[Solved] - Plasmashell frequently crashes.

[kdemeoz]

In Mint KDE i was a heavy user of multiple Desktop Effects [why bother using KDE at all, otherwise?], so i'm pretty familiar with them. KWin was certainly not 100% reliable in Mint KDE4, but it was still pretty good overall. Sadly in Maui, since i installed it "for real" on my SSD [instead of just in VB VMs, which cannot test those Effects given no 3D Acceleration], Plasmashell very frequently crashes [sometimes a dozen+ times an hour]. It's terribly disappointing & actually annoying. I really hope it gets fixed in an imminent update.

The triggers so far can be LOTS of things [including "nothing", ie, sometimes i've watched it crash with my hands off the keyboard & mouse, simply passively reading a webpage]. Initially [earlier this week, soon after i installed Maui] the action most likely to cause the crash was to display the Desktop Grid, then drag a window from one VD to another. Depressingly i've more recently also found that incredibly banal actions like clicking on the Menu Button, browsing the Menu, clicking any icons in the System Tray, etc, can also often crash it.

The one ray of sunshine is that i used to have to keep logging out & in again to recover, but luckily i eventually discovered how to make a bash script to kill then restart plasmashell, without damaging any of my open windows. Unfortunately it's not perfectly effective, as eg, nothing i've found, after the first crash of the day, will recover the audio volume control, which thereafter remains entirely blank [hence i cannot easily control music volume etc].

Is this unreliability commonplace? Does anyone have any suggestions for a solution please?

PS -- When i installed Maui "for real", ie, to my SSD not merely in VMs, i formatted Mint KDE's / partition, but reused my existing /opt & encrypted /home partitions. In hindsight i almost wish i'd also formatted /home, to blow away the Mint KDE ~/.kde folder [& maybe others too?]... i'm slightly anxious that maybe some of the legacy KDE4 config files might somehow be conflicting now with Maui's Plasma5, & maybe causing / contributing to this unhappy Plasmashell instability...? I really do hope not, because i've now spent the week installing all my pgms & tweaking Maui just to my liking, so the prospect of having to start all over again now would be very unappealing.

[fanisatt]

I had noticed plasma crashes when I had chosen the opengl 3.1 instead of the the opengl 2.0 !

[leszek]

Maybe you suffer from a bad graphics driver.
Which driver do you use for which card ?

[kdemeoz]

I had noticed plasma crashes when I had chosen the opengl 3.1 instead of the the opengl 2.0 !

Oh dear me, thank you so very much -- i wanna have your babies!! Yes, it seems you are correct for my problem as well as yours. I read your reply late last night, thought "Aha, that's interesting", changed the Compositor setting from OpenGL 3.1 to OpenGL 2.0 as you suggested, & then watched to see if Maui would become better. Initially it stayed just as bad, so i logged out & in again, but it still seemed no better. Then i rebooted, & after that, last night & so far for all four hours using my pc non-stop today, KWin / Plasmashell has not crashed even once!!!

Unfortunately it's impossible to say with certainty if the apparent solution was 100% from this Compositor Rendering change only, because as well as reading your reply last night, i also read leszek's reply [see my separate reply]. 

When i recently installed Maui i deliberately chose OpenGL 3.1 for two reasons:

1. I [stupidly?] assumed that "newer = better".
   
2. In my Mint 17.3 KDE4, which i'd recently upgraded to Maui, i had used this OpenGL 3.1 setting & it seemed to work well [mostly, albeit occasionally Mint would completely freeze when i displayed the Desktop Grid & dragged a window between VDs, requiring a reboot -- it never occurred to me that maybe the cause might have been that setting].
   

Since changing this setting in Maui, as i said there's been no more of those annoying Plasmashell crashes, but sometimes when again displaying the Desktop Grid & dragging a window between VDs, the screen flashes & Plasmashell clearly seems unhappy, but so far everytime it has recovered without crashing. I sincerely hope this much improved behaviour continues for a very long time.

Thank you very much.

[kdemeoz]

Maybe you suffer from a bad graphics driver.
Which driver do you use for which card ?

Aha, that's interesting! 

   

   

When i checked this last night, i was surprised to see that initially the Nouveau driver seemed to be in use, despite me originally setting the latest NVidia driver as active. I changed it back to NVidia, then soon after [as indicated in my reply to fanisatt i rebooted. Today [so far?] it has not changed itself back again. 

As i said in my other reply, i can't say if the MAJOR IMPROVEMENT in Plasmashell stability i'm now enjoying, is due to the OpenGL downgrade, or the Driver change, or both. Though it would be nice to know for certain, the important & happy news is that now my Maui is once again behaving really nicely, & is very pleasant to use. 

Thank you for your ongoing help.

[fanisatt]

I had noticed plasma crashes when I had chosen the opengl 3.1 instead of the the opengl 2.0 !

Oh dear me, thank you so very much -- i wanna have your babies!! Yes, it seems you are correct for my problem as well as yours. I read your reply late last night, thought "Aha, that's interesting", changed the Compositor setting from OpenGL 3.1 to OpenGL 2.0 as you suggested, & then watched to see if Maui would become better. Initially it stayed just as bad, so i logged out & in again, but it still seemed no better. Then i rebooted, & after that, last night & so far for all four hours using my pc non-stop today, KWin / Plasmashell has not crashed even once!!!

Unfortunately it's impossible to say with certainty if the apparent solution was 100% from this Compositor Rendering change only, because as well as reading your reply last night, i also read leszek's reply [see my separate reply]. 

When i recently installed Maui i deliberately chose OpenGL 3.1 for two reasons:

1. I [stupidly?] assumed that "newer = better".
   
2. In my Mint 17.3 KDE4, which i'd recently upgraded to Maui, i had used this OpenGL 3.1 setting & it seemed to work well [mostly, albeit occasionally Mint would completely freeze when i displayed the Desktop Grid & dragged a window between VDs, requiring a reboot -- it never occurred to me that maybe the cause might have been that setting].
   

Since changing this setting in Maui, as i said there's been no more of those annoying Plasmashell crashes, but sometimes when again displaying the Desktop Grid & dragging a window between VDs, the screen flashes & Plasmashell clearly seems unhappy, but so far everytime it has recovered without crashing. I sincerely hope this much improved behaviour continues for a very long time.

Thank you very much.

Your welcome my friend !

[fanisatt]

I had noticed plasma crashes when I had chosen the opengl 3.1 instead of the the opengl 2.0 !

Oh dear me, thank you so very much -- i wanna have your babies!! Yes, it seems you are correct for my problem as well as yours. I read your reply late last night, thought "Aha, that's interesting", changed the Compositor setting from OpenGL 3.1 to OpenGL 2.0 as you suggested, & then watched to see if Maui would become better. Initially it stayed just as bad, so i logged out & in again, but it still seemed no better. Then i rebooted, & after that, last night & so far for all four hours using my pc non-stop today, KWin / Plasmashell has not crashed even once!!!

Unfortunately it's impossible to say with certainty if the apparent solution was 100% from this Compositor Rendering change only, because as well as reading your reply last night, i also read leszek's reply [see my separate reply]. 

When i recently installed Maui i deliberately chose OpenGL 3.1 for two reasons:

1. I [stupidly?] assumed that "newer = better".
   
2. In my Mint 17.3 KDE4, which i'd recently upgraded to Maui, i had used this OpenGL 3.1 setting & it seemed to work well [mostly, albeit occasionally Mint would completely freeze when i displayed the Desktop Grid & dragged a window between VDs, requiring a reboot -- it never occurred to me that maybe the cause might have been that setting].
   

Since changing this setting in Maui, as i said there's been no more of those annoying Plasmashell crashes, but sometimes when again displaying the Desktop Grid & dragging a window between VDs, the screen flashes & Plasmashell clearly seems unhappy, but so far everytime it has recovered without crashing. I sincerely hope this much improved behaviour continues for a very long time.

Thank you very much.

Your welcome my friend !

I have just tried again the opengl 3.1 setting and this time I have no plasma crashes (so far....) Perhaps you may try again this setting too !! 

[fanisatt]

I have just tried again the opengl 3.1 setting and this time I have no plasma crashes (so far....) Perhaps you may try again this setting too !!

[kdemeoz]

Aha, thank you! I actually had tried, once or twice, with 3.1 once our Plasma became 5.8.0 & then most recently 5.8.2, but i kept reverting to 2.0 as a precaution (i suppose i was scared it might crash again]. But now, reading your post, i have again set it to 3.1. Fingers crossed that it will be good now for us all :-)

[fanisatt]

Aha, thank you! I actually had tried, once or twice, with 3.1 once our Plasma became 5.8.0 & then most recently 5.8.2, but i kept reverting to 2.0 as a precaution (i suppose i was scared it might crash again]. But now, reading your post, i have again set it to 3.1. Fingers crossed that it will be good now for us all  :-)