[gentoo-user] Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[gentoo-user] Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Paul Hartman]

Hi, I recently upgraded my kernel to 2.6.35.1 and my KDE to 4.5. After
rebooting, I have some weird, possibly unrelated issues:

During bootup, boot process hangs on "waiting for uevents" for ~30
seconds or so. I don't remember this ever happening before. As far as
I can tell everything still works fine, it just delays the boot
process a lot.

In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
slowdown problem.

Anyone else had those same problems or know what I might try? I'm
using nvidia-drivers and tried 3 different versions with no success. I
have not yet tried downgrading my kernel or KDE installation, but
that's next on the list of things to try tonight.

Re: [gentoo-user] Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Thomas Yao]

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On Fri, Aug 13, 2010 at 12:24 AM, Paul Hartman <
paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@gmail.com>> wrote:

> Hi, I recently upgraded my kernel to 2.6.35.1 and my KDE to 4.5. After
> rebooting, I have some weird, possibly unrelated issues:
>
> During bootup, boot process hangs on "waiting for uevents" for ~30
> seconds or so. I don't remember this ever happening before. As far as
> I can tell everything still works fine, it just delays the boot
> process a lot.
>
> In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
> first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
> to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
> touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
> It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
> unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
> momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
> desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
> briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
> slowdown problem.
>
> Anyone else had those same problems or know what I might try? I'm
> using nvidia-drivers and tried 3 different versions with no success. I
> have not yet tried downgrading my kernel or KDE installation, but
> that's next on the list of things to try tonight.
>
>
I have no problem with my kernel upgraded today earlier and I didn't have my
KDE upgraded cuz so far I found 4.5 is a buggy version.
Maybe you should downgrade to 4.4.5 and wait for a stable version of 4.5.x.

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[gentoo-user] Re: Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 08/12/2010 07:24 PM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>[...]
> In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
> first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
> to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
> touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
> It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
> unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
> momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
> desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
> briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
> slowdown problem.
>
> Anyone else had those same problems or know what I might try? I'm
> using nvidia-drivers and tried 3 different versions with no success. I
> have not yet tried downgrading my kernel or KDE installation, but
> that's next on the list of things to try tonight.

I suppose you're running a complete ~arch system, not just some packages?

Also, I had a somewhat similar problem with GUI slowness.  It was a 
matter of disabling the "Use VSync" checkbox in System Settings->Desktop 
Effects->Advanced tab and enabling the "Disable functionality checks" 
box in the same tab.  Note that the desktop and all apps will keep being 
tear-free and VSynced even if making those changes in System Settings.

Furthermore, I've set:

   CheckIsSafe=false

in my ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc

After all that, KDE 4.5.0 runs perfectly for me using 
gentoo-sources-2.6.35-r1, xorg-server-1.8.99.905, and the following live 
(9999) packages:

media-libs/mesa
x11-proto/glproto
x11-proto/dri2proto
x11-libs/libdrm
x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati

Using KMS.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> On 08/12/2010 07:24 PM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
>> first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
>> to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
>> touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
>> It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
>> unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
>> momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
>> desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
>> briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
>> slowdown problem.
>>
>> Anyone else had those same problems or know what I might try? I'm
>> using nvidia-drivers and tried 3 different versions with no success. I
>> have not yet tried downgrading my kernel or KDE installation, but
>> that's next on the list of things to try tonight.
>
> I suppose you're running a complete ~arch system, not just some packages?

Yep

> Also, I had a somewhat similar problem with GUI slowness.  It was a matter
> of disabling the "Use VSync" checkbox in System Settings->Desktop
> Effects->Advanced tab and enabling the "Disable functionality checks" box in
> the same tab.  Note that the desktop and all apps will keep being tear-free
> and VSynced even if making those changes in System Settings.
>
> Furthermore, I've set:
>
>  CheckIsSafe=false
>
> in my ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc
>
> After all that, KDE 4.5.0 runs perfectly for me using
> gentoo-sources-2.6.35-r1, xorg-server-1.8.99.905, and the following live
> (9999) packages:
>
> media-libs/mesa
> x11-proto/glproto
> x11-proto/dri2proto
> x11-libs/libdrm
> x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati
>
> Using KMS.

Thanks for the tips, I'll experiment tonight and see what I can make it do.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Nikos Chantziaras <realnc@arcor.de> wrote:
> On 08/12/2010 07:24 PM, Paul Hartman wrote:
>>
>> [...]
>> In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
>> first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
>> to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
>> touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
>> It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
>> unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
>> momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
>> desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
>> briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
>> slowdown problem.
>>
>> Anyone else had those same problems or know what I might try? I'm
>> using nvidia-drivers and tried 3 different versions with no success. I
>> have not yet tried downgrading my kernel or KDE installation, but
>> that's next on the list of things to try tonight.
>
> I suppose you're running a complete ~arch system, not just some packages?
>
> Also, I had a somewhat similar problem with GUI slowness.  It was a matter
> of disabling the "Use VSync" checkbox in System Settings->Desktop
> Effects->Advanced tab and enabling the "Disable functionality checks" box in
> the same tab.  Note that the desktop and all apps will keep being tear-free
> and VSynced even if making those changes in System Settings.
>
> Furthermore, I've set:
>
>  CheckIsSafe=false
>
> in my ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc
>
> After all that, KDE 4.5.0 runs perfectly for me using
> gentoo-sources-2.6.35-r1, xorg-server-1.8.99.905, and the following live
> (9999) packages:
>
> media-libs/mesa
> x11-proto/glproto
> x11-proto/dri2proto
> x11-libs/libdrm
> x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati
>
> Using KMS.

I'm using nvidia-drivers, and didn't try the -9999 version of those
last few packages but otherwise tried the rest of your suggestion.
Tried also upgrading to qt-4.7.0_beta2 but still having the freezing
problems. It happens even without desktop effects enabled, just plain
2D mode. So it seems something is just not right... will keep
experimenting.

[gentoo-user] Re: Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I recently upgraded my kernel to 2.6.35.1 and my KDE to 4.5. After
> rebooting, I have some weird, possibly unrelated issues:

This is partially solved, and was not KDE related at all afterall. I
did suffer the same slowdown in Gnome, XFCE, LXDE and KDE.

> In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
> first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
> to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
> touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
> It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
> unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
> momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
> desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
> briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
> slowdown problem.

I downgraded to kernel 2.6.34.3 and everything runs smoothly again. No
more hangs or sluggishness. It would seem that something in 2.6.35
series kernels does not like my computer, or something in my computer
does not like 2.6.35 series kernels.

Based on LKML lurking I guess I'll need to learn how to git bisect the
kernel and prepare myself for many reboot cycles. Either that or keep
using old kernel and hope my problem is fixed either on purpose or by
accident in future kernel releases.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[pk]

On 2010-08-14 10:36, Paul Hartman wrote:

> I downgraded to kernel 2.6.34.3 and everything runs smoothly again. No
> more hangs or sluggishness. It would seem that something in 2.6.35
> series kernels does not like my computer, or something in my computer
> does not like 2.6.35 series kernels.

Not sure if this is related (esp. since you have an nvidia card using
proprietary drivers) but it may provide some insights to your problem:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16265

Best regards

Peter K

[gentoo-user] Re: Extraordinarily laggy UI, keyboard, udev weirdness, KDE 4.5

[Paul Hartman]

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I recently upgraded my kernel to 2.6.35.1 and my KDE to 4.5. After
> rebooting, I have some weird, possibly unrelated issues:
>
> During bootup, boot process hangs on "waiting for uevents" for ~30
> seconds or so. I don't remember this ever happening before. As far as
> I can tell everything still works fine, it just delays the boot
> process a lot.
>
> In X the UI responsiveness randomly goes bad, keyboard especially. At
> first it'll be fine, then simply using Konsole and typing will begin
> to slow down. Also, screen output in general seems to freeze until I
> touch the mouse or keyboard. Even something like listing a directory.
> It's really weird... It gets so bad that it becomes completely
> unresponsive, freezing for minutes at a tie. It eventually un-freezes
> momentarily, long enough to logout and back in at least. I disabled
> desktop effects but it still had the same problem. I tried Gnome
> briefly last night before going to sleep and didn't experience this
> slowdown problem.
>
> Anyone else had those same problems or know what I might try? I'm
> using nvidia-drivers and tried 3 different versions with no success. I
> have not yet tried downgrading my kernel or KDE installation, but
> that's next on the list of things to try tonight.

FYI last night I upgraded to kernel 2.6.35.5 and everything seems to
be working normally, so I guess whatever caused my problems has been
solved. I still have long "waiting on uevents" at boot time, but I
guess it's normal and was unrelated, and I usually only boot once
every few months so it's not a big deal. :)

Thanks,
Paul