Bug 179851 - whole KDE4 Desktop is slow after a while
Summary: whole KDE4 Desktop is slow after a while
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 184859
Alias: None
Product: kwin
Classification: Plasma
Component: compositing (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Platform: openSUSE Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: KWin default assignee
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2009-01-06 22:48 UTC by Roman K.
Modified: 2009-12-11 12:21 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:


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Description Roman K. 2009-01-06 22:48:23 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.1.3)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

I have a problem with my KDE4 Desktop. Probably Plasma is not the right application, but it noticeable the most on the Desktop, so I write this here. I don't know it better.

First of all, my Desktop is fast and responsive when I log in and I have hardly any problems with it. But lately, it becomes unresponsive after a while. I notice it this way:
-when I press alt+f2, the runner needs 10-30 seconds to appear 
-when I enter a command of any programm it takes loooong time to start up (but I don't think that it's the programm that takes so long) and krunner shows up the following message: klauncher could not be reached via dbus.  start_service_by_desktop_path:empty
-when I klick on a link in akregator, it takes a long time to start the browser (in my case firefox) and akregator shows a similar message to the above one. even if the browser is already running, it is much faster to copy the link, open a new tab in firefox, paste the link and load the page(also in this case, I don't think that is it the browser that takes so much time)
-when I click on the logout-button of the logout-plasmoid it takes long time until the logout-screen appears
-when I want to open a file in dolphin or from the folderview (for example a *.pdf) it takes much time to start the programm (for example okular)

all this things happen with nearly no use of my cpu, or better said, it is the same as idle, my memory is not full (0,7 of 2 GB) and the harddisk is also not accessed. And how I said before, all these programms normally start up very fast.

so I think there is a problem with a service running in the background.

tell me what i can do to give you more infos
Comment 1 Aaron J. Seigo 2009-01-07 01:13:50 UTC
look at the cpu usage when it goes slow; press ctrl+escape and you'll get a nice process listing there.

also, all the things you describe require d-bus to work, so perhaps d-bus is getting overwhelmed by traffic by some process.

let's start with the process listing, though, and see if that tells us anything.
Comment 2 Roman K. 2009-01-07 23:22:37 UTC
Ok, I played around a bit with it. First, I noticed nothing special in process listing. Only that X used 11% of my cpu, but I thought it was normal. Now I disabled compositing, and all the symptoms are gone, everything is responsive again. And then I enabled compositing again, and it was still working. But after a reboot and a little bit of time it gets slow again.

I have an Intel X3100 graphics card.

What else can I do?
Comment 3 Aaron J. Seigo 2009-01-08 00:07:16 UTC
hm.. don't know. i'm going to move this over to the kwin side, if you could provide a list of all the plugins enabled in the desktop effects control panel that might help them out some.

btw, i have the same GPU in my laptop and i've noticed that it also slows over time if i have compositing enabled. this started happening just recently, however i haven't had time to track down what might be the cause of it (updated drivers, new x.org, something in kwin or one of its plugins, etc)
Comment 4 Roman K. 2009-01-08 19:44:09 UTC
The problem is, that I use the "german version" of KDE. So I can tell you the Plugins how they are called in german. I don't know if this helps, in brackets my translation:
Abmeldung (logout)
Anmeldung (login)
Eltern-Fenster abdunkeln (parent windows ...)
Fenster anzeigen (show windows?)
hineinzoomen (zoom in)
minimieren animation (minimize animation)
schatten (shadow)
transparenz (transparency?)
wabernde fenster (wobbly windows)
arbeitsflächenumschalter
arbeitsflächen-zylinder
desktop-sphäre
schreibtisch-würfel (cube)
vorschaubild in der fensterleiste (preview in windowlist)
arbeitsflächenvergrößerung
lupe

btw. you're doing a great job, i'm looking forward to the first packages of 4.2
Comment 5 Roman K. 2009-01-13 23:43:54 UTC
The Problem still occurs with KDE 4.1.87 with openSUSE packages. And as soon as I disable compositing, it runs fast again (and disabling compositing with alt + shift + f12 is very fast, too). 
Comment 6 Roman K. 2009-03-31 01:50:35 UTC
Still there in 4.2.1
Comment 7 Roman K. 2009-06-22 11:49:48 UTC
this bug still exists in kde 4.2.90 (KDE 4.3 beta2). this absolutely prevents me from using desktop effects in kde. 

the problem doesn't appear if i use compiz as window manager, so this seems to be a kwin bug.
Comment 8 Sebastian Sauer 2009-06-23 00:55:55 UTC
Hi Roman,

what happens if you enable compositing and disable ALL kwin-plugins?
Comment 9 Roman K. 2009-06-29 19:59:08 UTC
Hi, I tested it for one week now. I didn't have any problems. 
The only thing I noticed: with compositing enabled Xorg consumes 25-35% CPU, depending on how many applications are running. when I disable compositing the usage is at about 10%.

I hope this helps
Comment 10 Roman K. 2009-06-30 14:54:31 UTC
OK, today the symptoms came back. perhaps i only was not long enough at the computer last week ;)

i clicked on three links in akregator (to open them with firefox), and the sites just didn't appear. then i disabled compositing and - tada - they appeared. i still have no plugins enabled.
Comment 11 Graham 2009-08-25 17:32:10 UTC
I was also having this problem since upgrading to 4.3. Very similar to what you experience. I log in and it's really fast for about 30 mins, sometimes 10 mins, then everything becomes unresponsive. I played around with the kwin settings, and changed compositing type from opengl, to xrender and also changed the texture filter to Nearest.

Since then, i have not had any problems. I'm running archlinux 64, with an AMD 5600+ and Nvidia 8800GTS. I never had these problems in 4.2 with the same hardware though. So either an xorg upgrade or something has caused it i reckon.
Comment 12 David Chamberlain 2009-09-01 21:53:45 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 13 David Chamberlain 2009-09-01 21:55:52 UTC
This is still happening in 4.3 on Gentoo.
Comment 14 sentinel 2009-09-21 12:03:50 UTC
It looks like GPU is busy doing something.
This is what 'intel_gpu_top' shows when the problem appears even though nothing explains such load:


ring idle:  10%  ring space: 88/126976 (0%)
                          task  percent busy

                   Bypass FIFO: 80%
              Color calculator: 80%
                ................


After 'kwin --replace' everything is ok for a while:

ring idle:  96%  ring space: 2/126976 (0%)
                          task  percent busy

                   Bypass FIFO: 2%
              Color calculator: 2%
                       ..........

Specs:
- Intel(R) 945GM
- KDE 4.3.1
- Xorg 7.4
Comment 15 Roman K. 2009-10-12 12:19:37 UTC
I updated my system to:
 - Xorg 7.4
 - KDE 4.3.2

but the problem is still the same.

One thing I noticed: when everything gets slow, even firefox gets unresponsive (i.e. changing between tabs is very slow) -> disable compositing -> it's fast again
Comment 16 Roman K. 2009-11-03 21:50:44 UTC
Still there with KDE 4.3.3

I also noticed that the GPU seems to be busy (intel_gpu_top show similar values like in comment #14).
Comment 17 Jacek Pawlyta 2009-11-08 18:43:00 UTC
I'm confirming the same symptoms on Fedora 11 64 bit KDE4.3.2
I have noticed that system slows down always when composing is on and I run OpenOffice.
When OpenOffice is not running, KDE works well even for days.
Comment 18 Inso 2009-11-08 22:43:20 UTC
Same problem here, with ati 3650 and fglrx.
Comment 19 Roman K. 2009-11-24 19:27:35 UTC
so, as if there was not enough confusion, today I encountered the problem again - but the other way round. compositing was disabled, I tried to start konsole, it didn't work and I got the little window saying that perhaps klauncher isn't running. I enabled compositing (alt-shift-f12) - konsole opened instantly. so there seems to be a method called that kind of cleans something in the system (memory?) when changing from/to compositing.
Comment 20 Thomas Lübking 2009-11-25 17:43:26 UTC
can you please
a) see whether this is related to the magiclam/minimize effect (enable the paint plugin, open/close -as being most offending?! - kmail from systray and check whether the animation stops or the screen is infinitly repainted.

also see bugs #177985 and #184859
Comment 21 Roman K. 2009-11-25 19:07:09 UTC
ok, what I did:
 - enable paint plugin
 - enable magic-lamp effect
 - close kmail to systray

then I see my desktop blinking like crazy...:)

when I disable magic-lamp plugin, everything is "normal" again.

I hope this helps.
Comment 22 Inso 2009-11-25 19:37:23 UTC
I don't have the magiclamp enabled, and my desktop is going slow after a while... (mostly after some Composite enabled/disabled via DBus)
Comment 23 Thomas Lübking 2009-11-25 20:12:05 UTC
@Roman:
your bug /should/ be fixed by the very recent updates (if the non stopping effect caused the lagginess for you), please check and update the bug (e.g. with 4.4 beta)

@Gael:
This applies to the minimize animation as well, but your problem might be completely unrelated (e.g. a driver bug, leak on initing the GL context)
- Can you confirm high gpu load? (no idea on how to check that for ati, sorry)
- Which process(es) has (have) high cpu load?
- Have you tested the show paint plugin?
- Have you tested the render backend?
Comment 24 Inso 2009-11-30 23:35:10 UTC
@Thomas Lübking :

- I've just tested the paint plugin when x was taking 20% CPU : all the screen was being repainted 20 times per second :/
- I didn't tested the render backend. I'll do...

X stopped to lag when i did alt + shit + F12, and al + shift + F12 again.
Comment 25 Thomas Lübking 2009-12-01 00:04:16 UTC
I assume the crazy repaint stopped by this as well?
This is usually triggered by some fullscreen effect, and might be shadowed by another.

Which effect plugins are you using?
Comment 26 Inso 2009-12-01 08:37:19 UTC
Ok, XRender crached when i used it after 20 or 30 minutes...

That was a bit difficult to enable Composite after this. I had to change an Opengl Option in order to let composite been enabled. After this, i was able to enable composite and reset my Opengl options as before.

So, here is my Kwin configuration file :

[Effect-Cube]
BorderActivate=9
BorderActivateCylinder=9
BorderActivateSphere=9

[Effect-DesktopGrid]
BorderActivate=3

[Effect-PresentWindows]
BorderActivate=9
BorderActivateAll=7
TabBox=false

[ElectricBorders]
Bottom=None
BottomLeft=None
BottomRight=None
Left=None
Right=None
Top=None
TopLeft=None
TopRight=None

[Plugins]
kwin4_effect_boxswitchEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_coverswitchEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_cubeEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_cubeslideEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_desktopgridEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_dialogparentEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_diminactiveEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_dimscreenEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_explosionEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_fadeEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_fadedesktopEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_fallapartEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_flipswitchEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_highlightwindowEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_invertEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_loginEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_logoutEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_lookingglassEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_magiclampEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_magnifierEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_minimizeanimationEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_mousemarkEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_presentwindowsEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_scaleinEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_shadowEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_sharpenEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_sheetEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_showfpsEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_showpaintEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_slideEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_slidebackEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_snaphelperEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_snowEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_taskbarthumbnailEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_thumbnailasideEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_trackmouseEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_translucencyEnabled=true
kwin4_effect_wobblywindowsEnabled=false
kwin4_effect_zoomEnabled=true

[Style]
BorderSize=1
ButtonsOnLeft=MS
ButtonsOnRight=HIA__X
CustomButtonPositions=false
PluginLib=kwin3_aurorae
ShowToolTips=true

[Windows]
ElectricBorderCooldown=350
ElectricBorderDelay=150
ElectricBorders=0

Hope it can help.
Comment 27 Inso 2009-12-01 08:38:37 UTC
Forgot to post my Opengl settings :

[Compositing]
AnimationSpeed=3
Backend=OpenGL
DisableChecks=true
Enabled=true
GLDirect=true
GLMode=TFP
GLTextureFilter=1
GLVSync=true
HiddenPreviews=5
XRenderSmoothScale=false

Again, i hope it can help.
Comment 28 Thomas Lübking 2009-12-01 14:57:49 UTC
> kwin4_effect_minimizeanimationEnabled=true

try disabling the minimize effect first, as it showed the same problem as the magiclamp
(to get a better idea on whether it's the culprit you can use the "kmail from/to systray test", as it reproduced the issue for sure here.
Comment 29 Martin Flöser 2009-12-11 12:21:03 UTC
I think it's the known and fixed bug. If disabling the minimize effect does not help, please reopen.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 184859 ***