CLOSE Dave:
But it doesn't work reliably for the last few weeks. If I'm away from my desk for more than a few minutes, the lock screen is frozen when I return. I can't unlock. I can switch to a different virtual terminal and kill X, but if I then try to restart X using startx again, it doesn't come up properly. No windows appear, no panels, and neither the keyboard nor the mouse do anything except move the cursor. I have to fall back to rebooting
pretty sure there are still processes running from the old session, that happens sometimes even after a clean logoff which is the excuse for the new idiotic default of systemd which hopefully never makes it into distributions https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4lebbr/systemd_to_kill_all_user_proc...
just type "ps aux | grep username" and kill all remaining process as well as file bugs for them
anyways - it's nonsense to boot into runlevel 3 and startx without a display manager - *hopefully* you don't at least call "startx" as root then
I've not seen locking problems in a long time. One of the very first things I do after creating a new user login is to disable screen locking. When I need my screen locked, I shut the machine down.
IMO, Fedora is the simplest way to have the most recent KDE release, and thus an unlikely place to experience what I consider a "stable" KDE environment. I've found KDE less than stable most of the period since v4.0 replaced v3.5.
F23 was released with Plasma 5.4.2. Currently in updates is 5.6.4. That difference is a double-edged sword, bringing in needed fixes, along with new bugs.
You might want to give TDE a try, for stability along with a familiar feel: https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/FedoraInstall#For_Fedora_23_.28R14.0.3.29
On Wednesday 15 Jun 2016 11:15:30 PM Felix Miata wrote:
I've not seen locking problems in a long time. One of the very first things I do after creating a new user login is to disable screen locking. When I need my screen locked, I shut the machine down.
I am not surprised. Screen lock is fundamentally broken in KDE/Plasma. Screen should be locked based on power state of a device and not solely based on time triggers. I want my screen to lock say when screen goes off which indicates that I have been away from my system for a considerable amount of time.
It doesn't work like that in Plasma. Plasma will only lock your system at a minute or 2 or 5 minute or whatever you set it to. These don't always coincide with your power options.
Android allows triggering of screen lock when power button is pressed or any time screen goes off. My wild guess is that Ubuntu's screen locker is also triggered when screen goes off (I haven't tried it in a long time). According to Kwin dev, X11 has no such API and Android is SurfaceFlinger.
Maybe we will have a better screen locker in Wayland.
On 15/06/16 19:25, CLOSE Dave wrote:
Apologies if you've already seen this note which I previously sent to the general Fedora list.
I'll be the first to admit that I don't use Fedora in a conventional way. But it suits me -- or it did until things started misbehaving a few weeks ago. Now I'm finally disgusted enough to write some notes and hope for good advice.
I run F23 with the KDE desktop in what used to be called runlevel 3. I delete rhgb and quiet from /etc/default/grub and start X using startx because I like to see what happens during boot. I hate systems that try to hide what is really happening. Once KDE is running, I use eight desktops with several windows on each one, most of them XTerms with active SSH sessions to other machines. When I leave my desk, I lock the screen (using the default KDE locker as configured with System Settings) but I disable locking based on inactivity. As long as this works, I'm happy.
But it doesn't work reliably for the last few weeks. If I'm away from my desk for more than a few minutes, the lock screen is frozen when I return. I can't unlock. I can switch to a different virtual terminal and kill X, but if I then try to restart X using startx again, it doesn't come up properly. No windows appear, no panels, and neither the keyboard nor the mouse do anything except move the cursor. I have to fall back to rebooting.
When I reboot and startx again, things start up as they should. Except that all my previous windows are on the first desktop, overlapping like crazy. Moving them where they should be is very annoying and tedious. I have to do this at least once per day, sometimes more often. It's not just a matter of rearranging the windows, I also have to re-establish all the SSH sessions. And, of course, any active commands that were running were terminated so I may have some clean-up to do, also.
My machine is completely up-to-date with the latest Fedora. Even the kernel is up-to-date due to the frequent reboots. The F23 was not an upgrade, it was originally installed fresh using the workstation image (but choosing KDE, not Gnome).
What are you running for video card and driver?
I am running KDE with F23 and I use multiple sessions but I do use sddm. What I found when I went to the closed source driver was the Xserver was polling the video card and would sometimes reset the card. I created an Xorg.conf file and solved the problems for sessions dying.
Now I just have to debug the corrupted characters from time to time with the pop-ups and sddm screen.
Robin
I wrote:
I'll be the first to admit that I don't use Fedora in a conventional way. But it suits me -- or it did until things started misbehaving a few weeks ago. Now I'm finally disgusted enough to write some notes and hope for good advice.
I run F23 with the KDE desktop in what used to be called runlevel 3. I delete rhgb and quiet from /etc/default/grub and start X using startx because I like to see what happens during boot. I hate systems that try to hide what is really happening. Once KDE is running, I use eight desktops with several windows on each one, most of them XTerms with active SSH sessions to other machines. When I leave my desk, I lock the screen (using the default KDE locker as configured with System Settings) but I disable locking based on inactivity. As long as this works, I'm happy.
But it doesn't work reliably for the last few weeks. If I'm away from my desk for more than a few minutes, the lock screen is frozen when I return. I can't unlock. I can switch to a different virtual terminal and kill X, but if I then try to restart X using startx again, it doesn't come up properly. No windows appear, no panels, and neither the keyboard nor the mouse do anything except move the cursor. I have to fall back to rebooting.
When I reboot and startx again, things start up as they should. Except that all my previous windows are on the first desktop, overlapping like crazy. Moving them where they should be is very annoying and tedious. I have to do this at least once per day, sometimes more often. It's not just a matter of rearranging the windows, I also have to re-establish all the SSH sessions. And, of course, any active commands that were running were terminated so I may have some clean-up to do, also.
My machine is completely up-to-date with the latest Fedora. Even the kernel is up-to-date due to the frequent reboots. The F23 was not an upgrade, it was originally installed fresh using the workstation image (but choosing KDE, not Gnome).
Just to follow-up. Since about Tuesday this week, the problem has gone away. I presume it was due to some update installed automatically.
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CLOSE Dave -
Felix Miata -
Reindl Harald -
Robin Laing -
Sudhir Khanger