said Gerhard Zintel:
| On Friday 02 January 2015, dep wrote:
| > said Michele Calgaro:
| > | On 12/28/2014 08:15 AM, dep wrote:
| > | > sorry to be such a bother, but as long as i'm bringing things up,
| > | > here's one that has been an issue for a couple of years and
| > | > survived into R14.
| > | >
| > | > my desktop crashes, but in such a way as to not even be noticeable
| > | > at first.
| > | >
| > | > i have in lieu of wallpaper xplanet set up as a realtime moon
| > | > phase indicator, updating hourly. the way i tell the desktop has
| > | > crashed is that it doesn't update -- in this case it last
| > | > refreshed at 10:30 a.m. yesterday. i believe that i was probably
| > | > editing pictures at that time, though would not swear to it.
| > | >
| > | > after it crashes, a right click on the desktop does not produce
| > | > the expected menu. as it happens, kicker and everything else
| > | > continues to function as expected -- in fact, it was just now that
| > | > i noticed that the desktop itself had gone south.
| > | >
| > | > i thought i'd look in the x error log, bit i see that the one i
| > | > have, ~/.xsession-errors, is of an unspecified file type and won't
| > | > open in a text editor (it reports its size as 500.0 k).
| > | >
| > | > any idea if there's a log that might let me see what's going on
| > | > here and if so what log it might be? bonus points, how i might
| > | > restart the desktop without logging out and back in? extra bonus
| > | > points, how i might fix it so it doesn't do this anymore? i'm
| > | > running some flavor of ubuntu 12.04LTS -- i say some flavor
| > | > because when i sought to upgrade a few days ago the ubuntu
| > | > upgrader refused, citing third-party apps or a beta version of the
| > | > opsys, or something; it didn't specify. i thought i had bog
| > | > standard 12.04LTS on the machine but am apparently wrong.
| > |
| > | sorry for the late reply. The desktop behavior is controlled by the
| > | kdesktop process. When your desktop stops updating, from CLI type:
| > | ps aux | grep desktop
| > | and see if there is something like:
| > | username      8414  0.4  0.7 260192 28956 pts/8    Sl   12:50   0:00
| > | kdesktop
| >
| > avahi     1973  0.0  0.0  32308  1732 ?        S     2014   0:01
| > avahi-daemon: running [dep-desktop.local]
| > dep       3200  0.0  0.1 252184 17972 ?        Sl    2014
| > 1:04 /opt/trinity/bin/kdesktop
| > dep      11289  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z     2014   0:02
| > [kdesktop_lock] <defunct>
| > dep      29758  0.0  0.0   9388   904 pts/0    S+   16:12   0:00 grep
| > desktop
| >
| > nevertheless, it hasn't updated since 10:19:53 AM 26 December. and a
| > rmb click on the desktop does not produce the expected menu.
| >
| > | If not, kdesktop has crashed. You can type:
| > | kdesktop & from CLI to restart it (or alternatively Alt-F2 and then
| > | kdesktop).
| >
| > dep@dep-desktop:~$ kdesktop is already running!
| >
| > | If this brings everything back in order, please let us know because
| > | we need some more advanced testing to understand why and where
| > | kdesktop crashed.
| >
| > fwiw, top reports 3 zombies.
|
| have you tried to kill the running kdesktop beforehand (not the
| defuncts)? I assume it runns under process number 3200. Thus:
| $ kill -9 3200
|
| and than launch kdesktop again?

this worked. i do not know if we learned anything from its having worked, 
but work it did.

thanks!
-- 
dep

The shortest distance between you and playing great acoustic guitar:
the great new instructional DVDs from Marjorie Thompson, 
available at www.MarjorieThompson.com