06-01-2020, 11:41 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-13-2020, 10:38 AM by Phillip Bell.)
I was interested in monitoring CPU usage, so I enabled the KDE CPU monitor widget. It seemed OK, but then lag started occuring. Then I opened it and turned on monitor all CPUs.
In short, never do this  Apparently, the default interval is set to 0 seconds, which can't be changed from desktop, and if it monitors all six CPUs, it overwhelms the buffer with monitor requests, which the processor is too slow to respond to. Your user desktop will crash, and from GUI, you will be able to do nothing at all.
Later, I'll follow up how to resolve this of you get stuck - from the GUI, you can log into root and edit a file in the .config, to remove all those extra CPUs. I don't have a good Internet connection right now, so I'll post when I do.
Until then, treat those widgets gently. It seems at least one of them can't be tolerated by the hardware.
CPU_Monitor.png (Size: 38.23 KB / Downloads: 571)
(06-01-2020, 11:41 AM)Phillip Bell Wrote: I was interested in monitoring CPU usage, so I enabled the KDE CPU monitor widget. It seemed OK, but then lag started occuring. Then I opened it and turned on monitor all CPUs.
In short, never do this Apparently, the default interval is set to 0 seconds, which can't be changed from desktop, and if it monitors all six CPUs, it overwhelms the buffer with monitor requests, which the processor is too slow to respond to. Your user desktop will crash, and from GUI, you will be able to do nothing at all.
Later, I'll follow up how to resolve this of you get stuck - from the GUI, you can log into root and edit a file in the .config, to remove all those extra CPUs. I don't have a good Internet connection right now, so I'll post when I do.
Until then, treat those widgets gently. It seems at least one of them can't be tolerated by the hardware.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who was caught by this. I had the same issue!
Thanks for posting this, I had the same issue, so its good to understand what was behind it.
I think (although I can't recall 100%) the RAM / Memory usage widget caused issues for me first, and then when I added a CPU monitor everything ground to a halt.
If there is a way to resolve it outside the GUI, I'd be very interested to learn how to do that - I'm a noob so I resorted to just reflashing the eMMC.
06-04-2020, 07:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-13-2020, 10:41 AM by Phillip Bell.)
If you have already done this and are stuck, here's what I did to resolve it.
Pre-requisite: You have not been working in the root Desktop, but rather the administrator user Desktop that you should have created upon startup. We will work with two users, root and <username>, where the latter is the username with the stuck desktop.
- Reboot your machine (hard reboot)
- The Manjaro KDE Plasma login screen should appear after reboot. The issue I saw is only related to logging in, because the CPU Monitor widget is bound to your user Desktop, not everyone else's.
- Switch User from login screen
- For username root and then your root password
- This should open a new Desktop as root user, with no non-stock widgets enabled
- Open Konsole
- From the command line (as root), `su <username>`, where <username> is the username with the stuck desktop.
- `cd ~/.config` to navigate to <username> config directory. Note, this is not root .config directory, but the <username> .config directory.
- `vim plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc` (or use any text editor of your choice)
- Find the following lines and delete:
[Containments][2][Applets][19] immutability=1 plugin=org.kde.plasma.systemmonitor.cpu
- Save, restart entire machine and login as your <username>
Thank you, for a newbie like me this is very well described and helpful.
I knew there must be a way to get into another user that didn't have the widgets selected, but didn't know how to access and then what to do with it, so thanks!
Strange, I wrote a reply here, mentioning that I ran into the same or a very similar problem,.. it seems to be gone...
Anyway, I now use gkrellm, which is fine, doesn't load the system too much.
The plasma kde widget that I put (perhaps a different onet than Philip tried out?) also locked the system up by overloading it. I managed to log in (after shutting down hard) and before it really got started I got to the panel dialog and was able to remove it.
I'm using conky since it's quite light and after a bit of tweaking it fits nicely on my PineBook Pro desktop:
![[Image: TaUhO0Z.png]](https://i.imgur.com/TaUhO0Z.png)
Jason, which conky theme are you using? Care to share it? ;-)
It's based on the conky_seamod theme that I modified, here is the config file: https://gist.github.com/JasonG-FR/8f1985...45612bb3e6
There is an issue with conky and plasma (conky will either stay on top of everything or disappear when clicking on the desktop) so you'll have to add a rule for kwin. Here is the method I followed: https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky/iss...-227017373
I'm using a SD card as my home folder (this is the /home/jason/PBP_Home mount point in the file), so you'll have to replace it, comment it out or delete it if you're not using it.
I used the wallpaper submitted by Luke here: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...114&page=2
Link to the wallpaper: https://i.imgur.com/5y3L0CK.png
Thanks a million!! Great service! I had a quick look, have to take more time tomorrow - all will be easier after a good night's sleep!
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