Bug 337164

Summary:	plasmashell does not re-launch itself when killed by KWin due to a hanging window
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Harald Sitter <sitter>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Sebastian Kügler <sebas>
Status:	CONFIRMED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	aleixpol, bshah, justin.zobel, kde, nate, notmart
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	master
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	unspecified
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments:	screenshot

Description Harald Sitter 2014-07-07 08:17:23 UTC

when for example the download-widgets window causes a deadlock in plasmashell (see bug #337077) and the user tries to close the apparently unresponsive window via the window decoration kwin will detect that the application doesn't actually quit (what with it being in a deadlock) and offers to kill it. for plasmashell this however has the side effect that the user is then left without a discoverable way to manually recover (logout/shutdown) and gets to sit in front of a black background, crying (most likely).

(relevant invalid kwin bug #337163)

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
Plasmashell should restart itself when killed by kwin. In fact perhaps one should think about always forcing a restart of the shell when killed by means other than an actual sig quit?

Comment 1 Harald Sitter 2014-07-07 08:20:00 UTC

Created attachment 87608 [details]
screenshot

Comment 2 Marco Martin 2014-07-08 12:01:42 UTC

perhaps the behavior is correct, but in case it's plasmashell (and only plasmashell) it should restart it right after haviung killed it?

Comment 3 Harald Sitter 2014-07-08 12:29:59 UTC

Please note the kwin bug report. They don't want to support client specific workarounds which seems reasonable to me. Generally speaking I can totally see this as a plasma specific problem, much like pulseaudio, plasma probably should restart just about always unless instructed not do so or having already done so a number of times in the immediate past (i.e. to prevent getting stuck in a restart loop).

Simplest approach to this probably would be a kded module that watches plasmashell and klaunches it when it disappears.

(FTR: the way pulseaudio achieves respawns is by having libpulse talk to the daemon and if there is none it will try to launch one, not sure that is a viable scheme for plasma though)

Comment 4 Justin Zobel 2020-10-25 08:58:13 UTC

Harald is this behavior still present in current versions?

Comment 5 Harald Sitter 2020-10-30 10:49:07 UTC

Yep.

- open wallpaper config
- killall -STOP plasmashell # to simulate a deadlock
- click close on wallpaper config
- kwin offers to kill plasmashell and leave you stranded

Comment 6 Justin Zobel 2020-10-31 00:01:23 UTC

Confirmed on KDE Neon User Edition. I'm not even prompted to kill plasmashell, it just kills everything and I'm left with my konsole.

Comment 7 Nate Graham 2021-08-31 19:29:28 UTC

The real problem here seems to be that Plasma does not automatically restart itself when this happens, as it does in other cases.