KDE4 4.10.1 issues

I grabbed a FreeBSD 8.4 CD-ROM set from FreeBSDMall last week. The installation of the system went fine, but I couldn't get the network card running right, so I dropped back to 8.3. I kept the ports that came with the 8.4 CD-ROM set and built KDE4 4.10.1 from source. It's working, but there are a couple issues I'd like to talk about.
  • The most problematic issue is the screen locker/saver is constantly crashing and restarting. It's impossible to login once that gets started. If it does start, I switch to a virtual terminal and kill X, then restart. If I know I'm going to be away from the computer for long, I logout and restart when I get back. Disabling xscreensaver thru through the xscreensaver settings dialog does not resolve the issue.
  • Virtuosso runs constantly. Before, when I was using 4.8.4, it would run for a few minutes, then stop and wait for something. Now it just runs and runs. Is there a way to see what's going on with it?
Any suggestions about what can be done about these issues?
 
Update your ports tree and see if there's anything you can update. The ports tree that comes with a -RELEASE image tends to be rather old by the time you install it.
 
Is there a program or ports make directive that will tell me what the differences are between the ports tree and what is installed?
 
I will look into Portmaster.

What I've done now is to run make package-depends-list on both the ports tree that came with 8.4 and with the current ports tree. I massaged the output a little with sort, uniq and gawk, then diffed them, i.e. diff ports-8.4.txt ports-current.txt. This is the result.

Code:
16d15
< bitstream-vera-1.10_5
44c43
< djbfft-0.76_2
---
> dejavu-2.34
47c46
< docbook-1.4
---
> docbook-1.4_1
96d94
< gio-fam-backend-2.34.3
110a109
> graphite2-1.2.3
137a137
> harfbuzz-0.9.19
155a156
> kactivitymanagerd-4.10.5
294a296
> libXxf86misc-1.0.3
383a386
> libyaml-0.1.4_2
495a499,500
> python-2.7_1,2
> python2-2
540c545
< ruby-1.8.7.371,1
---
> ruby-1.9.3.448,1
567a573
> tevent-0.9.18
594a601
> xf86miscproto-0.9.3

I'm not seeing a heck of a lot of differences. It's all additions and no version changes. The only thing that stands out to me is the addition of kactivitymanagerd, tevent, libXxf86misc. Interesting that bitstream-vera is no longer required. Anything stand out to you?
 
Ignore my last post. Apparently, package-depends-list is not picking up the version difference for kde KDE 4.10.1 in the 8.4 ports tree and 4.10.5 in the current ports tree. Docs in bsd.port.mk say it should pick up the difference, but apparently it doesn't. Lots of differences once you take that into account.
 
Look with pkg_version -vI. That'll tell you what's out of date easily.
 
Thanks. I will use that in the future. I decided to restart, so I deleted everything and rebuilt. Nearly 800 packages installed now, so I'm almost done.
 
Well... Since the rebuild, I've had a few days to play with KDE 4.10.5 and here are the results.

Virtuoso runs normally on startup while Nepomuk is indexing files, once that's finished Virtuoso goes crazy. CPU usage can easily exceed 150%. I can get it to quit using so much CPU by starting, then closing the Nepomuk backup program. Sometimes, I also have to kill the Nepomuk indexing controller.

I'm not sure if the screen saver still crashes. I found a variable in the config scripts to enable kscreensaver, so I disabled it and haven't had any trouble since.

Most, but not all, of the KDE applications are unusable. They come up blank. No data showing, no toolbar, menus that appear only when the mouse is over them. File open/save dialogs that are blank without any controls. It's impossible to get anything done with them.

Anyway, I'm thinking of dropping back down to KDE 4.8.4, 4.10.x is just not ready for prime time.
 
Similar issues with fresh install of 9.2-RELEASE and kde4

Any update on this please? I may be experiencing the same problem, hence the interest.
What I did:
  1. installed 9.2-RELEASE from the DVD ISO image
  2. pkg install xorg
  3. Configured Xorg as in 6.4 of the online FreeBSD manual
  4. pkg_add -r kde4
  5. echo "exec /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde" > ~/.xinitrc
Now, startx brings up KDE, but the menus and programs are either too slow or too unpredictable (wierd behavior, difficult to describe) to be utterly unusable. Most menu items require clicking several times to work.

Assuming the problems are the same, I'm interested in any update / solution.
If dropping back to KDE 4.8.4 is indeed the solution, then any pointer on where is should start (i.e., a pointer to a post / how-to)?

Thanks.
 
Slow and sluggish Xorg is usually an indication it's running on the vesa driver. What videocard do you have and what's Xorg using for the driver?
 
Well... I'm happy to report that I now have a working KDE 4.10.5 on FreeBSD 8.4. I reinstalled 8.4 from CDrom, managed to get the internet working by working with ifconfig and DHCP. Then I updated 8.4 to p4 using the newly discovered freebsd-update. That fixed all the internet problems. Next I updated the ports tree with portsnap and built KDE from source. Once that was completed, I ran KDE for the first time and experienced several of the same sets of problems. I quit and restarted. Fixed!... mostly. For some reason there isn't any TZDATA for the clock to find, so it's showing UTC. If I run more than one copy of Okular the controls disappear. I've been updating almost daily with portsnap and portmaster which has helped, but sometimes things break. Currently, w3m needed by git will not build. In addition, libxine and opencv will not build. Virtuosso still likes to eat cpu, but now I understand it more and know when it's doing useful work verses infinite looping. Otherwise, I'm happy. I'm planning to move on to 9.2 in November, so 6 weeks of work for 2 weeks of use. LOL.
 
SirDice said:
Slow and sluggish Xorg is usually an indication it's running on the vesa driver. What videocard do you have and what's Xorg using for the driver?
Is there a command you can use to check which driver is being used by a running Xorg?
 
I'm using an Acer TravelMate 8372 with Intel HD Graphics. No other details are known at this time.
xorg.conf has these
Code:
Section "Device"
    Identifier "Card0"
    Driver     "vesa"
    VendorName "Intel Corporation"
    BoardName  "Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller"
    BusID      "PCI:0:2:0"

/var/log/Xorg.0.log also shows that X11 is using vesa driver.

When I saw in the manual that this version autoconfigures X Display, I just went with it with a huge smile. Am returning to FreeBSD after many years, and still remember the long tedious configuration process in this part. Seems my laziness has been duly rewarded! :)
 
Grendel said:
Is there a command you can use to check which driver is being used by a running Xorg?
Not a command but it is in the logs; /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
 
kinfocenter is an application that can display system information and is part of the KDE SC. If it reboots your system when you click on graphics, you're using the KMS Intel drivers ;)
 
As pointed out above, my default installation is using vesa drivers. This, is probably hurting the usability of the system.

How do I change the driver? To what? Any help is much appreciated.
 
sas3 said:
As pointed out above, my default installation is using vesa drivers. This, is probably hurting the usability of the system.

How do I change the driver? To what? Any help is much appreciated.

Change the
Code:
Driver "vesa"
line in your previously posted Xorg configuration to read
Code:
Driver "intel"
after having installed x11-drivers/xf86-video-intel, and updated ports with
Code:
WITH_NEW_XORG=YES
in your make.conf().
 
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