[KDE4] konsole-kde4 goes black and eats my cursor

[Alexander Rødseth]

Binary package hint: konsole-kde4

I start up konsole-kde4 and all is well - everything works as expected.

However, after writing a command or two, sometimes the window goes completely black and my mouse-cursor disappears.
It doesn't seem like the sudden change of window-content is connected to commands I type (like cd and ls - nothing strange).

I can still move the window around and resize the window. The mouse-cursor still works correctly everywhere except when moving it over that window.

I have turned off the scrollbar, tab-bar and menubar in the options, and run konsole-kde4 as full screen (it covers the entire virtual desktop). I use Fvwm.

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

This is on Ubuntu Hardy with 2.6.24-4-generic

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

I think I've found the reason for this. As stated, I use Fvwm. I don't use any of the supporting libraries of KDE if I don't have to.
So, when I run konsole-kde4 and presses "tab" a few times, it wants to play a sound, but needs to start the whole sound-KDE-library-monster first.
I think this is what causes the terminal to go entirely black and look like it's hanging.

[Ralph Janke (txwikinger)]

Thanks for reporting this problem.

According to comment #2 https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/kdebase-kde4/+bug/186172/comments/2 it looks to me that this is not a general issue.

I have also not been able to reproduce this problem.

Could you please either confirm that this report can be closed, or provide complete steps to reproduce this problem.

Thanks

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

Steps to reproduce:
1. Start FVWM2 or some other non-KDE windowmanager, preferably not Xfce or Gnome, since I think they start their own sound-systems
2. Start the konsole-application belonging to kde4 (/usr/lib/kde4/bin/konsole)
3. type "cd", space, tab
4. Now, konsole wishes to play a "beep", but it seems like it needs to start the sound-system, and this takes some time. The result is that the konsole becomes completely unresponsive for a while.
5. In my case, the entire konsole-window also went black, since I switched to another desktop and back, and konsole was busy with other things than redrawing the window.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

Please install kdebase-dbg-kde4, start konsole from an xterm and attach the output to this report. I can't reproduce this issue, so I suppose a dependency is missing.

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

kdebase-dbg-kde4 is already installed, and I don't think this is a dependency issue. This is not a crash, but a bug in konsole. Did you try the steps to reproduce?

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

I think this is a valid and general issue. Have someone tried the steps to reproduce this?

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

Anybody tried to reproduce this? I don't think it should be marked as incomplete.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

* Ralph did before you posted the step-by-step howto
* I did before and after and now again

You still didn't post the output konsole generates when started from xterm, which makes it perfectly reasonable to be marked incomplete IMHO.

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

After the step-by-step howto, there should be enough information to reproduce this and, IMO, not to be marked as incomplete. Anyways, here is the output when I reproduced the problem on another computer, this time using Xterm under Gnome:

~$ /usr/lib/kde4/bin/konsole
~$ konsole(10833) KToolInvocation::klauncher: klauncher not running... launching kdeinit
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/kde4/lib/kde4/libexec/klauncher
kdeinit4: Launched KLauncher, pid = 10908 result = 0
kdeinit4: opened connection to :0.0
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/kde4/bin/kded4
kdeinit4: Launched KDED, pid = 10909 result = 0
kdeinit4: Got EXT_EXEC '/usr/lib/kde4/bin/kbuildsycoca4' from launcher.
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/kde4/bin/kbuildsycoca4
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kdeinit4: PID 10916 terminated.
kdeinit4: Got EXEC_NEW 'kconf_update' from launcher.
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/kde4/lib/kde4/libexec/kconf_update
kdeinit4: PID 10917 terminated.
kdeinit4: PID 10909 terminated.
kdeinit4: Got EXT_EXEC '/usr/lib/kde4/bin/knotify4' from launcher.
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/kde4/bin/knotify4
kdeinit4: PID 10918 terminated.
konsole(10833): Couldn't start knotify from knotify4.desktop: "KDEInit could not launch '/usr/lib/kde4/bin/knotify4'."

knotify(10919) Phonon::KdePlatformPlugin::createBackend: using backend: "Xine"
konsole(10833) Konsole::SessionManager::setDefaultProfile: setting default session type to "Shell.profile"

~$

---

All i did in Konsole was to type in "cd d", press Tab and then notice that it takes a long time to respond. During the time it takes for konsole to respond again, it's completely unresponsive. I have two directories that starts with "d".

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

Oh, and this has never been a problem with konsole for KDE3, nor gnome-terminal when running under a different windowmanager. This is a KDE4-specific bug.

[Harald Sitter (apachelogger)]

I am setting the status to new, since it is possible that loading phonon blocks the application, still someone should try to get this confirmed for real. Also changing the Importance to Wishlist, since this a usability issue. Ralph, please report this upstream (though I think they can't do much about it).

[Ralph Janke (txwikinger)]

Alexander,

The KDE developers want you to perform the following:

Hello,

Can you run Konsole from gdb (in another terminal such as Xterm) and interrupt it during this unresponsive period to find out what it is up to? If debugging packages are available for KDE 4 and Qt 4 it will help to install them.

gdb konsole
(gdb) set args --nofork
(gdb) run

< perform some activity until Konsole becomes unresponsive >

(Press Ctrl+C in the Xterm to interrupt Konsole)

(gdb) backtrace

Thanks

[Ralph Janke (txwikinger)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[yangcheng (yangzju)]

I am face the same problem here.
whenever i type a tab or space, the cursor goes back 2 spaces, and seems hanging far behind

[vjrj (vjrj)]

Same problem here when using gnome+compiz.
No problem with gnome without compiz.

[Alexander Rødseth (alexanro)]

I didn't have the opportunity to test this, sorry for the delay and for not providing the gdb output.

This is no longer an issue for me and it's has been a while since the bug was created. I think you can just close it.

Thank you (and sorry about the snappy tone, I'm older and wiser now). :)