Latest Update Breaks KDE

[stormreaver]

System: Kubuntu 7.04

I have no idea how to reproduce this, but I thought I would report it anyway. When I noticed the update icon in my system tray, I ran through the normal update procedure. I noticed that large portions of KDE were being updated, and a new kernel was being updated. This is no problem, and happens regularly, so I proceeded with the upgrade. No errors were reported, and everything seemed to be fine. Since I was working, I decided to hold off rebooting until later (which ended up being three or four hours later).

The reboot proceeded normally, and I logged in via kdm as usual. This is where things started going wrong. KDE went through its normal startup without any errors, and my entire previous session was restored. It just seemed to take a few seconds longer than usual for the session restore to start. When I selected an empty virtual desktop, I noted that all of my desktop icons were gone. The last program to be restored happened to be Konsole, which had keyboard focus. I pressed alt-f2 to bring up the run dialog, but all I got was the binary keyboard code showing in Konsole.

I then tried to launch "Run Command..." from the K Menu, but nothing happened. I tried right-clicking on the K Menu, and Kicker froze. It didn't crash; it just froze. None of the KDE keyboard shortcuts worked (Control-Escape wouldn't bring up the ksysguard, for example). Right-clicking on an empty desktop did nothing. Many KDE programs will not start, though one will from time to time. Running strace on Konqueror shows it stalling waiting for a response having to do with kded. Here are the last several lines of strace before it stalls indefinitely:

-------------------------------
access("/usr/share/apps/konqueror/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/actions/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde-profile/default/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/actions/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/actions/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde-profile/default/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/actions/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/actions/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/apps/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/apps/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/devices/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/devices/folder.png", R_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
access("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/filesystems/folder.png", R_OK) = 0
open("/usr/share/icons/crystalsvg/16x16/filesystems/folder.png", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 11
fstat64(11, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=594, ...}) = 0
fstat64(11, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=594, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb5a38000
_llseek(11, 0, [0], SEEK_SET) = 0
read(11, "\211PNG\r\n\32\n\0\0\0\rIHDR\0\0\0\20\0\0\0\20\10\6\0\0"..., 4096) = 594
close(11) = 0
munmap(0xb5a38000, 4096) = 0
write(10, "closed(779f1a87):\nopened(779f1a8"..., 64) = 64
write(8, "\1\2\1\0\232\0\0\0G\0\0\0", 12) = 12
write(8, "\0\0\0\20konqueror-12102\0\0\0\0\5kded\0\0\0\0"..., 67) = 67
write(8, "\0\0\0\10\0h\0t\0t\0p\377\377\377\377\377\377\377\377\0"..., 87) = 87
-------------------------------

I just now noticed all of the missing icon files, so I checked adept_manager. It says that kde-core is uninstalled. When I get home from work, I'll try reinstalling it and seeing if that helps.

[stormreaver (kubuntu-tonyobryan)]

Installing the kde meta package, which installed kde-core and a few others, had no effect.

[stormreaver (kubuntu-tonyobryan)]

I have more information. I found that there were multiple copies of kded running (in this case, four copies). The first copy showed in "ps aux" as:

kded [kdeinit]

The other three showed as:

kded [kdeinit] --new-startup
kded [kdeinit] --new-startup
kded [kdeinit] --new-startup

I killed the three with --new-startup, and my desktop icons immediately returned, most KDE applications started working again (such as Konqueror and KMail), and the KDE shortcut keys immediately started working again. Kaffeine won't work for some reason, but most of my desktop functionality is back.

[stormreaver (kubuntu-tonyobryan)]

I cannot write to my CDRW, mount NFS shares, view my /media folder via Konqeuror, and do a host of other items since the update. KDE boots with multiple copies of kded, and much of my desktop acts very bizarre overall (too many things to list here).

I rebooted and reverted back to the prior kernel (2.6.20-15-generic), and everything is fixed. It seems that the 2.6.20-16-generic kernel was responsible for turning my system into a big mess.

[pol (xtekhne)]

Today i had to kill a process of the same kind:
    kded [kdeinit] --new-startup
that was using 98% of the cpu time and overheating my laptop.

I am using kubuntu gutsy, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic

I wasn't able to trace back that process to its cause.

--
Pol

[Adam Niedling (krychek)]

I'm closing this bug as the cause of it was found and the original reported did not update this report whether this bug occurs on a later kernel or not.

[stormreaver (kubuntu-tonyobryan)]

Subsequent systems upgrades have not caused any additional problems. The kded daemon has always occasionally gone berserk on all of my systems, but the particular problem I reported here has not recurred with newer kernel upgrades.

[Michael Nagel (nailor)]

can i close this bug report, then?

[stormreaver (kubuntu-tonyobryan)]

Yes, thanks.