SUMMARY This bug first appeared with the 6.3.5 update of plasma-desktop on May 8. On startup (the exact timing and trigger seem to vary, sometimes it happens when opening a window, sometimes after about 20 seconds, sometimes only a couple of seconds after the desktop appears), the desktop background and plasmoids will disappear and be replaced by solid black. Other aspects of plasmashell like notifications still work as normal. The panel can also freeze (though it doesn't disappear) seemingly at random. These issues can sometimes be fixed by running "systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell" but often this command takes over a minute to complete and occasionally it never completes. Inevitably though (sometimes after several hours, sometimes minutes, sometimes immediately), the desktop and its associated plasmoids will vanish again. Whenever the desktop bug triggers, the system will become unresponsive for 1-2 seconds. Another bug, which may or may not be related also appeared, related to the lock screen. When resuming a session from the lock screen, one of two things may happen, seemingly determined at random. The more common and benign event is that plasmashell will crash and immediately restart (I have filed automatic reports over this). However, there is a chance for a much more serious error--the screen will go entirely black with an "X" cursor. At this point even going into a tty and restarting the display manager will not work, as a new KDE session will fail to start and dump me back into the display manager. All that can be done is to reboot the machine. STEPS TO REPRODUCE Black desktop bug: 1. Boot computer. 2. Log into KDE Wayland session. 3. Use computer as normal, bug will trigger within one minute, often much less. Lock screen bug: 1. Leave computer unattended until the lock screen appears. 2. Type in password and resume session. OBSERVED RESULT Black desktop bug: Desktop background and all desktop plasmoids go black. Lock screen bug: Either plasmashell will crash and immediately relaunch, displaying a prompt to file an automatic report, or the entire session goes black with an "X" cursor, requiring the computer to be rebooted from the display manager or a tty. EXPECTED RESULT Desktop background and plasmoids should appear normally. SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS Linux/KDE Plasma: Arch KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.24.0 Qt Version: 6.9.0 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Hardware: Gigabyte GA-AB350 Gaming 3 AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 64 GB RAM nVidia RTX 2070 55" LG OLED TV w/ HDR as monitor Kernel: Linux 6.14.6-zen (64-bit) Shell: fish 4.0.2 Display manager: SDDM 0.21.0 Window manager: Kwin (Wayland) Video mode: 4096x2160 @ 60 Hz, HDR enabled Driver: nvidia-open-dkms 570.144 Desktop plasmoids: Condensed Weather at top left Calendar immediately below. Immediately to the left of right-hand column: browser plasmoid open to archlinux.org news Right-hand column: Analog clock and 6 system monitor widgets displaying various sensor readouts.
Do you have multiple screens when this happens?
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1) > Do you have multiple screens when this happens? No. The big TV is my only display.
Thanks. I'm not seeing anything terribly suspicious in the changelog for 6.3.5 (https://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/plasma/6/6.3.4-6.3.5) which jumps out to me as explaining what's going on here. Let's focus on the black desktop issue here. It sounds quite a bit like Bug 494262, but that so far has only affected people with more than one screen, but you only have one. And it also sounds like Bug 490040, but so far that has only affected people on X11, but you're on Wayland.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #3) > Thanks. I'm not seeing anything terribly suspicious in the changelog for > 6.3.5 (https://kde.org/announcements/changelogs/plasma/6/6.3.4-6.3.5) which > jumps out to me as explaining what's going on here. > > Let's focus on the black desktop issue here. It sounds quite a bit like Bug > 494262, but that so far has only affected people with more than one screen, > but you only have one. And it also sounds like Bug 490040, but so far that > has only affected people on X11, but you're on Wayland. I will try an X11 session today and see how that goes.
It would be useful to see journal log output when this happens, are you able to collect such data?
(In reply to Oliver Beard from comment #5) > It would be useful to see journal log output when this happens, are you able > to collect such data? Here is a journalctl output showing lines between Plasma/Wayland initializing and when a lot of DrKonqi messages start showing up: https://pastebin.com/jVYY6KRN I have also noticed that sometimes the plasmashell system crashes when turning on the display even if it hasn't gone to a lock screen. I know older versions of Arch Linux/KDE would "forget" this TV was plugged in after a while and force you to pull and re-insert the HDMI cable. Maybe there is something weird with how this TV presents itself to the GPU compared to a monitor?
It's possible. TVs are very weird these days; they're basically mini-computers, and often try to outsmart the video input sources they're connected to.
Hi - possibly related to that point, is the TV connected via HDMI? If so, is it possible to disable HDMI CEC on the TV and see if that happens to change anything?
(In reply to John Kizer from comment #8) > Hi - possibly related to that point, is the TV connected via HDMI? If so, is > it possible to disable HDMI CEC on the TV and see if that happens to change > anything? It is connected via HDMI (I prefer DisplayPort but this TV doesn't have an option for that). I looked for HDMI CEC in the settings and it is already disabled.
I have logged into an X11 session and I can confirm the desktop blanking bug does not happen under X. Whether the other bugs trigger remains to be seen. P.S. what info do you still need?
Thanks - I'll need to defer to folks with more knowledge on this one.
Continuing to use the X11 sessions, I have had no problems with it (aside from not having Wayland features like HDR, anyway). This is definitely Wayland specific.
Just to check - does this issue occur using a new user account on your device, with no desktop plasmoids or customization settings changed? Thanks!
🐛🧹 ⚠️ This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 15 days. Please provide the requested information, then set the bug status to REPORTED. If there is no change for at least 30 days, it will be automatically closed as RESOLVED WORKSFORME. For more information about our bug triaging procedures, please read https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging. Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!
🐛🧹 This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 30 days. Closing as RESOLVED WORKSFORME.