Black screen

hchiper · 2024-08-21 13:01

Unfortunately the problem happens repeatedly. The last time is when I tried to add an entry in App Launcher Favorites.
And it seems nearly impossible to get rid of kactivitymanager.

q4osteam · 2024-08-21 13:24

So, you could try to clean the cache in complete:
- Log out from Plasma session
- Log in to tty console terminal
$ cd $HOME
$ rm -rf .local/share/kactivitymanagerd
$ rm -rf .cache/ .cachekde/
$ mkdir .cache/ .cachekde/
- Reboot
You need to take this action in console terminal, when the user is logged out from Plasma session.

Last edited by q4osteam (2024-08-21 13:25)

hchiper · 2024-08-21 14:04

Done. Tried again to place VS Code in App Launcher favorites. Typed 'code' letter by letter (interval ~ 2 s):
- c: OK
- o: VS Code and 2 other apps appeared in a list
- d: ... black screen :,-(

Plasma is very nice when it works, but awful (or impossible) to repair. So many things seem intricated: if I try sudo apt autoremove --dry-run kactivitymanager I see so many other packages that are being uninstalled that almost nothing of Plasma would subsist.

If I have to reinstall, which seems more and more likely, I wonder whether I'll stick to Plasma or choose Trinity, which I have no experience with.

Edit:
Also tried by navigating through the hierarchy to the app shortcut, right click, add to favorites. No crash, but nothing added to the favorites.

Last edited by hchiper (2024-08-21 14:34)

q4osteam · 2024-08-21 14:32

This bug looks more and more like a Plasma's one. It obviously shows under some circumstances, but we have no idea what they could be. Unfortunately, we don't have any reference about this issue and thus a solution. If you would install Q4OS 5, there is a chance this bug will be resolved there. As you are accustomed to Plasma, we recommend you to stick with. In anyway you can install Trinity as a second desktop and try as it comes.

We are not able to reproduce and investigate this issue, so we have the only reference to indirect descriptions and logs. We are still unsure, if this issue is a system or user level one. If this is at pure user level problem, you can just create a new user, add to sudo group and make him the primary one. So you would only need to setup user's profile and copy data needed. It is possible we will discover the root of this bug and apply a fix for the first user in a future. This fix can be very simple, as it usually is.

Last edited by q4osteam (2024-08-21 14:39)

q4osteam · 2024-08-21 17:07

Please try to clear Activities history:
System settings > Workspace behavior > Activities > Privacy > Clear history

q4osteam · 2024-08-21 17:09

An interesting essay about Kactivities https://www.howtogeek.com/be-more-produ … ctivities/

hchiper · 2024-08-21 21:20

q4osteam wrote:

Please try to clear Activities history:
System settings > Workspace behavior > Activities > Privacy > Clear history

Same black screen after the same letter d (I typed more slowly).

hchiper · 2024-08-21 21:27

q4osteam wrote:

An interesting essay about Kactivities https://www.howtogeek.com/be-more-produ … ctivities/

Powerful and interesting ... if it could work here. Tried to create a new activity or to give a name to the one present by default and nothing changes. Exactly the same behavior as some months ago with my other laptop.

hchiper · 2024-08-21 21:45

q4osteam wrote:

This bug looks more and more like a Plasma's one. It obviously shows under some circumstances, but we have no idea what they could be. Unfortunately, we don't have any reference about this issue and thus a solution. If you would install Q4OS 5, there is a chance this bug will be resolved there. As you are accustomed to Plasma, we recommend you to stick with. In anyway you can install Trinity as a second desktop and try as it comes.
We are not able to reproduce and investigate this issue, so we have the only reference to indirect descriptions and logs. We are still unsure, if this issue is a system or user level one. If this is at pure user level problem, you can just create a new user, add to sudo group and make him the primary one. So you would only need to setup user's profile and copy data needed. It is possible we will discover the root of this bug and apply a fix for the first user in a future. This fix can be very simple, as it usually is.

I think I'll give up and either reinstall or give a try to Trinity. I think also of a problem with Plasma or at least with system requirements for it (CPU instructions, or something like that, I'm on a Pentium T4200).

If I reinstall, I hesitate between Q4OS 4 that comes with Python 3.9 and Q4OS 5 with Python 3.12 (not totally sure) but with this new version it is no more possible to add packages with pip install outside a venv (otherwise we get a severe warning about config integrity an possible conflicts). On the other hand, with the time there will be no more choice.

I can't terminate without thanking you a lot for the time you spent and your invaluable effort to help.

hchiper · 2024-08-22 10:33

To be sure, I booted from the live image of Gemini Plasma 4.12.1-n1 and tried Activities.
Worked well, so there is no CPU incompatibility.
I just saw a file ~/.config/kactivitymanagerd/resources/error.log with this content:

2024-08-22T09:52:04 error: near ".": syntax error Impossible d'exécuter l'instruction

Also noticed the possibility to deactivate activities history. Will do it next time. I didn't discover where it is useful. My history database had more than 30 k entries.

Last edited by hchiper (2024-08-22 10:33)

q4osteam · 2024-08-22 10:57

hchiper wrote:

... I booted from the live image of Gemini Plasma 4.12.1-n1 and tried Activities. Worked well, so there is no CPU incompatibility.

Yes, activities in Plasma work fine in general. It started to crash on your systems after some period of use. So there must be some common trigger mechanism specific to your case, as other users don't notice such issues. Maybe some specific application, filled cache, or some other conditions started activities daemon to crash. We may only need to find out how to clear out some cache and your system would work as usual.

q4osteam · 2024-08-22 11:02

Would you attach the file ~/.config/kactivitymanagerd/resources/error.log please ? Or better the complete "~/.config/kactivitymanagerd/" folder, you could ship it via e-mail develop@q4os.org too.

Last edited by q4osteam (2024-08-22 11:04)

hchiper · 2024-08-22 12:15

q4osteam wrote:

Would you attach the file ~/.config/kactivitymanagerd/resources/error.log please ? Or better the complete "~/.config/kactivitymanagerd/" folder, you could ship it via e-mail develop@q4os.org too.

Sorry, I meant ~/.local/share/... and not ~/.config/...

Which data do you need: those from my live session or those from my installed version?
In the live session, error.log contained only one line (copied/pasted it in the post above).
In my installed version, I have deleted them.
But I have retrieved those from my other laptop where I had similar problems (version 4 of Q4OS too). The .tgz is 1.1 Mio; interested in?

q4osteam · 2024-08-22 14:12

hchiper wrote:

But I have retrieved those from my other laptop where I had similar problems (version 4 of Q4OS too). The .tgz is 1.1 Mio; interested in?

Yes, we would try to analyze data from the erroneous system.

q4osteam · 2024-09-02 10:04

q4osteam wrote:

Yes, we would try to analyze data from the erroneous system.

Unfortunately, we cannot see anything determinative in the "database" file. Did you find some more clues about this Plasma "activities" issue ? Does a fresh user account work properly ? If so, you could add it to the appropriate system groups: "adm,sudo,dip,netdev,bluetooth,lpadmin,scanner,systemd-journal" and use it as the default user account, until we find a fix.

q4osteam · 2024-09-04 15:44

If it's possible, make desktop unusable (black screen) again for any user, log in to plasma desktop, and try to run in terminal under the user account affected:
$ kactivities-cli --no-bare --list-activities
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager
$ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager
and post back the output.

Last edited by q4osteam (2024-09-04 15:56)

hchiper · 2024-09-04 22:28

Sorry, I don't understand well the beginning of the procedure: I couldn't log in to Plasma desktop after making something to get the screen black because I need to be already logged in to cause the black screen. Can you please explain?

Just to see, I have already issued each of the commands while the screen was normal. Something maybe worth to note:

$ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so: undefined symbol: sqlite3_column_table_name16

I had downloaded sqlite3 source, built and installed recent versions (./configure, make, make install). Could it be a problem? I'm pretty sure that at first, sqlite3 was not installed. I tried to install from the repositories but that version was lacking features (right join) so I looked at more recent versions sources.
If you need to check, /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so dates from 28 avr 22:48 ans is 73312 bytes.

q4osteam · 2024-09-04 23:08

hchiper wrote:

.. Can you please explain? ..

We need to log in to Plasma desktop while the black screen is present, so you see the black screen. Now, run mentioned commands in konsole terminal, if konsole could be started somehow. It this is not possible, switch to console terminal ctrl-alt-f2 and run the commands there.

However the

"/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so: undefined symbol: sqlite3_column_table_name16"

message seems to be the clue, we will evaluate possible debugging and post back how to continue.

hchiper · 2024-09-05 08:23

In my everyday account, I provoked the black screen, logged out and logged in: the normal desktop with wallpaper (no black) was back there.
But when I logged in with the test1 account, I had the black screen.
I have made a little script with the commands you mentioned to redirect the output to a .txt file for each of these users. Please see attachments.

Last edited by hchiper (2024-09-05 08:26)

Attachments:

q4os.sh, Size: 170 B, Downloads: 54

q4os-laurent-wallpaper.txt, Size: 390 B, Downloads: 37

q4os-test1-black.txt, Size: 390 B, Downloads: 32

hchiper · 2024-09-05 08:42

q4osteam wrote:

However the
"/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so: undefined symbol: sqlite3_column_table_name16"
message seems to be the clue, we will evaluate possible debugging and post back how to continue.

I searched for that error and found this old post. It seems qt5 is involved. I did install qt5 components to compile gnuplot from sources. I don't remember which components precisely (installed one by one each time a new compilation error / missing package appeared). Always installed from repositories. But that was a long time before the black screen problem happened.

In the response at the end of the thread, the folder /usr/local/lib is mentioned. The content of mine is

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root     4096 27 jui 18:12 pkgconfig
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root     4096 21 nov  2021 python3.9
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22866028 27 jui 18:12 libsqlite3.a
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      982 27 jui 18:12 libsqlite3.la
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       19 27 jui 18:12 libsqlite3.so -> libsqlite3.so.0.8.6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       19 27 jui 18:12 libsqlite3.so.0 -> libsqlite3.so.0.8.6
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  8932776 27 jui 18:12 libsqlite3.so.0.8.6
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root      185  3 jui 14:45 run_qdflman

I compiled only the executable of sqlite3, not the libraries (.a or .so).

Last edited by hchiper (2024-09-05 09:00)

q4osteam · 2024-09-05 09:13

Please run:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade
and post output of commands:
$ md5sum /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so
$ nm -gD /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so

q4osteam · 2024-09-05 09:20

As a simple test, you can also temporarily remove the /usr/local/lib/* files, reboot, login to Plasma and post the output:
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager
$ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager

hchiper · 2024-09-05 12:50

q4osteam wrote:

Please run:
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt full-upgrade
and post output of commands:
$ md5sum /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so
$ ldd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so
$ nm -gD /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so

$ md5sum /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so
faf3abb3e66461af9b5ea0408a424261 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/qt5/plugins/sqldrivers/libqsqlite.so

Outputs of ldd and nm in attachment

Last edited by hchiper (2024-09-05 12:50)

Attachments:

ldd.txt, Size: 1.43 KiB, Downloads: 30

nm.txt, Size: 13.19 KiB, Downloads: 31

hchiper · 2024-09-05 13:06

q4osteam wrote:

As a simple test, you can also temporarily remove the /usr/local/lib/* files, reboot, login to Plasma and post the output:
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager
$ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager

$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager
laurent      831     659  0 14:03 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
laurent     1392    1132  0 14:04 pts/1    00:00:00 grep kactivitymanager
$ /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
$ ps -ef | grep kactivitymanager
laurent      831     659  0 14:03 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/kactivitymanagerd
laurent     1401    1132  0 14:05 pts/1    00:00:00 grep kactivitymanager

And now, "Add to favorites" works in the application launcher. A good point.
And I can type anew more than 2 letters in the search bar of the app launcher without falling in the black screen.
And from the desktop I can type anew letters of an app name and krunner (if it is is name) detects it.
And the default activity appears with its name "Default" and I can create new activities

Now tying to understand if /usr/local/lib content is totally useless or if I need to keep some of its content.

Last edited by hchiper (2024-09-05 13:33)

q4osteam · 2024-09-05 13:20

Well, /usr/local/lib/libsqlite3* files has been added in a non system way, they are not part of the proper Apt driven filesystem. Since you remove them, the system should work fine, however the linked libraries might corrupted system some other unknown way.

That seems to be a culprit of these woes.

Last edited by q4osteam (2024-09-05 13:21)

Q4OS Forum

#26 2024-08-21 13:01

Re: Black screen

#27 2024-08-21 13:24

Re: Black screen

#28 2024-08-21 14:04

Re: Black screen

#29 2024-08-21 14:32

Re: Black screen

#30 2024-08-21 17:07

Re: Black screen

#31 2024-08-21 17:09

Re: Black screen

#32 2024-08-21 21:20

Re: Black screen

#33 2024-08-21 21:27

Re: Black screen

#34 2024-08-21 21:45

Re: Black screen

#35 2024-08-22 10:33

Re: Black screen

#36 2024-08-22 10:57

Re: Black screen

#37 2024-08-22 11:02

Re: Black screen

#38 2024-08-22 12:15

Re: Black screen

#39 2024-08-22 14:12

Re: Black screen

#40 2024-09-02 10:04

Re: Black screen

#41 2024-09-04 15:44

Re: Black screen

#42 2024-09-04 22:28

Re: Black screen

#43 2024-09-04 23:08

Re: Black screen

#44 2024-09-05 08:23

Re: Black screen

#45 2024-09-05 08:42

Re: Black screen

#46 2024-09-05 09:13

Re: Black screen

#47 2024-09-05 09:20

Re: Black screen

#48 2024-09-05 12:50

Re: Black screen

#49 2024-09-05 13:06

Re: Black screen

#50 2024-09-05 13:20

Re: Black screen

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