Bug 186266

Summary:	zombie processes after login prevent logout later
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	Kai Krakow <kai>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs <unassigned-bugs-null>
Status:	RESOLVED UPSTREAM
Severity:	normal	CC:	echidnaman, kde, trueg
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Gentoo Packages
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Kai Krakow 2009-03-05 21:33:51 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.2.0)
Compiler:          gcc-Version 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2 p1.0.2) 
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Gentoo Packages

Shortly I upgraded to qt-4.5-rc1 and the latest nvidia driver. Since then when logging in to KDE several zombie processes show up directly after login. I suppose this prevents me from logging out (I have to switch to the console and hit ctrl+alt+del to get rid of these).

This happened to KDE 4.1.3 with qt-4.5-rc1 and I ignored it because I ran qt-rc. I now upgraded to KDE 4.2.0 final with qt-4.5 final. The problem persists. I doesn't seem to harm my session, everything is working. But trying to logout, the desktop becomes stuck.

I'm not sure if this is related to the upgrade of my nvidia-driver to 180.29/.35 (tried both) or due to the upgrade to qt-4.5.

It's reproducable on several machines, may they run x86 or amd64. The affected machines are Athlon amd64 and P4-HT x86, both running identical versions of KDE, qt and nvidia-drivers.

Here's my ps grep:

kakra@jupiter ~ $ ps axuw|grep Z
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
kakra     4316  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:01 [krunner_lock] <defunct>
kakra    19055  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [nepomukserver] <defunct>
kakra    19064  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [nepomukservices] <defunct>
kakra    19072  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [kgpg] <defunct>
kakra    19081  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [akonaditray] <defunct>
kakra    19084  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [gpg] <defunct>
kakra    19085  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [kmix] <defunct>
kakra    19087  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   2:00 [skype] <defunct>
kakra    19103  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [kopete] <defunct>
kakra    19135  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    Mar03   0:00 [nvidia-settings] <defunct>
kakra    26452  0.0  0.0   3928   880 pts/0    S+   21:19   0:00 grep --colour=auto Z

Killing the parent of these processes leads to a plain white screen when killing ksmserver with the machine completely hung (no switch to console possible). Only way to do a clean reboot is to not logout but instead switch to console and ctrl+alt+del the system.

Comment 1 Kai Krakow 2009-03-05 21:37:02 UTC

Just a side note: Each of these zombies has another "twin process" running and working, e.g. kopete is up and running. Looks like probably ksmserver forks processes, forgets about them and forks them again during login.

Comment 2 Sebastian Trueg 2009-03-06 09:55:55 UTC

i don't think this is really related to nepomuk. You could try by disabling nepomuk and then logging out again. If the problem persists, it is not nepomuk related. Otherwise I will look further into it.

Comment 3 Martin Droessler 2009-03-08 14:34:13 UTC

I have the same problem, running KDE 4.2.1 on Kubuntu 8.10
Disabling nepomuk-services in the kde-systemsettings don't fix it.

Comment 4 Kai Krakow 2009-03-08 15:40:45 UTC

@Sebastian: I never mentioned nepomuk to be the cause, neither thought of it. I suppose it's a problem in the KDE session spawner.

Comment 5 Kai Krakow 2009-03-08 21:42:21 UTC

Sorry, I swapped versions. 4.1.x was okay, but 4.2.0 and 4.2.1 show this problem.

Comment 6 Sebastian Trueg 2009-03-09 14:32:28 UTC

@Kai: But you set nepomuk as bug component. Unless that is changed people will think it is a nepomuk problem and not look into it.

Comment 7 Kai Krakow 2009-03-09 18:37:13 UTC

@Sebastian: No I didn't, look at:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_activity.cgi?id=186266

Sorry... ;-)

Comment 8 Pino Toscano 2009-03-10 02:43:46 UTC

Bring back to 'kde', then.

I heard (but not an nvidia user, so cannot be any sure about it) this could be a problem of a recent version of nvidia divers.

Comment 9 Jonathan Thomas 2009-03-10 02:45:54 UTC

Yeah, it's a bug in the nvidia drivers. It should be fixed in 180.37. (https://launchpad.net/bugs/335879)