Bug 309047

Summary:	KDE should warn the user if connection to localhost fails
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	Stephan Beyer <stephan.beyer>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs mailing-list <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED
Severity:	minor	CC:	m.wege, nate, perezmeyer
Priority:	NOR
Version:	4.8
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=691406
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Stephan Beyer 2012-10-26 13:53:18 UTC

If the lo loopback interface (needed to connect to 127.0.0.1) is down, KDE is unusable: KDE startup takes 4 minutes and a lot of KDE programs takes minutes to start.
The reason is that those KDE programs want to connect to 127.0.0.1 and if localhost is not available, the connect()s just timeout and everything goes on.

I think that - at least - at the KDE startup one process (kdeinit?) should say "Hey, I am unable to connect to localhost. This should not happen! Please check your system, something is wrong. KDE does not work well under this circumstances."
A warning like this would have saved me a lot of time.

Best
  Stephan

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. ifdown lo   (or, if ifdown is not available, something like ifconfig lo down should do it)
2. look for an activity for the next 10 minutes
3. start KDE
Actual Results:  
KDE startup took 4 minutes and running several KDE programs takes a lot of time. A list of such KDE programs can be found in the Debian bug report (see link).

Expected Results:  
Either KDE should just work[tm] or it should provide a warning that the system is f**ked up because localhost connection fails.

Comment 1 Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer 2012-11-01 23:50:05 UTC

Hi! I'm one of the maintainers of KDE in Debian. While we longtime KDE users know that we need the loopback interface up to run KDE, it is not uncommon to receive bugs stating that KDE is too slow, normally turning that the lo interface is down.

It would be really *awesome* if KDE checked this upon start and showed the user a message warning her that the lo interface is down.

Comment 2 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-11-09 01:07:36 UTC

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been stagnant for a long time. Could you help us out and re-test if the bug is valid in the latest version? I am setting the status to NEEDSINFO pending your response, please change the Status back to REPORTED when you respond.

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

Comment 3 Lisandro Damián Nicanor Pérez Meyer 2018-11-09 13:56:36 UTC

I'm afraid I can not currently test it without breaking stuff. But for what I have seen from my Debian users this seems to still be a valid bug, although nowadays is pretty weird to see non-working loopbacks. But might happen.

Comment 4 Nate Graham 2020-09-28 23:45:32 UTC

No response; assuming it was fixed since then.