[gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Howdy,

It seems plasmashell and wallpapers for the desktop has a problem.  I'm
not sure if it is just me or if it could affect others.  Either way, I
have no idea how to fix it.  I have a LOT of wallpapers that I've
downloaded/collected over the years.  Some are NASA pics of Mars, stars,
galaxies and a whole lot of others that I've accumulated over the last
15 years or so.  According to Dolphin and the properties box, it's well
over 100,000 of them.  I have them all in a directory named, wait for
it, wallpapers.  Under that they are sorted in directories by what they
are, where they come from or whatever.  I try not to go to deep but it
does pick up at least two or three levels deep.  I've had it set that
way for ages and it has always worked with the only problem being it
picking them at random.  Some are intended to be like a slideshow. 
Anyway, they added the option of doing them in different orders
including a-z, which is nice.  It will be nicer if I can get it to work
now.  ;-)

Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops. 
It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem. 
It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
it later.  I suspect when the option to have them random or in order was
added, something changed in the way it looks at the directory.  Thing
is, I have no idea how to make this work like it should with all of them
enabled.

My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only has a
couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work.  Setting it to the whole
directory after that tho, does the same as above.  So doing a sort of
reset doesn't help.  Heck, at one point, I cleaned up the living room,
took out the trash and did some other stuff while it was banging away
with a core on my CPU.  Thing never did finish.

Anyone even know where to start with this?  I've got it narrowed down to
it being a issue with wallpapers.  I just don't know where to go from
here.  Is it supposed to do that for some reason and I'm the only one
with a HUGE collection?  Surely not. 

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Mick]

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On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 06:40:13 GMT Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> It seems plasmashell and wallpapers for the desktop has a problem.  I'm
> not sure if it is just me or if it could affect others.  Either way, I
> have no idea how to fix it.  I have a LOT of wallpapers that I've
> downloaded/collected over the years.  Some are NASA pics of Mars, stars,
> galaxies and a whole lot of others that I've accumulated over the last
> 15 years or so.  According to Dolphin and the properties box, it's well
> over 100,000 of them.

WOW!  A rather large number I would think.


> I have them all in a directory named, wait for
> it, wallpapers.  Under that they are sorted in directories by what they
> are, where they come from or whatever.  I try not to go to deep but it
> does pick up at least two or three levels deep.  I've had it set that
> way for ages and it has always worked with the only problem being it
> picking them at random.  Some are intended to be like a slideshow. 
> Anyway, they added the option of doing them in different orders
> including a-z, which is nice.  It will be nicer if I can get it to work
> now.  ;-)
> 
> Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
> plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops. 
> It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
> bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
> clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
> else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
> finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
> restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
> downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
> I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
> the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
> neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
> itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem. 
> It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
> I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
> it later.

Take a pic of it so you have a more precise idea what it reports and google 
for ideas on what may be causing it.  If you're on a console use tee to 
redirect the output to a file, or use gpm to select some text off the screen 
and paste it in a file.


> I suspect when the option to have them random or in order was
> added, something changed in the way it looks at the directory.  Thing
> is, I have no idea how to make this work like it should with all of them
> enabled.

I have found the file indexer occasionally chews up CPU non-stop.  I think I 
disabled it at some point but in any case I have not noticed it chewing up CPU 
since.  Could it be the file indexer now needs to re-index all your images and 
it falls over itself due to the number and directory depth?

Is possible to drop into a console or ssh into this PC when it's hanging to 
see what process(es) are taking up resources in real time?


> My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only has a
> couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work. 

Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared with the 
rest in the whole directory?


> Setting it to the whole
> directory after that tho, does the same as above.  So doing a sort of
> reset doesn't help.  Heck, at one point, I cleaned up the living room,
> took out the trash and did some other stuff while it was banging away
> with a core on my CPU.  Thing never did finish.
> 
> Anyone even know where to start with this?  I've got it narrowed down to
> it being a issue with wallpapers.  I just don't know where to go from
> here.  Is it supposed to do that for some reason and I'm the only one
> with a HUGE collection?  Surely not. 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Some ideas in no particular order:

Compare the metadata of an image which works without crashing and one that 
causes a crash, with exif or less.  If there is no discernible difference it 
may be the problem is not with the metadata, but with Plasma being able to 
parse all these files and their metadata.

Gradually add images to find a number at which the problem occurs and back off 
from there.  Not a solution, but a workaround.

Another workaround, restructure the fs to have fewer layers, but keep the same 
large number of images to see if it process them without a crash.

Do you really all 100,000 images?  Is it worth keeping all of them, or is it 
perhaps time for some house keeping?

Wait for new Plasam version to come out and perhaps report a bug if one is not 
yet posted.
-- 
Regards,

Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[J. Roeleveld]

On Tuesday, December 24, 2019 10:53:13 AM CET Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 06:40:13 GMT Dale wrote:
> > Howdy,
> > 
> > It seems plasmashell and wallpapers for the desktop has a problem.  I'm
> > not sure if it is just me or if it could affect others.  Either way, I
> > have no idea how to fix it.  I have a LOT of wallpapers that I've
> > downloaded/collected over the years.  Some are NASA pics of Mars, stars,
> > galaxies and a whole lot of others that I've accumulated over the last
> > 15 years or so.  According to Dolphin and the properties box, it's well
> > over 100,000 of them.
> 
> WOW!  A rather large number I would think.
> 
> > I have them all in a directory named, wait for
> > it, wallpapers.  Under that they are sorted in directories by what they
> > are, where they come from or whatever.  I try not to go to deep but it
> > does pick up at least two or three levels deep.  I've had it set that
> > way for ages and it has always worked with the only problem being it
> > picking them at random.  Some are intended to be like a slideshow.
> > Anyway, they added the option of doing them in different orders
> > including a-z, which is nice.  It will be nicer if I can get it to work
> > now.  ;-)
> > 
> > Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
> > plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops.
> > It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
> > bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
> > clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
> > else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
> > finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
> > restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
> > downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
> > I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
> > the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
> > neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
> > itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem.
> > It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
> > I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
> > it later.
> 
> Take a pic of it so you have a more precise idea what it reports and google
> for ideas on what may be causing it.  If you're on a console use tee to
> redirect the output to a file, or use gpm to select some text off the screen
> and paste it in a file.
> 
> > I suspect when the option to have them random or in order was
> > added, something changed in the way it looks at the directory.  Thing
> > is, I have no idea how to make this work like it should with all of them
> > enabled.
> 
> I have found the file indexer occasionally chews up CPU non-stop.  I think I
> disabled it at some point but in any case I have not noticed it chewing up
> CPU since.  Could it be the file indexer now needs to re-index all your
> images and it falls over itself due to the number and directory depth?
> 
> Is possible to drop into a console or ssh into this PC when it's hanging to
> see what process(es) are taking up resources in real time?
> 
> > My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only has a
> > couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work.
> 
> Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared with the
> rest in the whole directory?
> 
> > Setting it to the whole
> > directory after that tho, does the same as above.  So doing a sort of
> > reset doesn't help.  Heck, at one point, I cleaned up the living room,
> > took out the trash and did some other stuff while it was banging away
> > with a core on my CPU.  Thing never did finish.
> > 
> > Anyone even know where to start with this?  I've got it narrowed down to
> > it being a issue with wallpapers.  I just don't know where to go from
> > here.  Is it supposed to do that for some reason and I'm the only one
> > with a HUGE collection?  Surely not.
> > 
> > Thanks.
> > 
> > Dale
> > 
> > :-)  :-)
> 
> Some ideas in no particular order:
> 
> Compare the metadata of an image which works without crashing and one that
> causes a crash, with exif or less.  If there is no discernible difference it
> may be the problem is not with the metadata, but with Plasma being able to
> parse all these files and their metadata.
> 
> Gradually add images to find a number at which the problem occurs and back
> off from there.  Not a solution, but a workaround.
> 
> Another workaround, restructure the fs to have fewer layers, but keep the
> same large number of images to see if it process them without a crash.
> 
> Do you really all 100,000 images?  Is it worth keeping all of them, or is it
> perhaps time for some house keeping?
> 
> Wait for new Plasam version to come out and perhaps report a bug if one is
> not yet posted.

Or run the following:
find ./ -iname "*" -type f -exec file {} \; > /tmp/file.txt

from inside the Wallpaper-folder and check the output (see file /tmp/file.txt) 
for anything obvious.

You will have a long line per file, so using "grep -v " to filter out known 
good results might help in finding the problem file(s)

--
Joost

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Wols Lists]

On 24/12/19 09:53, Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 06:40:13 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> It seems plasmashell and wallpapers for the desktop has a problem.  I'm
>> not sure if it is just me or if it could affect others.  Either way, I
>> have no idea how to fix it.  I have a LOT of wallpapers that I've
>> downloaded/collected over the years.  Some are NASA pics of Mars, stars,
>> galaxies and a whole lot of others that I've accumulated over the last
>> 15 years or so.  According to Dolphin and the properties box, it's well
>> over 100,000 of them.
> 
> WOW!  A rather large number I would think.
> 
No it's not, I would think. Dunno how many I've accumulated, but I've
taken a fair few pictures of my own over the years, downloaded loads,
scanned lots of my old stuff ... it all adds up much faster than you
think ...
> 
<snip>
>>
>> Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
>> plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops. 
>> It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
>> bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
>> clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
>> else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
>> finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
>> restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
>> downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
>> I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
>> the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
>> neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
>> itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem. 
>> It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
>> I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
>> it later.
> 
If it's what's locking up my SUSE box, you don't need that many
pictures! Certainly sounds like it - "load" goes through the roof, and
system response goes through the floor. It eventually sorts itself out
(usually), but it's a bugger.

> Take a pic of it so you have a more precise idea what it reports and google 
> for ideas on what may be causing it.  If you're on a console use tee to 
> redirect the output to a file, or use gpm to select some text off the screen 
> and paste it in a file.
> 



> 
> I have found the file indexer occasionally chews up CPU non-stop.  I think I 
> disabled it at some point but in any case I have not noticed it chewing up CPU 
> since.  Could it be the file indexer now needs to re-index all your images and 
> it falls over itself due to the number and directory depth?
> 


> 
> Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared with the 
> rest in the whole directory?
> 
That would be a bugger - I think different scanners, different cameras,
different whatevers all seem to interpret the jpeg spec slightly
differently, with the result that any program that tries to strictly
enforce its interpretation is doomed to reject most pictures as
"invalid" :-( It's a nightmare the times I get one program objecting to
another program's output ... and I don't actually use these programs
enough to get a handle on what's going on.

> 
>> Setting it to the whole
>> directory after that tho, does the same as above.  So doing a sort of
>> reset doesn't help.  Heck, at one point, I cleaned up the living room,
>> took out the trash and did some other stuff while it was banging away
>> with a core on my CPU.  Thing never did finish.
>>
>> Anyone even know where to start with this?  I've got it narrowed down to
>> it being a issue with wallpapers.  I just don't know where to go from
>> here.  Is it supposed to do that for some reason and I'm the only one
>> with a HUGE collection?  Surely not. 
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
> 
> Some ideas in no particular order:
> 
> Compare the metadata of an image which works without crashing and one that 
> causes a crash, with exif or less.  If there is no discernible difference it 
> may be the problem is not with the metadata, but with Plasma being able to 
> parse all these files and their metadata.
> 
> Gradually add images to find a number at which the problem occurs and back off 
> from there.  Not a solution, but a workaround.
> 
> Another workaround, restructure the fs to have fewer layers, but keep the same 
> large number of images to see if it process them without a crash.
> 
> Do you really all 100,000 images?  Is it worth keeping all of them, or is it 
> perhaps time for some house keeping?
> 
> Wait for new Plasam version to come out and perhaps report a bug if one is not 
> yet posted.
> 
Shades of when - was it akonadi? - the file indexer started at boot and
killed system response so badly that it was taking a lot of systems more
than A DAY to log in the shell!!! I got bitten by that, and the response
of the devs seemed to be "we're not interested unless you're interested
in helping us debug it" :-(

Sorry, but I'm not interested in helping debug a problem that renders my
system so badly incapacitated that I can't even get a response out of
it! I was forced to ditch KDE just to get a usable system ...

(That said, I'd be delighted if this is the problem and we get a cure
for our broken boot ...)

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 06:40:13 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> It seems plasmashell and wallpapers for the desktop has a problem.  I'm
>> not sure if it is just me or if it could affect others.  Either way, I
>> have no idea how to fix it.  I have a LOT of wallpapers that I've
>> downloaded/collected over the years.  Some are NASA pics of Mars, stars,
>> galaxies and a whole lot of others that I've accumulated over the last
>> 15 years or so.  According to Dolphin and the properties box, it's well
>> over 100,000 of them.
> WOW!  A rather large number I would think.

Well, they were accumulated over many years.  Besides, NASA takes a lot
of pics.  I haven't added any in years.  I started my video collection
and well, got side tracked. lol  There's actually close to 150,000.  I
looked at the count wrong.  I mistook the 5 for a 0.  It shows 154,090
in 8,567 sub-folders. 


>
>
>> I have them all in a directory named, wait for
>> it, wallpapers.  Under that they are sorted in directories by what they
>> are, where they come from or whatever.  I try not to go to deep but it
>> does pick up at least two or three levels deep.  I've had it set that
>> way for ages and it has always worked with the only problem being it
>> picking them at random.  Some are intended to be like a slideshow. 
>> Anyway, they added the option of doing them in different orders
>> including a-z, which is nice.  It will be nicer if I can get it to work
>> now.  ;-)
>>
>> Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
>> plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops. 
>> It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
>> bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
>> clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
>> else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
>> finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
>> restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
>> downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
>> I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
>> the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
>> neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
>> itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem. 
>> It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
>> I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
>> it later.
> Take a pic of it so you have a more precise idea what it reports and google 
> for ideas on what may be causing it.  If you're on a console use tee to 
> redirect the output to a file, or use gpm to select some text off the screen 
> and paste it in a file.
>

I should have done that.  I sort of thought I would remember enough of
it tho.  Of course, I go to the kitchen and forget what I went in there
for.  I should have known better.  :/ 


>> I suspect when the option to have them random or in order was
>> added, something changed in the way it looks at the directory.  Thing
>> is, I have no idea how to make this work like it should with all of them
>> enabled.
> I have found the file indexer occasionally chews up CPU non-stop.  I think I 
> disabled it at some point but in any case I have not noticed it chewing up CPU 
> since.  Could it be the file indexer now needs to re-index all your images and 
> it falls over itself due to the number and directory depth?
>
> Is possible to drop into a console or ssh into this PC when it's hanging to 
> see what process(es) are taking up resources in real time?
>

I've disabled a lot in KDE already.  I can't recall them all tho.  I
think one was semantic or something.  I think something pulled it in but
I think I cut it off in system settings somewhere.  Tell me how to check
and I'll see if it is off/disabled as well. 


>> My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only has a
>> couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work. 
> Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared with the 
> rest in the whole directory?
>

It's actually a small directory of the exact same images.  I might add,
the clock does skip a second or so when I add them so I suspect it
performs the same action, it just has a much smaller number of them. 
It's hard to say.  Point being, I'm using the same images as before,
just a smaller sub-directory. 

>> Setting it to the whole
>> directory after that tho, does the same as above.  So doing a sort of
>> reset doesn't help.  Heck, at one point, I cleaned up the living room,
>> took out the trash and did some other stuff while it was banging away
>> with a core on my CPU.  Thing never did finish.
>>
>> Anyone even know where to start with this?  I've got it narrowed down to
>> it being a issue with wallpapers.  I just don't know where to go from
>> here.  Is it supposed to do that for some reason and I'm the only one
>> with a HUGE collection?  Surely not. 
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
> Some ideas in no particular order:
>
> Compare the metadata of an image which works without crashing and one that 
> causes a crash, with exif or less.  If there is no discernible difference it 
> may be the problem is not with the metadata, but with Plasma being able to 
> parse all these files and their metadata.
>
> Gradually add images to find a number at which the problem occurs and back off 
> from there.  Not a solution, but a workaround.
>
> Another workaround, restructure the fs to have fewer layers, but keep the same 
> large number of images to see if it process them without a crash.
>
> Do you really all 100,000 images?  Is it worth keeping all of them, or is it 
> perhaps time for some house keeping?
>
> Wait for new Plasam version to come out and perhaps report a bug if one is not 
> yet posted.


I think it is parsing the files.  As you say, there is a lot of them.  I
sat and watched it scroll through the files and it just kept scrolling
them by.  It didn't hang on a particular one or anything, it was
steadily listing every directory and file.  I guess I need it to somehow
skip that step.  As you see above, it's a LOT of files and it would be
quite a daunting task to even check each one much less try to build some
sort of database or something for them all. 

I'll try to see if I can get the actual error here in a bit, either a
picture or the actual text.  I only need one line because it is the same
for them all except the name and path of the file. 

Thanks much.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Wols Lists]

On 24/12/19 18:35, Dale wrote:
> I'll try to see if I can get the actual error here in a bit, either a
> picture or the actual text.  I only need one line because it is the same
> for them all except the name and path of the file. 

I've just had an idea ...

I think it was on LWN they were talking about how a directory scan on
linux can take absolutely ages, because as it goes through it pulls
everything into cache and knackers the system. (Which is why a lot of
programs go through the grief of using direct rather than buffered io.)

Not sure which developer it was, but they've brought in a new mode which
leaves cache untouched (sort of). If it can retrieve the file from
cache, it does so. If it's not in cache, it pulls it in, processes it,
and drops it. That way the cache does not fill up with recently accessed
files that are never going to be touched again, and your system doesn't
start swapping like mad to save all this unwanted data.

Maybe when that is enabled in plasmashell it'll fix the problem ... how
big is this directory that's being scanned? If it's similar or larger in
size to your ram that could be the problem. Even if it's rather less, if
other programs are using up your ram ...

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 24 Dec 2019 12:35:41 -0600, Dale wrote:

> >> My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only
> >> has a couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work.   

> > Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared
> > with the rest in the whole directory?
> 
> It's actually a small directory of the exact same images.  I might add,
> the clock does skip a second or so when I add them so I suspect it
> performs the same action, it just has a much smaller number of them. 
> It's hard to say.  Point being, I'm using the same images as before,
> just a smaller sub-directory. 

Have  you tried using the smaller directory and then addng a few (hundred)
images at a time, letting the scan finish and then repeating.

I wonder is plasma is using a new method of caching the data, or the old
cache got corrupted, so it has to reindex the whole directory again. It's
never had to do 150000+ files in one go before because the directory has
grown organically. Now, for whatever reason, it seems like it is trying to
do the whole lot in one hit.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

I'd tell you a UDP joke, but you may not get it.

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Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 06:40:13 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I have them all in a directory named, wait for
>> it, wallpapers.  Under that they are sorted in directories by what they
>> are, where they come from or whatever.  I try not to go to deep but it
>> does pick up at least two or three levels deep.  I've had it set that
>> way for ages and it has always worked with the only problem being it
>> picking them at random.  Some are intended to be like a slideshow. 
>> Anyway, they added the option of doing them in different orders
>> including a-z, which is nice.  It will be nicer if I can get it to work
>> now.  ;-)
>>
>> Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
>> plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops. 
>> It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
>> bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
>> clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
>> else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
>> finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
>> restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
>> downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
>> I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
>> the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
>> neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
>> itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem. 
>> It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
>> I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
>> it later.
> Take a pic of it so you have a more precise idea what it reports and google 
> for ideas on what may be causing it.  If you're on a console use tee to 
> redirect the output to a file, or use gpm to select some text off the screen 
> and paste it in a file.
>

OK.  This is what it spits out, one after another:


kf5.kpackage: No metadata file in the package, expected it at:


After that, it repeats the same thing with the path and name of each
image on the end of the above.  The only thing that changes is the file
name.

With that, I googled and found this.


https://forum.manjaro.org/t/plasmashell-freezing-after-update/76302/7

Which had this fix:

"All good, I found a solution.
I just cleaned all plasma configuration with rm ~/.config/plasma* and
logged in my session again."

I have these files located there:


root@fireball / # ls -al /home/dale/.config/plasma*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users    35 Oct 16  2017
/home/dale/.config/plasma_calendar_holiday_regions
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users    26 Oct 16  2017
/home/dale/.config/plasma-localerc
-rw------- 1 dale users    34 Oct 10 08:16 /home/dale/.config/plasmanotifyrc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users 11262 Dec 24 13:01
/home/dale/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users    68 May  3  2018 /home/dale/.config/plasmarc
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users   974 Dec 23 10:40 /home/dale/.config/plasmashellrc
-rw------- 1 dale users   207 Mar 24  2018
/home/dale/.config/plasma_workspace.notifyrc
root@fireball / #


I'd think the 1st, 4th and last one wouldn't be the ones, but what do I
know.  I'd think the others could be something.  Still, I went digging
through them all.  The file plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc has
many mentions of wallpapers and lists directories of where they are.  So
far, #1 suspect.  After checking the other files, no mention of
wallpapers found.  I know, I could have used grep for this but . . .

OK.  I renamed the file with .old.  Logged out and back in again and
lost pretty much every setting I had.  No big surprise just slightly
annoying.  Anyway, after getting things back to being usable, I added
the wallpaper directory back, the monster directory, and guess what,
same thing.  CPU went to 100% on one core and stayed there.  Now it just
so happens that a friend came up to visit and we ended up talking for a
good hour or so.  When I came back, it was still banging away doing
whatever silliness it is doing.  So, we up to about a hour without it
completing whatever it is doing.  Do I really want to go through this
with every login??? 

So, it seem that when they changed the random only part of this to being
able to do them in order, they added some indexing system or something
without thinking about people who may have quite a few of wallpapers.  I
guess in the meantime, I'm going to have to whittle down the directories
or something.  Of course, I could add my directory for my camera pics
and see if it just plain blows up or something.  That would add another
50,000 images and push the total over 200,000 at that point.  ROFLMBO

It sucks when they improve one thing but then basically break the whole
thing in the process.  ROFL 

Now to see what other replies I have. 

Thanks much.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

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Wols Lists wrote:
> On 24/12/19 18:35, Dale wrote:
>> I'll try to see if I can get the actual error here in a bit, either a
>> picture or the actual text.  I only need one line because it is the same
>> for them all except the name and path of the file. 
> I've just had an idea ...
>
> I think it was on LWN they were talking about how a directory scan on
> linux can take absolutely ages, because as it goes through it pulls
> everything into cache and knackers the system. (Which is why a lot of
> programs go through the grief of using direct rather than buffered io.)
>
> Not sure which developer it was, but they've brought in a new mode which
> leaves cache untouched (sort of). If it can retrieve the file from
> cache, it does so. If it's not in cache, it pulls it in, processes it,
> and drops it. That way the cache does not fill up with recently accessed
> files that are never going to be touched again, and your system doesn't
> start swapping like mad to save all this unwanted data.
>
> Maybe when that is enabled in plasmashell it'll fix the problem ... how
> big is this directory that's being scanned? If it's similar or larger in
> size to your ram that could be the problem. Even if it's rather less, if
> other programs are using up your ram ...
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>


I think it is indexing/caching/something that requires it to look at
every single file in there plus all the levels below it.  If so, that
would be a huge task. Here is some info on that but I did post it a bit
ago.  It was sort of nested in one of the posts. 

23.5 GiB 154,090 files, 8,567 sub-folders

Some NASA pics can get large at times. Some I have are quite small.
Still, it's a LOT of files.

Dale

:-) :-)


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Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Dec 2019 12:35:41 -0600, Dale wrote:
>
>>>> My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only
>>>> has a couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work.   
>>> Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared
>>> with the rest in the whole directory?
>> It's actually a small directory of the exact same images.  I might add,
>> the clock does skip a second or so when I add them so I suspect it
>> performs the same action, it just has a much smaller number of them. 
>> It's hard to say.  Point being, I'm using the same images as before,
>> just a smaller sub-directory. 
> Have  you tried using the smaller directory and then addng a few (hundred)
> images at a time, letting the scan finish and then repeating.
>
> I wonder is plasma is using a new method of caching the data, or the old
> cache got corrupted, so it has to reindex the whole directory again. It's
> never had to do 150000+ files in one go before because the directory has
> grown organically. Now, for whatever reason, it seems like it is trying to
> do the whole lot in one hit.
>
>


I was wondering about that too.  When I was testing to get the actual
error, posted in another reply, I noticed it seems to start over each
time.  It makes me think that each time I login, it will repeat the
process.  If so, that's not only undesirable, it's unusable.  So far, I
have let it sit for a hour or so banging away without completing.  Who
knows, it may take many hours or even days to go through them all. 
While it is doing that, the desktop is pretty much unusable.  Nothing in
the panel works.  I have to use ctrl + F* keys to switch desktops.  I
also can't start new programs since the panel thing is locked up and the
application menu thingy won't respond.  The only reason I can do
anything, I have it set to a saved session and it starts most of my apps
when I login.  If not for that, I wouldn't have anything at all running
and couldn't start anything either.  Since I have 12 desktops and use
all 12 of them, the ctrl + F* keys won't get me to the last two or
three.  Even right clicking on the desktop does nothing. 

I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while. 
Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Wols Lists wrote:
> On 24/12/19 18:35, Dale wrote:
>> I'll try to see if I can get the actual error here in a bit, either a
>> picture or the actual text.  I only need one line because it is the same
>> for them all except the name and path of the file. 
> I've just had an idea ...
>
> I think it was on LWN they were talking about how a directory scan on
> linux can take absolutely ages, because as it goes through it pulls
> everything into cache and knackers the system. (Which is why a lot of
> programs go through the grief of using direct rather than buffered io.)
>
> Not sure which developer it was, but they've brought in a new mode which
> leaves cache untouched (sort of). If it can retrieve the file from
> cache, it does so. If it's not in cache, it pulls it in, processes it,
> and drops it. That way the cache does not fill up with recently accessed
> files that are never going to be touched again, and your system doesn't
> start swapping like mad to save all this unwanted data.
>
> Maybe when that is enabled in plasmashell it'll fix the problem ... how
> big is this directory that's being scanned? If it's similar or larger in
> size to your ram that could be the problem. Even if it's rather less, if
> other programs are using up your ram ...
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>


I found out something else.  In the old KDE3 days, it would start at
login at the top directory and work its way down while remember the last
image.  If you logout and back in, it picks up where it left off at. 
KDE5 does something totally different.  It scans every file and puts
them in order by the name no matter what directory they are in.  In
other words, if I have 100 directories with a image named 0000.jpeg,
then it will show the images named 0000.jpeg regardless of what
directory they are in.  When that is done, it then moves to say 0001.jpeg. 

How did I notice this you ask??  When I added a larger directory, I
noticed it did a preview thing in another part of the dialog window.  It
also has a little checkbox to disable/enable that image.  What I noticed
was what I posted above, how it was putting the images in order.  It
just so happens that folder had some slideshow type images in it that
are numbered in sequence.  Thing is, in the preview they were all
clumped together but were mixed up and not sorted by the directory they
were in.  I hate to say it but it is the same result as random done this
way. 

So, it appears what several of you came up with is correct.  It is
building some sort of index/cache/whatever system to organize the
images.  That results in a lot of CPU time.  The only question left, if
I were to allow it to build that index/whatever, does it rebuild at each
login or not??

I wonder, if I add each directory within wallpapers a few at a time if
it would be workable.  Would it build that index/whatever without
locking up?  Even if that works, would it then shows slideshow type
directories in sequence or would it still jump to other directories? 

Find one possible answer and end up with more questions.  ROFL 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Wols Lists]

On 24/12/19 20:33, Dale wrote:
> I think it is indexing/caching/something that requires it to look at
> every single file in there plus all the levels below it.  If so, that
> would be a huge task. Here is some info on that but I did post it a bit
> ago.  It was sort of nested in one of the posts. 

Exactly. The thing about what this developer noticed is that it is the
READING THE FILES that kills the system performance. The indexing is
just random noise.

So once this fix gets into the system it won't matter that it's indexing
- the indexing will stall waiting for the files to be read, and reading
the files won't kill the system.

What seems to be happening at the moment is that as plasma reads the
files, linux is paging plasma out to make way for the files, then it has
to drop old cache to page plasma back in, and it's just got stuck in
treacle trying to "in out in out shake it all about" :-)

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Wols Lists wrote:
> On 24/12/19 20:33, Dale wrote:
>> I think it is indexing/caching/something that requires it to look at
>> every single file in there plus all the levels below it.  If so, that
>> would be a huge task. Here is some info on that but I did post it a bit
>> ago.  It was sort of nested in one of the posts. 
> Exactly. The thing about what this developer noticed is that it is the
> READING THE FILES that kills the system performance. The indexing is
> just random noise.
>
> So once this fix gets into the system it won't matter that it's indexing
> - the indexing will stall waiting for the files to be read, and reading
> the files won't kill the system.
>
> What seems to be happening at the moment is that as plasma reads the
> files, linux is paging plasma out to make way for the files, then it has
> to drop old cache to page plasma back in, and it's just got stuck in
> treacle trying to "in out in out shake it all about" :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
>

I suspect the dev that did this, has very few wallpapers or doesn't use
the feature at all and just has one pic he changes manually from time to
time.  lol 

Maybe later on it will be fixed.  It only took a couple years for them
to add anything non-random anyway.  For ages, it was random and nothing
else.  I just don't have the energy right now to add several thousand
directories to the dialog one at a time.  o_O 

At least we figured out what the problem is.  That's a start I guess.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Wols Lists]

On 24/12/19 22:23, Dale wrote:
> Wols Lists wrote:
>> On 24/12/19 20:33, Dale wrote:
>>> I think it is indexing/caching/something that requires it to look at
>>> every single file in there plus all the levels below it.  If so, that
>>> would be a huge task. Here is some info on that but I did post it a bit
>>> ago.  It was sort of nested in one of the posts. 
>> Exactly. The thing about what this developer noticed is that it is the
>> READING THE FILES that kills the system performance. The indexing is
>> just random noise.
>>
>> So once this fix gets into the system it won't matter that it's indexing
>> - the indexing will stall waiting for the files to be read, and reading
>> the files won't kill the system.
>>
>> What seems to be happening at the moment is that as plasma reads the
>> files, linux is paging plasma out to make way for the files, then it has
>> to drop old cache to page plasma back in, and it's just got stuck in
>> treacle trying to "in out in out shake it all about" :-)
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Wol
>>
>>
> 
> I suspect the dev that did this, has very few wallpapers or doesn't use
> the feature at all and just has one pic he changes manually from time to
> time.  lol 

Apologies, but did you bother to read what I wrote? The fault has
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Plasma or KDE.

I'm inclined to agree that KDE should try and work round bugs, but the
real fault lies in the Linux kernel.

I'm a kernel dev wannabe, and following what's going on can be VERY
enlightening - this is a design fault, and I'm sure there are plenty
more ... :-) it can be VERY frustrating as an app developer to find that
what *should* be nice and simple is made horribly frustrating by stupid
faults in the layer below.

If you think about it logically, you would EXPECT that the effort of
indexing a file would be substantially less than that of reading it,
wouldn't you? So why would you expect reading a bunch of files and
indexing them would peg *cpu* use at 100%? Surely it's going to peg disk
i/o at 100%?
> 
> Maybe later on it will be fixed.  It only took a couple years for them
> to add anything non-random anyway.  For ages, it was random and nothing
> else.  I just don't have the energy right now to add several thousand
> directories to the dialog one at a time.  o_O 
> 
> At least we figured out what the problem is.  That's a start I guess.  ;-)
> 
Well, the fix should hopefully be in the next kernel release. It then
needs Plasma to take advantage of it, which shouldn't be long ...

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Wols Lists wrote:
> On 24/12/19 22:23, Dale wrote:
>> Wols Lists wrote:
>>> On 24/12/19 20:33, Dale wrote:
>>>> I think it is indexing/caching/something that requires it to look at
>>>> every single file in there plus all the levels below it.  If so, that
>>>> would be a huge task. Here is some info on that but I did post it a bit
>>>> ago.  It was sort of nested in one of the posts. 
>>> Exactly. The thing about what this developer noticed is that it is the
>>> READING THE FILES that kills the system performance. The indexing is
>>> just random noise.
>>>
>>> So once this fix gets into the system it won't matter that it's indexing
>>> - the indexing will stall waiting for the files to be read, and reading
>>> the files won't kill the system.
>>>
>>> What seems to be happening at the moment is that as plasma reads the
>>> files, linux is paging plasma out to make way for the files, then it has
>>> to drop old cache to page plasma back in, and it's just got stuck in
>>> treacle trying to "in out in out shake it all about" :-)
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Wol
>>>
>>>
>> I suspect the dev that did this, has very few wallpapers or doesn't use
>> the feature at all and just has one pic he changes manually from time to
>> time.  lol 
> Apologies, but did you bother to read what I wrote? The fault has
> ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Plasma or KDE.
>
> I'm inclined to agree that KDE should try and work round bugs, but the
> real fault lies in the Linux kernel.
>
> I'm a kernel dev wannabe, and following what's going on can be VERY
> enlightening - this is a design fault, and I'm sure there are plenty
> more ... :-) it can be VERY frustrating as an app developer to find that
> what *should* be nice and simple is made horribly frustrating by stupid
> faults in the layer below.
>
> If you think about it logically, you would EXPECT that the effort of
> indexing a file would be substantially less than that of reading it,
> wouldn't you? So why would you expect reading a bunch of files and
> indexing them would peg *cpu* use at 100%? Surely it's going to peg disk
> i/o at 100%?

I did but I was looking at it from the point that KDE and plasma was
triggering this.  After all, if KDE/plasma wasn't triggering this and
they did it the way KDE3 did, it wouldn't be a issue at all.  I'd rather
them go back and use that code/method regardless of whether the kernel
gets fixed or not.  That said, if the kernel has such a issue, it should
be fixed as well.  Thing is, the current way KDE5/plasma is doing this,
it isn't what I expected or would even want anyway.  It's no better than
the old fixed random method that we were stuck with since KDE3 went
away.  KDE3 did it in a logical way and worked, even tho it was old code. 


>> Maybe later on it will be fixed.  It only took a couple years for them
>> to add anything non-random anyway.  For ages, it was random and nothing
>> else.  I just don't have the energy right now to add several thousand
>> directories to the dialog one at a time.  o_O 
>>
>> At least we figured out what the problem is.  That's a start I guess.  ;-)
>>
> Well, the fix should hopefully be in the next kernel release. It then
> needs Plasma to take advantage of it, which shouldn't be long ...
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>

So that means I'd have to upgrade my kernel.  Well, it may fix some
other issue I'm not even aware of so maybe it isn't a bad deal.  Still,
just wish they would use the old method.  At least it worked like one
would expect.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:

> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while. 
> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe. 

What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or just its 
subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search > Enable File 
Search.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
>
>> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while. 
>> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe. 
> What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or just its 
> subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search > Enable File 
> Search.
>


I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)

Here's what I did test tho.  I added a couple more smaller directories. 
It would make short use of the CPU but it seemed to finish.  Then I
picked one that is plenty large enough to allow me to see just how long
it takes.  The directory I used has a little under 800 sub-directories
and about 13,700 files.  When I added it, it pegged one core at 100% for
over a minute.  It seemed to finish its task and went back to normal. 
During that, the desktop locked up just like it did on login when the
huge directory was selected.  The next test, see if it does it at each
login or if it only does it once and then on the next login, it uses the
previously generated index/db/whatever or if it repeats building that
index/db/whatever on each login.  If it is the former, I can add them a
little at a time and work with that. If it is the later one, well,
that's a issue.

Thing is, if the tool that is used to do this is turned off, it may
break the slideshow option as well since it seems pretty much bent on
building a index/db of these images.  While the devs may be using a
buggy tool, as Wols pointed out, it seems that having a large number of
wallpapers just isn't feasible at the moment.  Either the devs need to
change the tool or change the way it works without that tool at all, the
way KDE3 did it for example. 

Maybe a fix will be upcoming, eventually. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S.  Some may recall me using a HDMI splitter to run my TV in my
bedroom and living room at the same time with the same video. I
mentioned once that my bedroom TV would blink from a brief signal loss. 
It would only be a second or so but it was annoying.  I replaced the
HDMI cable, no problems since. I have not seen a single blink. Odd thing
is, the first cable was pricey.  Second cable was half the cost.  Go
figure.  ROFL 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday, 28 December 2019 05:57:16 GMT Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while.
> >> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe.
> > 
> > What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or just
> > its subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search >
> > Enable File Search.
> 
> I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
> setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
> separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
> controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
> certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)

I may have misled you by calling it the Control Panel. It's actually System 
Settings > Workspace > Search > Enable File Search.

I wouldn't expect your wallpaper operations to be affected by this, but then 
what do I know about it?   ;)

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Saturday, 28 December 2019 05:57:16 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
>>>> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while.
>>>> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe.
>>> What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or just
>>> its subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search >
>>> Enable File Search.
>> I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
>> setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
>> separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
>> controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
>> certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)
> I may have misled you by calling it the Control Panel. It's actually System 
> Settings > Workspace > Search > Enable File Search.
>
> I wouldn't expect your wallpaper operations to be affected by this, but then 
> what do I know about it?   ;)
>

I must have it disabled by a USE flag or something because there is no
mention of search in the list.  I recall disabling some stuff when I was
switching to KDE4.  On the rare occasion I need to find something, there
is locate, find and friends.  Plus, Dolphin and other file managers have
their own search tools anyway. 

Worth a shot I guess.  ;-)

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Mick]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1890 bytes --]

On Saturday, 28 December 2019 15:30:10 GMT Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday, 28 December 2019 05:57:16 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
> >>>> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while.
> >>>> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe.
> >>> 
> >>> What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or
> >>> just
> >>> its subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search >
> >>> Enable File Search.
> >> 
> >> I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
> >> setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
> >> separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
> >> controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
> >> certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)
> > 
> > I may have misled you by calling it the Control Panel. It's actually
> > System
> > Settings > Workspace > Search > Enable File Search.
> > 
> > I wouldn't expect your wallpaper operations to be affected by this, but
> > then what do I know about it?   ;)
> 
> I must have it disabled by a USE flag or something because there is no
> mention of search in the list.  I recall disabling some stuff when I was
> switching to KDE4.

It is probably USE="semantic-desktop":

$ euse -i semantic-desktop
global use flags (searching: semantic-desktop)
************************************************************
[+  D   ] semantic-desktop - Cross-KDE support for semantic search and 
information retrieval

local use flags (searching: semantic-desktop)
************************************************************
[+  D   ] semantic-desktop
    media-gfx/digikam: Enable kde-frameworks/kfilemetadata support
        [+  ] (5) 6.3.0-r1 [gentoo]
        [+  ] (5) 6.4.0 [gentoo]

-- 
Regards,

Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Saturday, 28 December 2019 15:30:10 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
>>> On Saturday, 28 December 2019 05:57:16 GMT Dale wrote:
>>>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
>>>>> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
>>>>>> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while.
>>>>>> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe.
>>>>> What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or
>>>>> just
>>>>> its subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search >
>>>>> Enable File Search.
>>>> I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
>>>> setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
>>>> separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
>>>> controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
>>>> certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)
>>> I may have misled you by calling it the Control Panel. It's actually
>>> System
>>> Settings > Workspace > Search > Enable File Search.
>>>
>>> I wouldn't expect your wallpaper operations to be affected by this, but
>>> then what do I know about it?   ;)
>> I must have it disabled by a USE flag or something because there is no
>> mention of search in the list.  I recall disabling some stuff when I was
>> switching to KDE4.
> It is probably USE="semantic-desktop":
>
> $ euse -i semantic-desktop
> global use flags (searching: semantic-desktop)
> ************************************************************
> [+  D   ] semantic-desktop - Cross-KDE support for semantic search and 
> information retrieval
>
> local use flags (searching: semantic-desktop)
> ************************************************************
> [+  D   ] semantic-desktop
>     media-gfx/digikam: Enable kde-frameworks/kfilemetadata support
>         [+  ] (5) 6.3.0-r1 [gentoo]
>         [+  ] (5) 6.4.0 [gentoo]
>


I'm pretty much certain you are right.  That rings a bell in those cells
between my ears.  It is turned off in make.conf too.  I can't recall
what all that thing did but I remember people not wanting it.  I just
followed a bunch of others on that.  Can't be to important since I do
what I need to without it.  lol 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Mick]

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On Saturday, 28 December 2019 18:14:05 GMT Dale wrote:
> Mick wrote:
> > On Saturday, 28 December 2019 15:30:10 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >>> On Saturday, 28 December 2019 05:57:16 GMT Dale wrote:
> >>>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >>>>> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
> >>>>>> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a
> >>>>>> while.
> >>>>>> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe.
> >>>>> 
> >>>>> What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or
> >>>>> just
> >>>>> its subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search >
> >>>>> Enable File Search.
> >>>> 
> >>>> I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
> >>>> setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
> >>>> separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
> >>>> controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
> >>>> certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)
> >>> 
> >>> I may have misled you by calling it the Control Panel. It's actually
> >>> System
> >>> Settings > Workspace > Search > Enable File Search.
> >>> 
> >>> I wouldn't expect your wallpaper operations to be affected by this, but
> >>> then what do I know about it?   ;)
> >> 
> >> I must have it disabled by a USE flag or something because there is no
> >> mention of search in the list.  I recall disabling some stuff when I was
> >> switching to KDE4.
> > 
> > It is probably USE="semantic-desktop":
> > 
> > $ euse -i semantic-desktop
> > global use flags (searching: semantic-desktop)
> > ************************************************************
> > [+  D   ] semantic-desktop - Cross-KDE support for semantic search and
> > information retrieval
> > 
> > local use flags (searching: semantic-desktop)
> > ************************************************************
> > [+  D   ] semantic-desktop
> > 
> >     media-gfx/digikam: Enable kde-frameworks/kfilemetadata support
> >     
> >         [+  ] (5) 6.3.0-r1 [gentoo]
> >         [+  ] (5) 6.4.0 [gentoo]
> 
> I'm pretty much certain you are right.  That rings a bell in those cells
> between my ears.  It is turned off in make.conf too.  I can't recall
> what all that thing did but I remember people not wanting it.  I just
> followed a bunch of others on that.  Can't be to important since I do
> what I need to without it.  lol 
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

Wikipedia explains what semantic search is.  Pretty much what Google does when 
your search for something and you find a bunch of MSWindows answers coming up 
top, annoying the hell out you!  LOL!

PS. I tend to add "-Windows" in many searches these days in order to keep my 
blood pressure down.  :-p

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Saturday, 28 December 2019 18:14:05 GMT Dale wrote:
>>
>> I'm pretty much certain you are right.  That rings a bell in those cells
>> between my ears.  It is turned off in make.conf too.  I can't recall
>> what all that thing did but I remember people not wanting it.  I just
>> followed a bunch of others on that.  Can't be to important since I do
>> what I need to without it.  lol 
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
> Wikipedia explains what semantic search is.  Pretty much what Google does when 
> your search for something and you find a bunch of MSWindows answers coming up 
> top, annoying the hell out you!  LOL!
>
> PS. I tend to add "-Windows" in many searches these days in order to keep my 
> blood pressure down.  :-p
>

When I have a error, I search bgo first, fgo 2nd and then go to
startpage/google and use the quote marks.  There's not to many windoze
errors that way.  That said, I often find the answer I want on the 2nd
or 3rd page.  Sometimes it is even deeper than that. 

Given what you said, no wonder so many wanted to get rid of the thing. 
lol  It's like a pocket full of sand when standing on the beach.  Pretty
much worthless.  :/

I still haven't had the chance to logout and back in yet.  I assembled
three battery desulfators today.  I ordered the boards off ebay, put
them in PVC pipe to protect them and installed one so far.  I'm testing
it on the lawn mower first.  Tractor and car comes next.  ;-) 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Wols Lists]

On 28/12/19 18:14, Dale wrote:
> I'm pretty much certain you are right.  That rings a bell in those cells
> between my ears.  It is turned off in make.conf too.  I can't recall
> what all that thing did but I remember people not wanting it.  I just
> followed a bunch of others on that.  Can't be to important since I do
> what I need to without it.  lol 

That's that thing I think I mentioned - that basically made KDE
*UNUSABLE* in the early days of KDE4. My ancient thunderbird athlon took
over a day from login to desktop - I don't know how long because I
killed it and switched to LXDE or something like that.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday, 28 December 2019 15:30:10 GMT Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Saturday, 28 December 2019 05:57:16 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >>> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 20:42:07 GMT Dale wrote:
> >>>> I think I'm just going to have to whittle down the number for a while.
> >>>> Maybe later on a fix will come along.  Maybe.
> >>> 
> >>> What happens if you switch off file indexing in the control panel, or
> >>> just
> >>> its subsidiary option Also Index file content? Workspace > Search >
> >>> Enable File Search.
> >> 
> >> I looked around in the System Settings window and can't find that
> >> setting.  Am I looking in the right place?  I sort of think this is a
> >> separate thing tho.  It may be using the same tool but won't be
> >> controlled by system settings.  Anything is possible tho.  I'll
> >> certainly test the option if I can find it. ;-)
> > 
> > I may have misled you by calling it the Control Panel. It's actually
> > System
> > Settings > Workspace > Search > Enable File Search.
> > 
> > I wouldn't expect your wallpaper operations to be affected by this, but
> > then what do I know about it?   ;)
> 
> I must have it disabled by a USE flag or something because there is no
> mention of search in the list.  I recall disabling some stuff when I was
> switching to KDE4.  On the rare occasion I need to find something, there
> is locate, find and friends.  Plus, Dolphin and other file managers have
> their own search tools anyway. 

On this box the search is enabled by default. (Among the first things I do on 
creating a new user is to switch it off.) That being so, I asume it's also 
switched on on your system.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Dale wrote:
>
> OK.  This is what it spits out, one after another:
>
>
> kf5.kpackage: No metadata file in the package, expected it at:
>
>
> After that, it repeats the same thing with the path and name of each
> image on the end of the above.  The only thing that changes is the file
> name.
>
> With that, I googled and found this.
>
>
> https://forum.manjaro.org/t/plasmashell-freezing-after-update/76302/7
>
> Which had this fix:
>
> "All good, I found a solution.
> I just cleaned all plasma configuration with rm ~/.config/plasma* and
> logged in my session again."
>
> I have these files located there:
>
>
> root@fireball / # ls -al /home/dale/.config/plasma*
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users    35 Oct 16  2017
> /home/dale/.config/plasma_calendar_holiday_regions
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users    26 Oct 16  2017
> /home/dale/.config/plasma-localerc
> -rw------- 1 dale users    34 Oct 10 08:16 /home/dale/.config/plasmanotifyrc
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users 11262 Dec 24 13:01
> /home/dale/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users    68 May  3  2018 /home/dale/.config/plasmarc
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 dale users   974 Dec 23 10:40 /home/dale/.config/plasmashellrc
> -rw------- 1 dale users   207 Mar 24  2018
> /home/dale/.config/plasma_workspace.notifyrc
> root@fireball / #
>
>
> I'd think the 1st, 4th and last one wouldn't be the ones, but what do I
> know.  I'd think the others could be something.  Still, I went digging
> through them all.  The file plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc has
> many mentions of wallpapers and lists directories of where they are.  So
> far, #1 suspect.  After checking the other files, no mention of
> wallpapers found.  I know, I could have used grep for this but . . .
>
> OK.  I renamed the file with .old.  Logged out and back in again and
> lost pretty much every setting I had.  No big surprise just slightly
> annoying.  Anyway, after getting things back to being usable, I added
> the wallpaper directory back, the monster directory, and guess what,
> same thing.  CPU went to 100% on one core and stayed there.  Now it just
> so happens that a friend came up to visit and we ended up talking for a
> good hour or so.  When I came back, it was still banging away doing
> whatever silliness it is doing.  So, we up to about a hour without it
> completing whatever it is doing.  Do I really want to go through this
> with every login??? 
>
> So, it seem that when they changed the random only part of this to being
> able to do them in order, they added some indexing system or something
> without thinking about people who may have quite a few of wallpapers.  I
> guess in the meantime, I'm going to have to whittle down the directories
> or something.  Of course, I could add my directory for my camera pics
> and see if it just plain blows up or something.  That would add another
> 50,000 images and push the total over 200,000 at that point.  ROFLMBO
>
> It sucks when they improve one thing but then basically break the whole
> thing in the process.  ROFL 
>
> Now to see what other replies I have. 
>
> Thanks much.
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 
>


OK.  I finally got around to rebooting.  Took me a while but anyway. 
When I logged into KDE, nothing plasma was working.  There was no
background at all, no panel thingy at the bottom, just nothingness.  It
was ugly.  I used the ctrl F* key to get where I could see gkrellm.  One
core of the CPU was banging away at something.  I had a suspect too. 
;-)  I let it sit for a bit and sure enough, the panel thingy showed up,
my background popped up and the output for the TVs also kicked in. 

So, the "fix" for making things not random is to bog plasma down with
some index/db/whatever thingy.  I guess until there is a proper fix,
I'll just have to whittle this thing down some more.  It took a couple
minutes or so to do whatever it is doing too.  Sort of had me worried
for a minute there.  My first problem was X itself not coming up.  After
trying the usual suspects, restarting udev fixed that.  I'm not sure
what to think about that.  :/

Thanks to all.  Just wanted to give a update. 

Dale

:-)  :-)