Bug 179877 - Folder activities not saved accross logins
Summary: Folder activities not saved accross logins
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: plasma4
Classification: Plasma
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: Compiled Sources Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-01-07 04:59 UTC by Fred Wells
Modified: 2009-02-01 02:27 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


Attachments
plasmarc and plasma-appletsrc files (1.21 KB, application/x-compressed-tar)
2009-01-08 15:39 UTC, Fred Wells
Details

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Description Fred Wells 2009-01-07 04:59:07 UTC
Version:            (using Devel)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Compiled sources


KDE 4.1.87 (KDE 4.2 >= 20090101)

After creating new activity and changing activity type to Folder, the new activity is missing from subsequent logins.  Desktop activities, on the other hand, are properly retained.
Comment 1 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-01-07 16:36:34 UTC
I can't reproduce. I added a new folder activity to the default desktop and I restarted plasma, the folder activity is still there.

Can you attach your plasmarc and plasma-appletsrc config files please? Thanks in advance
Comment 2 Aaron J. Seigo 2009-01-07 18:03:22 UTC
I can't reproduce it either. Here are the steps I took:

* Zoom out
* Click Add Activity
* Zoom in on new activity
* Open the Appearance Settings dialog
* Select Folder View as the Activity Type
* press Ok
* kquitapp plasma
* plasma

there it was.

i also tried doing this and then kill -9'ing it shortly after it was set (~15s) and the config saving worked nicely even in those poor conditions (simulating a crash, really).

Fred: if your steps were different than the ones above, please enumerate them as i did there so i can try and reproduce *exactly*.
Comment 3 Fred Wells 2009-01-08 05:21:20 UTC
Actually the behavior is very inconsistently incorrect, depending upon from which activity you logout.  But, the key is logging out and back in rather than restarting plasma manually.  Here are the steps...

* Before login, rm $HOME/.kde/share/config/plasmarc to ensure start with 
  clean default activity config.
* Login
* Zoom out
* Click Add Activity
* Zoom in on new activity
* Open the Appearance Settings dialog
* Select Folder View as the Activity Type
* Press Ok
* Zoom out
* Zoom in on original activity
* Logout
* Login
* Zoom out
* Observe missing activity

Recommend trying various combinations of logging out and back in from different activities - without restarting plasma manually.  This will give you some idea of the other inconsistencies I mentioned.
Comment 4 Fred Wells 2009-01-08 05:53:34 UTC
Obviously, there is some active development on this feature.  After upgrading to the latest KDE 4.1.96 (KDE 4.2 RC1), the behavior has improved somewhat.  Still not quite right, unfortunately. :(

Now, after creating the activity, setting to Folder type, logging out and back in, the new activity exists, but is now the default activity.  Also, it's set back to Desktop instead of Folder and there is no longer a Delete option when you zoom out.

FWIW, my general observation of this feature over the last months has been that it's been very buggy.  While gradually improving, there are still some bugs to be resolved before the final 4.2 release.  Keeping my fingers crossed. :)
Comment 5 Fred Wells 2009-01-08 06:05:06 UTC
Correction. The delete button is only absent because it's the active activity, which I presume is by design and makes sense.
Comment 6 Anne-Marie Mahfouf 2009-01-08 07:59:00 UTC
I cannot reproduce any missing activity, I followed your steps in comment #3. Please reproduce with KDE 4 rc1 and attach plasmarc and plasma-appletsrc before and after missing activity (before meaning after you add the new activity, set it as folderview then zoom out)

You are also saying that you see a different behaviour with logging out and using kquitapp plasma and restarting plasma, is that true?

About the default activity: I can't reproduce either. I keep the default folderview activity I set up. Again, please attach plasma config files before logging out and after logging back in so we can see what is happening. Thanks in advance.
Comment 7 Fred Wells 2009-01-08 15:39:44 UTC
Created attachment 30028 [details]
plasmarc and plasma-appletsrc files

As requested, attached are the plasmarc and plasma-appletsrc.   Note that the original reported behavior has returned - the activity is missing completely after relogin.
Comment 8 Aaron J. Seigo 2009-01-08 17:52:32 UTC
" depending upon from which activity you logout.  But, the key is logging out and back in rather than
restarting plasma manually"

there is actually zero difference between logging out and `kquitapp plasma`. there is no "are we saving session" code in plasma at all, and all application shutdowns are treated equally.

if you are receiving different results between logging out and restarting plasma then either the log out is *killing* rather than existing plasma (which is incorrect behaviour on the part of whatever is doing the logout; e.g. ctrl+alt+backspace is not logging out, but rather killing the session) or plasma is experiencing a crash-on-exit during log out only. that's a possibility, of course, though not something we're seeing in the general case.

"my general observation of this feature over the last months has been that
it's been very buggy."

well, let's see: it's a new feature, and a complex one at that. so it's unsurprising that its going to have bugs at first.

so .. i have tried, again, to replicate the issue and it is working exactly as expected here.

"the original reported behavior has returned"

intermitent behaviour like this says to me that its crash related.

now, looking at the configurations you uploaded (thanks for such a thorough collection of them), at no point is there any record of another activity or a folderview activity that i can see. there is a folderview applet on the desktop activity, but that's it. 

hum, hum, hum. <-- the sound of me thinking.
Comment 9 Aaron J. Seigo 2009-01-08 18:03:05 UTC
            containment->init();
            containment->updateConstraints(Plasma::StartupCompletedConstraint);
            KConfigGroup cg = containment->config();
            containment->save(cg);
            q->requestConfigSync();
            containment->flushPendingConstraintsEvents();

and as can be seen from the above snippet of code, plasma does save the creation of the activity to the config file immediately. so .. dunno what's going on for you.

were the "step2-addactivity" settings taken from after adding the activity, but before logging out or otherwise quitting plasma? if they were not taken while plasma was running, please try adding a new activity, wait 30 seconds, then grab plasma-appletsrc without shutting down plasma.

in any case, this behaviour you are seeing really looks like 4.1 where we assumed a half-working installation (these days we assume that people and/or their distributions will simply break their plasma installation and that we can't trust it) rather than 4.2.
Comment 10 Fred Wells 2009-01-08 20:32:30 UTC
Perhaps you're correct that logout isn't gracefully shutting plasma down.  One interesting observation with this (KDE4Daily/Debian) distribution is that clicking logout causes an immediate logout without the normal KDE Logout prompt.  Not sure why.  Is there a command that I can run to ensure graceful logout?

Anyway, here's an explanation of what I provided.
Step1 - Upon clean, initial login. 
Step2 - Immediately after adding activity.
Step3 - Immediately after setting folder type.
Step4 - Immediately after returning to previous desktop activity.
Step5 - Immediately after logging out and logging back in.

Hope this helps.
Comment 11 Dario Andres 2009-01-10 18:19:14 UTC
May be the incorrect logout is because of bug 179978 (which I'm experiencing too)
Comment 12 Fred Wells 2009-01-11 06:06:28 UTC
Good catch, Dario.  Bug 179978 appears to be the problem here as well.  Switching to another theme apparently prevents ksmserver crash, provides proper logout confirmation and correctly saves the plasma activity config.  Subsequent logins now retains the new folder activity.
Comment 13 Fred Wells 2009-02-01 02:27:00 UTC
This appears to have been caused by the Oxygen theme not gracefully logging out and preventing the plasma updates from occurring.  This appears to have been fixed.  As the original reporter I'm closing the bug report.