Bug 505151 - Taskbar freezes randomly - user home directory is mounted NFS
Summary: Taskbar freezes randomly - user home directory is mounted NFS
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG
Alias: None
Product: plasmashell
Classification: Plasma
Component: Panel (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.3.5
Platform: Fedora RPMs Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: 1.0
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-06-03 07:15 UTC by Attila
Modified: 2025-08-06 07:12 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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


Attachments
Log from journalctl (1.96 KB, text/plain)
2025-08-04 14:34 UTC, Attila
Details

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Description Attila 2025-06-03 07:15:27 UTC
SUMMARY

The taskbar freezes randomly every day under X11.  Additionally I can observe, that the system clock in the lower right corner doesn't update the seconds. It takes more than 30 seconds to recover automatically. During this time, the taskbar does not respond. I can not say why and how the taskbar freezes, it just happens, so I have no steps to describe how to reproduce it.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. 
2. 
3. 


SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Fedora Linux 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0
Qt Version: 6.9.0
Kernel Version: 6.14.8-300.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 20 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700T
Memory: 15.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Intel® UHD Graphics 770
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 11T3
System Version: ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3
Comment 1 TraceyC 2025-06-03 22:43:58 UTC
Thanks for the bug report. Can I ask you for some additional information?

- Does the freeze happen in a Wayland session at all?
- Can you test with a new user with the default panel setup and see if the freeze happens with that user as well? There could be some configuration cruft lying around.

Thanks.
Comment 2 Bug Janitor Service 2025-06-18 03:47:51 UTC
🐛🧹 ⚠️ 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!
Comment 3 Attila 2025-06-22 14:32:03 UTC
Sorry for the late reply.
One day after I reported this bugs, it was gone for a week. I was happy and thought it was an update for Fedora which fixed this bug.
Unfortunately the bug was suddenly back. At the moment I have no clue why, how and when the taskbar freezes.

Here what I did so far. Before I reported this bug I reinstalled Fedora and deleted some folders from the user directory like .cache, .config, .kde, .local. I guess this is something simular to "create a new user", hopefully. I couldn't find any useful information in "/var/log/messages".

Some additional information.
- The user directory is mounted as NFS.
- The setting for the taskbar is "Icons-and-Text Task Manager".
- The users are still on X11. I can't tell them to login to Wayland, because Wayland can't restore the session. It's not an option for the users. Sorry for that.
-  When the error occurs and Dolphin is open, I can navigate through the folders in Dolphin. So I can exclude a network problem. It only affects the taskbar.

Is there any way to monitor and log this bug. I would like to provide more information to help the developers.
Comment 4 TraceyC 2025-06-23 20:22:45 UTC
The user directory being mounted as NFS is probably relevant here. Any network delays, even transient and minor, could translate to the system waiting on a cache or config value to be read.

What I would recommend is to query system logs on a machine for a minute before and after a freeze. Adjust the dates and time in this command to gather that.

journalctl --since "2025-06-10 15:10:00" --until "now"

If you want to save it to a log to attach to this report, you can do something like this

journalctl --since "2025-06-10 15:10:00" --until "now" > ~/log.txt
Comment 5 Bug Janitor Service 2025-07-08 03:47:48 UTC
🐛🧹 ⚠️ 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!
Comment 6 Attila 2025-07-15 08:42:41 UTC
Sorry again for the late reply. I have not had access to the computers for the last two weeks.
I will run the journalctl command if the problem occurs again.
Comment 7 Attila 2025-08-04 14:33:26 UTC
(In reply to TraceyC from comment #4)
> The user directory being mounted as NFS is probably relevant here. Any
> network delays, even transient and minor, could translate to the system
> waiting on a cache or config value to be read.
> 
> What I would recommend is to query system logs on a machine for a minute
> before and after a freeze. Adjust the dates and time in this command to
> gather that.
> 
> journalctl --since "2025-06-10 15:10:00" --until "now"
> 
> If you want to save it to a log to attach to this report, you can do
> something like this
> 
> journalctl --since "2025-06-10 15:10:00" --until "now" > ~/log.txt

It's been a while, but it happened again. The system clock in the lower right corner stopped at 15:42:53.
Could this line be important? I don't know.

"xdg-desktop-portal-kde[2499]: kf.config.core: Created a KConfigGroup on an inaccessible config location ..."
Comment 8 Attila 2025-08-04 14:34:29 UTC
Created attachment 183780 [details]
Log from journalctl
Comment 9 TraceyC 2025-08-04 20:28:45 UTC
> It's been a while, but it happened again. The system clock in the lower
> right corner stopped at 15:42:53.
> Could this line be important? I don't know.
> 
> "xdg-desktop-portal-kde[2499]: kf.config.core: Created a KConfigGroup on an
> inaccessible config location ..."

The system clock is a valuable clue. The time shown when the clock was frozen, 15:42:53, corresponds to the entries in the log:

Aug 04 15:42:33 myhostname xdg-desktop-portal-kde[2499]: kf.config.core: Created a KConfigGroup on an inaccessible config location "/home/ABC/Lif/.directory" "Desktop Entry"
Aug 04 15:42:33 myhostname xdg-desktop-portal-kde[2499]: kf.config.core: Created a KConfigGroup on an inaccessible config location "/home/ABC/Temp/.directory" "Desktop Entry"

That indicates the NFS share was not available at the time KDE was trying to write to it. This would also mean that plasmashell wasn't able to read user preferences and cache values from their home directory.

Unfortunately, if Plasma can't read or write from the user's home directory when it's temporarily inaccessible, that will cause issues like this. The main problem is the user's files being unavailable. This isn't something KDE can fix, you'll need to investigate whatever is causing the /home directory to be randomly inaccessible.
Comment 10 Attila 2025-08-06 07:12:49 UTC
Thank you for your reply and your efforts.
One last question.

The file ".directory" in the folder "/home/ABC/Lif" is not readable or writable for the user experiencing the freezes and the owner is another user. The same here: "/home/ABC/Temp/.directory".

If I'm right, this could be helpful for developers and for users when reporting such a bug.