Created attachment 99827 [details] panel progress is stuck The following often happens when I copy large files (e.g. backup an 50 GB virtual machine image to an external USB drive) with dolphin: 1. The copy process begins normally. 2. After some time the panel (and the desktop widget) becomes unresponsive. Trying to create a new folder in dolphin renders the application unresponsive (takes about one minute until the New folder dialog appears). 3. I attached a screenshot where the panel file transfer progress is stuck at about 15 % (because the whole panel including system tray, clock and k-menu) but the file copying operation is still in progress. Other applications and for example krunner and Alt+Tab to switch windows are still working. Hardware: Intel Core i3 M, 8 GB RAM, 64 Bit, 500 GB internal SSD hard drive, external USB 2.0 hard drive, Kernel 4.1.26-21-default
It might not be KDE related. Try this: echo never >/sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag echo 0 > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/khugepaged/defrag taken from https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=112846&p=4
Today, I tried to reproduce the behaviour with some external hard drive on two different USB ports (if this has any influence). But I could not reproduce it. Kernel version: 4.1.36-44-default, openSUSE Leap 42.1, Plasma 5.8.5. I continue to have a watch. @Valerio: Thanks for forum post. A few answers down someone writes that only this one line $ echo madvise > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/defrag should be enough and that "madvise" might have less side effects than "never". One related thing is interesting though: when I used an USB stick instead of the drive and I copied 900 MB to it, I watched in dolphin how the new file size was growing. After it reached to target file size (pretty quickly) the job in the notification area did not stop for another minute or so. Could that be emptying some filesystem cache?
Yes, usually it's due to caching enabled for USB drives.
This is a bit off-topic, but do you know how to configure the system in a way that it is save to remove the USB stick after having copied files to it without prior unmounting (for users who easily forget that)?
Actually not, but a quick search for 'linux disable usb cache' yielded this: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/01/disable-disk-caching-prevent-data-loss/ It might be what you need. Good luck!
Thanks for the hint. The suggested solution works for my internal HDD ("... WriteCache=enabled ...") but an USB stick I tried yielded: sudo hdparm -i /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1: SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0a 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Invalid argument Detailed investigation would be part of another thread.
Thanks for the report Gregor, it looks like you have identified the issue and resolved this. Can you please confirm so we can resolve the bug report, thanks.
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This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 30 days. The bug is now closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information. For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!