KActivityManager blocking unmounting

While un-mounting a partition to safely remove the external hard drive, I got an error about the device being busy. Both Dolphin and the command line said the same thing.

umount /run/media/myuser/New\ Volume/
umount: /run/media/myuser/New Volume: target is busy.

It seems kactivitymanagerd was using it.


[root@clown myuser]# fuser -vm /run/media/myuser/New\ Volume/
                    USER        PID ACCESS COMMAND
/run/media/myuser/New Volume:
                     myuser     612 ..c.. kactivitymanage


I tried to stop the daemon but I got the following error.

root@clown myuser]# /usr/bin/kactivitymanagerd
QStandardPaths: wrong ownership on runtime directory /run/user/1000, 1000 instead of 0


After some discussion on Freenode, I got to know that when graphical apps are run with escalated priviledges, similar error is found. I guessed I was getting the error because I was trying to stop the daemon as root user. I tried changing back to my regular user and stopping the daemon. It worked  and I was able to unmount the drive after that.

/usr/bin/kactivitymanagerd stop
Service stopped
Cleaning up...

Unable to locate "adwaita" theme engine

While running KDE on Arch linux, on a number of occassions, I get to see the following error.

(java:20732): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita"

[828:828:0708/183334:ERROR:browser_main_loop.cc(249)] GTK theme error: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "adwaita"

The mitigation of the issue is installation of gnome-themes-standard package.

Steam failure due to SDDM breeze theme

I installed KDE on Arch linux and as suggested I used SDDM with breeze theme. However, it seems breeze is causing issues and it is better to switch back to the default theme.

I had noticed something was off when I first logged in via SDDM. After login, the login screen did not go away; it just stayed as an app with a title bar and I could minimise it. I did not think much about it at that time.

I installed steam and it started fine. The next day when I started steam, it failed. I tried to start it from command line and I got the following error.

/home/dknight/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 161: VERSION_ID: 

unbound variable
/home/dknight/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 161: VERSION_ID: 

unbound variable
Running Steam on arch  64-bit
/home/dknight/.local/share/Steam/steam.sh: line 161: VERSION_ID: 

unbound variable
STEAM_RUNTIME is enabled automatically
Installing breakpad exception handler for appid(steam)/

version(1454620878)
libGL error: failed to open drm device: Permission denied
libGL error: failed to load driver: i965

libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so
libGL error: failed to load driver: swrast

I was not sure how to fix it so I jumped on to #archlinux channel on Freenode. A user by the handle Namarrgon took interest in my issue. During the course of discussion, I found out that there were a lot of errors with the X session. Upon his suggestion, I ran the following command.

loginctl show-session $XDG_SESSION_ID -p Active -p Remote -p Active

The output is as follows:

Remote=no
Active=no

This rang a bell as it meant the session wasn't considered active and as a result the right acl weren't set which in turn didn't allow access to /dev/dri/card0. Namarrgon suggested to log out and try using startx to start the X session. When I got a hint that loading X was might be the issue, I remembered that SDDM loads it and it was having issues. So,it might be because of SDDM. Looking at dmesg output I found the following line.

[   61.033982] sddm-greeter[360]: segfault at 30 ip 00007f67673d89bf 

sp 00007ffdb3a81180 error 4 in libKF5CoreAddons.so.5.18.0

[7f67673a4000+96000]

Upon seeing this Namarrgon, pointed out to a bug which attributed the SDDM issue to breeze theme.

Change repeat rate in awesome WM

I had noticed that when you keep a button pressed in KDE it takes less time to repeat that character than when I do the same in Awesome. To get my desired behaviour, I had to set something called the auto-repeat rate option. A quick look at the manual page [1] tells us that we can turn it off either completely r for specific buttons. We can also the delay of auto-repeat and the rate of repetition, if XFree86-Misc extension of X server is implemented. Now, I had to find the delay and repetition rate values that I felt comfortable with. So, I found out the values in my KDE environment [2]. When I tried the values in Awesome, I was back in my comfort zone with the keyboard. The last step was to set the values every time Awesome started [3] and my system was all set.

[1] To see the options, try man xset, search for the option r or the string "autorepeat".

[2] The values can be found using the following command.

xset q | grep rate

[3] In the rc.lua file, just add the following line. You might want to customize the values for yourself.

os.execute("xset r rate 220 30")

Directory size listing

A lot of times when freeing up disk space [Well yes in today's world also people like me need to do it.], instead of opening my file manager and finding the size of the folders by checking the properties section in the right-click drop-down, I wanted to look at a list view where I can sort by folder size. Now, KDE's Dolphin file manager shows number of items within a folder but not the size and I anyways prefer the command line so I wanted a command line tool that lists size of directories. The amount of space left on the partitions can be easily found by the following command:

df -h

I also found a command for directory size.

du

However, its default behaviour is to show the size of files recursively. So, I do not get the size of the folders in the directory I am interested in. Instead, I get the size of files within those folders and recursively so forth. I needed to set the depth of search into the folders. I found a parameter with a similar name. The following command works just as I need.

du --max-depth=1 -h

Apple Magic Mouse with Dell Latitude E6520

Recently, I found some free time at office and my colleague's Apple magic mouse was lying on my table. It sure is a cool device. So, I thought why not connect it to linux and see how it works. So, I turned on the bluetooth daemon on my system with the following command.

systemctl start bluetooth

I use Bluedevil. So, I clicked on the tray icon and ran a scan for bluetooth devices in range. The pairing key required is 0000. Initially the mouse pointer movement was too fast and scroll was too slow. So, I changed the configuration using this blog.

It is cool, indeed. However, I found it difficult for regular use because I am not used to it and it is a touch mouse unlike other mice. When I am moving the mouse, I have to make sure my index finger is not touching the surface, else there is unwanted scrolling.

Cleaning KDE "Open with" list

I had installed MPlayer and uninstalled it long back. However, since then KDE always showed it in the "Open With" list for media files. Just to make sure it was not installed on my system I ran

pacman -Rcus mplayer

as root. Obviously the target was not found. After some chatting on #gentoo, I resolved the issue by deleting mplayer.desktop file from ~/.local/share/applications. Along with that, I cleaned some other stale applications from that directory.

Speeding up KDM

For some time, I have been noticing that KDE Display Manager (KDM) slows down after every version bump. I was of the idea that this was because KDE was becoming bloated. However, CPU usage of KDE had started declining after version 4.4. So, I was sure that KDE was actually not getting hung up in the background any more. However, till 4.7 the KDM load time kept increasing. As a matter of fact, after the recent update, KDM became so slow that I had to restart my system twice before actually getting to KDM. In fact, during the first two restarts, I was thinking that my installation was broken after the update.


I sometimes browse through the bugzilla to check over recent bugs to find if any of them are related to me. After the update, I decided to look up bugzilla to check if I am encountering a common problem. And, Bingo! The very first bug was about KDM slowing down. There was a suggestion about updating font cache to avoid slow startup of KDM. It can be done using the following command:


fc-cache -fv


I tried it and the next time KDM was loaded very fast indeed. The bug was closed by the Arch linux maintainer with the following comment: "Some font package (maybe unofficial) doesn't run fc-cache after its installation or its removal." However, I think a deeper investigation should be made before closing the bug. I have been a number of instances in Arch linux bugzilla when the bug is closed without sufficient investigation. Arch developers pass the buck to upstream developers very fast.

Removal of hal improves boot time

I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.37, removed hal and KDE to 4.6 and experience improved boot times now.

KDE 4.6 review

I was eagerly awaiting for kde 4.6 because I would be able to remove hal from my system after installeing it. So, as soon as kde 4.6 was available on Arch linux repositories, I got it installed. I was thrilled by some features and disappointed by some others. This review is about those.

Pros:
- The first thing I noticed was faster response. It spurred my interest in finding other improvements in kde 4.6 over previous versions. I do not know the reason why I am experiencing faster response; yet it is the best feature for me.

- Finally, KDE guys have done away with HAL. My other desktop environment, Enlightenment had switched to udisks, upower etc. So, I have been waiting for KDE to get rid of it.

- ksnapshot is improved. It is allowing two nice options:
     * hide mouse; and
     * hide window decoration.

KSnapshot

- KDE 4.6 has some delights in terms of graphics. The new wallpaper by Nuno is really cool. There are icons for compiled html files (chm) and also for portable compiled format(pcf) files. There is a new pointing cursor too.

Cons:
- I found a funny problem with knotes. I had saved a note as "typing <td>"; but it was transformed to "typing ".

- There are no icons for jpeg files yet. Neither are there any icons for deja vu(djvu) files.

Distribution change

So far, I have tried various flavours of linux. I have tasted various desktop environments, stability policies, maintainance policies and packaging policies. I have tried KDE 3, KDE 4, GNOME, Enlightenment, XFCE. KDE 3 is undoubtedly "rock solid". GNOME is simple. XFCE is leaner GNOME. KDE 4 has slowed down with semantic desktop. However, much of the work is yet to be done to get back the old KDE feel. Enlightement is fast and stable; however the development is on. I like working in Enlightenment. However, I also have KDE 4.

Coming down to packaging, I have experienced .debs, .rpms and compressed source files. I also have rpm packaging experience. I would say all of them solve different purposes. They define (or may be match) the distro's policies and philosophies. For business oriented distros, rpms are a good choice. However, Debian's package management is also nice. It is a mark of their stability. Compressed source files however are the most flexible ones. Gentoo's packaging clearly reflects its philosophy of flexibility.

I had been running openSUSE for a long time now. Recently, I had decided to go for a change. I wanted to go for a rolling release as I wanted to keep at the edge of technology. Moreover, events like the okular problem inclined me towards rolling release distros.

The first option that came to my mind was Gentoo: its a lovely distro. However, I didn't have time for all the compilation so I thought of trying Arch. Distrowatch said its a lean distro that provides bleeding edge software. I downloaded the netinstall image and started my installation. After multiple Gentoo installs (successful ones), I was ready for it as soon as I had the image copied to my USB stick.

One common problem that I face while installing any distro is that my internet connection is PPPoE and not many people have it so its hard to find help regarding that. To add to it, I don't like to download unnecessary packages or large images. So, I spent some time trying to figure out how to connect during installation. Once that was done, I had a pretty smooth install. Arch linux is a nice experience. However, I miss Gentoo's community support on Arch. #gentoo is far more responsive and friendly than #archlinux. Interestingly, I solved Arch problems while talking at #gentoo.

I had KDE 4 installed on it. Then I moved on to get the latest svn snapshot of Enlightenment and installed it. Both are working fine. Arch's package management is not as flexible as portage in Gentoo. Also, sometimes you need to know your way around. For example, I had installed Ark on KDE; but was not able to unzip any of my .zip files. It was because I had installed zip with it; but not unzip. After installing unzip, its working fine.

E17 vs KDE 4.3.1 -II

After my previous post comparing E17 and KDE 4.3.1, I tried to improve performance on both environments. On KDE, I could not go below 50 degree Celsius.

However, on E17, CPU temperature easily reached to 40 degree Celsius.

I have heard criticisms against E17 that E17 has taken more than 7 years trying to produce what KDE did in less than two years [they are referring to desktop shell]. However, such criticism is quite shallow. On its release KDE lacked a lot in terms of both functionality and stability. Even now, many packages are not complete in terms of functionality. For example, Amarok 2 has a new improved look than Amarok 1.4. However, Amarok 2 lacks ipod sync functionality [not considering the circumventing solutions as they are not for normal users]. Amarok 2 music database was not stable until recently. I have had a messed music database with incorrectly matched artist names and genres. k3b is not properly maintained. Kaffeine recently had a KDE4 port. My next post shall throw more light on "poor" KDE 4.

On the other hand, E17 has not been released but does not have intentions of such premature release to put users in trouble. E17 is clear in its approach and has maintained a standard of stability and functionality [Check out the svn version to verify]. Its performance even on embedded systems is marvellous.

E17 vs KDE 4.3.1

Recently, I have started using KDE 4.3.1 after it came in Gentoo stable tree. I have been using E17 svn versions for quite some time now. I found that with E17 the cpu is relatively cooler. Of course, my benchmarking is not precise yet it shall provide you an overall view. My system is Thinkpad R60.

With KDE 4.3.1, my system starts at about 55 degree Celsius as seen above. While with E17, it starts at about 50 degree Celsius.

Interestingly, it gradually decreases to about 45 degrees while in KDE it stabilizes at the same 55 degrees.

I decided to do the usual stuff and check. So, I started music play in Amarok (yeah, I use Amarok even in E17.) and compilation. With KDE 4.3.1, temperature reached 60 degrees. While with E17, temperature was within 50 degrees.

After working on my power management, I was able to get KDE to start at about 50 degrees as shown below.

However, E17 proved better once more by starting at about 45 degrees and cooling down to even lower temperatures after that.

Firefox in KDE

Recently, I was trying to save a webpage to a USB drive from Firefox. However, each time it was writing a blank document. Initially, I thought it was some problem with my system. After a few trials, I saved the file on my desktop and copied it to the USB drive. Now this worked fine. So I decided to dig deeper.

I found out that gnome-mount is needed to write to USB sticks. Mozilla products are kind of gnome addicts. I installed gnome-mount and it worked fine after that.

I have been looking for the KDE port for about a year. Initially, I was told that Nokia is developing a Qt port of Firefox. So, it would only a matter of time to port from Qt to KDE. I am not sure what happened of that; neither am I much interested in it. Now there is a KDE port of Firefox in the development tree of Firefox. I shall await a release.

Keyboard not working

Yesterday, after starting my openSUSE 11.1, I logged into my normal user account in KDE 4.1 session. I was surprised to find that my laptop keyboard was not working. I could use the touchpad but I could not get the keyboard to work. On top of it, I was also having an online exam to take.

I logged out and retried but it did not work. Then I restarted and retried yet again in vain. I thought I should check on my keyboard as well. So I logged into an Enlightenment session and I found that my keyboard was OK. I went on with my exam.

After finishing it, I logged out logged back as root into a KDE 4.1 session and found the keyboard to be working. I figures this was because settings for that user had changed for some reason. I was quite surprised because I had not done any installs. I hadn't even deleted a file.

I connected my USB keyboard (which I had got to play games though I haven't played in about a year now) to see if it works. It didn't either. I logged back into Enlightenment, and launched Konversation and joined #opensuse-kde and #suse on Freenode. I stated my problem. After discussing for some time, though I didn't find any solution, I realized that it was a very rare situation. Then I made a post at opensuse forums and went to sleep.

Today morning, I found replies on it. One was about kwin. I knew about it from last night's discussion at IRC. Issuing the command


kwin --replace

should do it for me; at least that's what I know now. However, for that to work I need to get my keyboard working. The other reply asked me to login on command line, run sax2, select my keyboard and then run kdm and start a KDE session.

I tried this one. It worked for me. I thought I should blog about it and started writing this blog. While I was halfway through all of a sudden, i was typing but no letters appeared. Thats when I realized that the keyboard wasn't working with KDE yet again. So I saved the blog and logged out of KDE. I have completed the blog in Enlightenment but my problem stays.

Restoring default panel in KDE 4.1

I have switched to opensuse 11.1 with KDE 4.1 desktop. In KDE 4.1, while fiddling with the new desktop style, it is easy to lose the default panel, which provides easy access to various features and to which we are very much used to. Here is how we can get the default panel back.
The panel is present here.
Now its gone. Then I right clicked on the desktop and selected "Add panel" option. I got a message asking me whether I want the default panel or empty panel.