Ksplash crash [solved]

[Electraglider]

Hi everybody, Long time Windose user, brand newbie Linux user here. Unless you count thinking about using Linux, in which case I’m a long time almost Linux user. Somwhere buried in the following post is an actual technical “help me” question.

 

As with many current and potential Linux users, my main reason for holding off on running Linux until now has been Quicken. My whole financial life is on Quicken, for good or bad. I recently decided to start checking into Linux compatible financial software again and came across a couple that sounded promising and in the search I also stumbled across Crossover Office and the WINE project. Now I finally feel I have the means whereby I can leave the windose world behind and venture into something new.

 

I chose Mandriva for several reasons, one of which was the inclusion of GnuCash, giving me the opportunity to check that out without having to download something else. There were other reasons beside that but that is neither here nor there. I’m sure there are other distros out there as good or better that also include GnuCash.

 

But I digress. After having made my decision as to which distro I should use I found a decent price on the download version of Mandriva 10.1 on CD through some outfit called Edmunds something or other. The arrival of which I waited for with bated breath. I bought the CD’s for the simple reason that I’m on a dialup. Need I say more?

 

My first venture into the Linux world wasn’t pretty. I was running a Compaq Presario of ancient vintage and questionable lineage, that I had been using for a backup computer for my main computer. Backup in the sense that I was backing up files to it. It was loaded with win2k and I figured if it could run that it sure as hell should be able to run Linux. Well, to make a long story short, I got it up and running much to my satisfaction but, I had to load it with the text install because the graphics hardware could not handle even the basic vgalo install. That took me roughly 3 hours one evening after work.I did the best I could and answered all the questions. When I got to the video graphics driver part I was favorably impressed with the fact that my driver was on the list. After reboot, everything worked as advertised and I had an immediate sense of inherent operating system stability. Don’t ask me why. Probably psychological, or just psycho.

 

I’m not using that computer anymore. The very next day I was relating my venture into the Linux world to a friend of mine who informed me that, had he known I was interested in Linux he would have given me a system that he had been playing with a few years back using Red Hat. Only he had just given it all away. However, he did have a computer he had inherited from his brother that he didn’t know what to do with and would I like that? So….whew, this is getting longer than I thought…. Anyway, the computer turned out to be an AMD Duron 800 MHZ with 128 Megs Ram, 40 gig HD and a Diamond Stealth III with 16 MB Ram video card. Aha! Now I had something. So out went the Compaq and in came the AMD. I loaded up Mandriva and it took only about 20 minutes or so using the GUI install, to be looking at my new KDE desktop. I bought another 256 Meg of RAM and now it’s great.

 

So what’s the problem you ask? And, “it’s about time” you add. Actually, now…. nothing. I had to reinstall the whole thing all over again to fix it. But I was thinking that maybe someone else out there has had the same thing happen and found another way to fix it besides reinstalling the whole thing again. I did search this board in a vain attempt to see if someone had posted something similar and either through my lack of search criteria or no one actually had the problem, I never found it.

 

So here it is. After I had gotten everything loaded nicely and it was ticking along like a Swiss watch, I decided to see what was available as far as personal desktop configuration and eye candy. You know, backgrounds, screen savers fonts etc. etc. To the best of my recollection I was playing around with the different desktop themes when all of a sudden I got an application crash warning about something called ksplash and that I should contact the programmer about a bug. Further, there was a tab that said backtrace so I clicked on it. Oh s__t!!!! what’s all this stuff? Anyway, not having a clue as to what just happened, I closed the debugger down and that’s when I noticed that all my KDE desktop and menu icons were wiped out. Upon further experimentation I discovered that there were certain applications that would slow the system to a crawl. Specifically, Konqueror and certain text editors. Maybe all of them I don’t know. On the good side, I learned in a hurry about some of the troubleshooting techniques available to me. And I found this forum.

 

To continue, I discovered that the Gnome desktop was unaffected but the applications would still slow the system to a crawl. You know how the mouse just jumps in little spurts when you move it as the CPU gets time to move it? Upon starting the Gnome system monitor and running one of the offending apps, it was apparent that X was using all the CPU resources in an attempt to open the application, or whatever it was trying to do. In pursuing the problem further I ran across lots of other things, one of which was that every time I booted up I would get the crash warning about ksplash. I found out what ksplash was and found out how to keep it from starting. I no longer got the crash warning and the bug report but I didn’t get my desktop back and the system continued to crawl upon trying to open the aforementioned apps. Apparently the damage had already been done. Except for that I was able to move around pretty much as usual.

 

So, here I am with a freshly installed system but I’m a bit gun shy about poking around with settings and configurations. I am thinking about preventing the splash screen from coming up again and maybe heading off a repeat of the last incident.

 

Has this happened to anybody else out there? If so, were you able to fix it? And does anybody know if commenting out the ksplash line in the startkde file would prevent it from happening in the first place?

 

Sorry about the long winded preamble to my issue but I thought I should give it a little background rather than just jumping right in there with a HELP!!!!! I’m a Linux newbie dummy and could somebody please take pity on me?

[ianw1974]

I can't say I've ever seen a problem like that. What you can do if everything disappears, and you can't restart normally, is press CTRl-ALT-BACKSPACE. This will exit X, and restart it so you can log in again, and hopefully get your desktop back.

 

If not, you can at least restart normally. Another option is pressing CTRL-ALT-F1 to get a console command line. You can then log in, and type reboot to restart the system.

 

The reason why I've probably not seen it is because I tend to apply all updates to the system before using it. It could be that there was a problem noted, and fixed by an update. This probably not helpful though if only on dialup, but if you have access to a fast connection, this would be better to get the updates installed.

 

Oh, and welcome to the board

[devries]

If you are not logged in as root the only files you can damage are your own and not the system files. Always run Linux as normal user. The config files for your kde session are saved in /home/your name/.kde (a hidden folder). If something goes wrong just delete the settings and restart kde.

[AussieJohn]

Here is a suggestion and it is not a joke.

I expect that at the moment that you don't have any important data in your Mandriva yet.

Because it only takes about 30 to 40 minutes to do it, do a complete reinstall of Mandriva and then most importantly set up easy-urpmi to enable you to use MCC (Mandriva Control Centre) to download the latest updates and bug fixes for your particular version. Even with dial-up it will still be worth it. If dia-up is a problem, get your discs supplier to send you an errata disc which will have all the updates and fixes for your version.

Actually you have a fairly old version and one which was known for more than a few bugs but these were fixed by updates.

 

You can contact me via PM if you wish and I will send you a set of the Mandriva 2005-LE discs. This version is pretty well acclaimed as the best yet being extremely stable and almost no bugs.

Just give me your postal address and I can burn and send the discs within a few days.

 

The last set I sent to canada in the last week of October took approx 2 weeks.

 

Cheers. John.

[daniewicz]

Very nice of you to volunteer in this way AussieJohn. I am impressed.

[ianw1974]

Very nice of you to volunteer in this way AussieJohn. I am impressed.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Me too :P

[Electraglider]

Thanks everybody for your input. Sorry about the long winded intro but once I got statrted I couldn't stop. Besides, you all know how hard it is to decide where to begin. Thanks very much too AussieJohn for your offer. I'm short on time at the moment but I'll get back you on that.

 

I'll take all the comments made herein to heart.

 

E'glider

[AussieJohn]

Hello Electraglider.

Have despached the cdrom set of Mandriva2005-LE at Midday today, Friday25th., November. It crosses the Pacific by Air so you should get it fairly quickly.

Do not send replacement cd-r discs. Instead if you find someone who wants to join our Linux world and Mandriva in particular, then burn them a copy of the discs for them and ask them to do the same in turn etc.

 

Please let me know when you receive it OK.

 

Cheers. John.

[AussieJohn]

Electraglider informs me that he has received the cdrom set.

 

Not bad huh, just 6 days from Australia.

 

Cheers. John.