Re: [gentoo-user] KDE4: Constant crashes in conjunction with Konsole

[Dudu Loschi <eddloschi@gmail.com>]

2009/9/10 Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>:
> On Thursday 10 September 2009 06:00:08 Dudu Loschi wrote:
>
>> I've had this issue today with a new KDE 4.3.1 installation (actually
>> not so new, it was running fine for 4 days). I decided to track down
>> what was probably causing this issue since it apparently to came from
>> nowhere.
>> Well, after testing some configurations I realized that changing fonts
>> size (specially menu's font) could lead to this problem, but reverting
>> the size didn't solved.
>> Them I started changing xorg.conf and found an workaround: disable
>> BackingStore. I've tested several times and the crash never happened
>> with BackingStore off. And I actually turned it on yesterday, so at
>> least on my system that's the cause of the crash.
>> So if you are experiencing this and have BackingStore on, disable it.
>> If you don't have BackingStore enable try changing some other
>> configuration in xorg.conf, it may help.
>
> I agree with Dudu, nvidia-drivers is the likely culprit. There were huge
> problems in the early days of KDE-4, it's very possible that bugs are still
> lurking.
>
> A useful site to trawl looking for similar problems and solutions:
>
> http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=14
>
> It's a semi-official announce site for nVidia plus general Forum. The driver
> devs read the list and respond to major issues.
>
> --
> alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
>
>

Thanks for the link Alan, it's very useful. Actually this bug has been
reported at that forum:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-6344472472167039%3Ayq78am-jukz&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=backingstore&sa=Search+Site

I was having a similar crash with gnome/metacity when I upgraded to
gnome 2.26 but I never tried to track down the bug, I just switched to
openbox, which didn't crash in gnome. But in KDE/Openbox the crash
happens, but less frequently than with KWin

2009/9/10 Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de>:
> Am Donnerstag, 10. September 2009 schrieb Dudu Loschi:
>
>> > Hi guys,
>> >
>> > until now I've been quite a KDE4 hater, but I'm willing to give it a try
>> > from time to time. So I installed 4.3 parallel to my beloved 3.5.10 and
>> > was quite pleased with it. However, I have repeating crashes of my entire
>> > X. Mostly it happens when I open Konsole, the next often occasion is
>> > opening a menu (main menu, context menu, you name it), but also only
>> > after a Konsole windows was opened. All I see is a quick error message
>> > about glibc, then X restarts and I'm back at kdm.
>> >
>> > I use a laptop with a Geforce 7600 GPU, running on nvidia-drivers-180.60.
>
>> I've had this issue today with a new KDE 4.3.1 installation (actually
>> not so new, it was running fine for 4 days). I decided to track down
>> what was probably causing this issue since it apparently to came from
>> nowhere.
>> Well, after testing some configurations I realized that changing fonts
>> size (specially menu's font) could lead to this problem, but reverting
>> the size didn't solved.
>> Them I started changing xorg.conf and found an workaround: disable
>> BackingStore. I've tested several times and the crash never happened
>> with BackingStore off.
>
> A great many thanks to you, I've just tried it and it seems to have the effect
> you described. I'll dig into it further. But now of course I'm trapped
> between two worlds - stay with my sceen efficient and faster 3.5, or begin a
> liason with 4.3 for the benefits it provides, but also with its latent
> lagginess. *ponder ponder*
> --
> Gruß | Greetings | Qapla'
> Kids in the back seat cause accidents. Accidents in the backseat cause kids.
>

Great that it worked!
One thing to notice is that BackingStore is implemented by de X
server, not by the driver, So maybe this isn't a bug in nvidia-drivers
IMHO you should use KDE4 as now it's pretty stable (without
BackingStore, no issues at all here)