Re: [gentoo-user] KDE plasmashell and wallpapers.

[Dale]

Mick wrote:
> On Tuesday, 24 December 2019 06:40:13 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> It seems plasmashell and wallpapers for the desktop has a problem.  I'm
>> not sure if it is just me or if it could affect others.  Either way, I
>> have no idea how to fix it.  I have a LOT of wallpapers that I've
>> downloaded/collected over the years.  Some are NASA pics of Mars, stars,
>> galaxies and a whole lot of others that I've accumulated over the last
>> 15 years or so.  According to Dolphin and the properties box, it's well
>> over 100,000 of them.
> WOW!  A rather large number I would think.

Well, they were accumulated over many years.  Besides, NASA takes a lot
of pics.  I haven't added any in years.  I started my video collection
and well, got side tracked. lol  There's actually close to 150,000.  I
looked at the count wrong.  I mistook the 5 for a 0.  It shows 154,090
in 8,567 sub-folders. 


>
>
>> I have them all in a directory named, wait for
>> it, wallpapers.  Under that they are sorted in directories by what they
>> are, where they come from or whatever.  I try not to go to deep but it
>> does pick up at least two or three levels deep.  I've had it set that
>> way for ages and it has always worked with the only problem being it
>> picking them at random.  Some are intended to be like a slideshow.
>> Anyway, they added the option of doing them in different orders
>> including a-z, which is nice.  It will be nicer if I can get it to work
>> now.  ;-)
>>
>> Problem.  When I have it set to the main directory and I login to KDE,
>> plasmashell goes nuts.  It hogs up a full CPU core and never stops.
>> It's not exactly memory friendly either.  The little panel thingy at the
>> bottom, the thing with the clock and the pager etc, locks up tight.  The
>> clock doesn't change, you can't select anything with it or anything
>> else.  Just for giggles, I left it for half a hour or so hoping it would
>> finish whatever it was doing but it never did.  Killing plasmashell and
>> restarting results in the same problem.  Once it does that, I have to
>> downgrade to a earlier version of plasma.  While fiddling with it today,
>> I had the idea of manually restarting plasmashell and letting it show on
>> the screen what it was doing.  Since the panel thingy won't work,
>> neither does the clipboard so no copy and paste of the actual error
>> itself.  What it showed me tho was that the wallpapers was the problem.
>> It said something about bad metadata for each and every wallpaper image
>> I have stored.  I can't recall the error exactly but may can reproduce
>> it later.
> Take a pic of it so you have a more precise idea what it reports and google
> for ideas on what may be causing it.  If you're on a console use tee to
> redirect the output to a file, or use gpm to select some text off the screen
> and paste it in a file.
>

I should have done that.  I sort of thought I would remember enough of
it tho.  Of course, I go to the kitchen and forget what I went in there
for.  I should have known better.  :/ 


>> I suspect when the option to have them random or in order was
>> added, something changed in the way it looks at the directory.  Thing
>> is, I have no idea how to make this work like it should with all of them
>> enabled.
> I have found the file indexer occasionally chews up CPU non-stop.  I think I
> disabled it at some point but in any case I have not noticed it chewing up CPU
> since.  Could it be the file indexer now needs to re-index all your images and
> it falls over itself due to the number and directory depth?
>
> Is possible to drop into a console or ssh into this PC when it's hanging to
> see what process(es) are taking up resources in real time?
>

I've disabled a lot in KDE already.  I can't recall them all tho.  I
think one was semantic or something.  I think something pulled it in but
I think I cut it off in system settings somewhere.  Tell me how to check
and I'll see if it is off/disabled as well. 


>> My temporary solution, I pointed it to a small directory that only has a
>> couple dozen images in it.  That seems to work.
> Is there a difference in the metadata of these few images compared with the
> rest in the whole directory?
>

It's actually a small directory of the exact same images.  I might add,
the clock does skip a second or so when I add them so I suspect it
performs the same action, it just has a much smaller number of them. 
It's hard to say.  Point being, I'm using the same images as before,
just a smaller sub-directory. 

>> Setting it to the whole
>> directory after that tho, does the same as above.  So doing a sort of
>> reset doesn't help.  Heck, at one point, I cleaned up the living room,
>> took out the trash and did some other stuff while it was banging away
>> with a core on my CPU.  Thing never did finish.
>>
>> Anyone even know where to start with this?  I've got it narrowed down to
>> it being a issue with wallpapers.  I just don't know where to go from
>> here.  Is it supposed to do that for some reason and I'm the only one
>> with a HUGE collection?  Surely not.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-)
> Some ideas in no particular order:
>
> Compare the metadata of an image which works without crashing and one that
> causes a crash, with exif or less.  If there is no discernible difference it
> may be the problem is not with the metadata, but with Plasma being able to
> parse all these files and their metadata.
>
> Gradually add images to find a number at which the problem occurs and back off
> from there.  Not a solution, but a workaround.
>
> Another workaround, restructure the fs to have fewer layers, but keep the same
> large number of images to see if it process them without a crash.
>
> Do you really all 100,000 images?  Is it worth keeping all of them, or is it
> perhaps time for some house keeping?
>
> Wait for new Plasam version to come out and perhaps report a bug if one is not
> yet posted.


I think it is parsing the files.  As you say, there is a lot of them.  I
sat and watched it scroll through the files and it just kept scrolling
them by.  It didn't hang on a particular one or anything, it was
steadily listing every directory and file.  I guess I need it to somehow
skip that step.  As you see above, it's a LOT of files and it would be
quite a daunting task to even check each one much less try to build some
sort of database or something for them all. 

I'll try to see if I can get the actual error here in a bit, either a
picture or the actual text.  I only need one line because it is the same
for them all except the name and path of the file. 

Thanks much.

Dale

:-)  :-)