Unstable kde

[King_DuckZ]

Hello, it's been since before the last upgrade that my kde behaves strangely. The last update didn't fix my problem, so I hope you can help me.
When I login, I would say 50% of the times, the kmix tray icon doesn't appear. From console though I get:

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[dev00@localhost ~]$ ps -A | grep kmix
 7766 ?        00:00:00 kmix
 7767 ?        00:00:00 kmix
 7788 ?        00:00:00 kmix
 7789 ?        00:00:00 kmix <defunct>


Audio does work anyways, although changing volume from mplayer, for example, affects global volume.
The real problem anyways is that when kmix doesn't appear kde freezes frequently (as when I click on application launcher, the whole plasma stops to respond for 30 seconds or so and then the launcher shows up). Even clicking on logout doesn't always yield any result, so killing X is often my best solution.
Any solutions to this?

[Fitzcarraldo]

Strange, as KDE 4.9 behaves extremely well for me. The last time I had trouble with KMix was back in the days of KDE 4.6.0. Try what I did then, to see if it helps: KMix not responding [Solved].

[King_DuckZ]

Unfortunately I think it's something else. I removed kmix' configuration files anyways, but that didn't solve the problem. In fact, the only icons I see in the tray are the keyboard mapping, korganizer and networkmanager. I would normally see the clipboard manager as well as kmix and the notifications icon.
I just got this problem into a second login to kde (ie: kde menu -> switch user). Switching to F7 and then back to F8 would give me a black screen with only the mouse working, but after a minute or so I got the desktop back again. Then I was able to logout through the usual symptoms (click on kde menu, not responding, click again one minute later, click logout, not responding etc...) The first login on F7 is completely unaffected. I didn't notice any weirdness in cpu/memory usage either, but I could be wrong due to bad timing.

edit: I just upgraded to Sabayon 10. Unfortunately upon reboot the problem is still there (only kmix icon missing this time, ps -A is the same as in my first post).

[Zeadar]

I get spooky issues with KDE as well.

KDE gets painfully slow and some k-apps takes a 1-2 minutes to launch, dolphin, ark, etc. And the ALT+F2 combo doesn't work.

This happens on about, well, 50% of the times I boot my machine. I don't have timed right now but when KDE get sluggish again i'll gather as many output logs I can.

[sqlpython]

@King_DuckZ says

I just upgraded to Sabayon 10. Unfortunately upon reboot the problem is still there

I was getting kdeint crash issues but the Upgrade to Sabayon X seems to have solved that issue.
Perhaps you can add back in kmix and update ...
If the problem still persists you can always remove again.

[batvink]

don't know exactly why, but sometimes i have that issue, too.
i did noticed that when this behaviour happens, multiple instances of kmix are running under my username.
(ksysguard --> 2 or three processes of kmix running under my username)., while there should be only one.

You can simply run "killall kmix && kmix"
which will close all running tasks of kmix, and starts 1 new process.
Then you'll have the icon back in the systray...

Also, KDE-4.9.1 is on it's way., which contains a lot of bug fixes., so does Sabayon 10.
KDE-4.9.1 is allready in Portage, so with a little patience it will show up in Entropy, too.

[batvink]

as for kmix,
you could make a script, make it executable, and put that in your autostart directory.

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#!/bin/bash
#wait 10 seconds then kill all running tasks of kmix, and restart kmix

(sleep 10 && killall kmix && kmix) &

Now, everytime you restart the PC, or DE,
for sure you have kmix loaded and presenting icon in the systray.
Until a proper solution has come up.

You should file a bug, about this.
https://bugs.sabayon.org/

[Fitzcarraldo]

Alternatively, you could try Veromix instead of KMix. Veromix is a KDE Plasmoid (widget), and some say it's much better than KMix (I think I agree with them, as I'm trying it while I type this). There is a 'how to' in the blog post: [How To] Increase Volume Past 100% in KDE

If you want to stop KMix loading when you reboot, don't forget to disable KMix by setting "AutoStart=false" in the "[Global]" section of ~/.kde4/share/config/kmixrc

That 'how to' also has a nice video explaining how to install and use Veromix. See also the links on the KDE-Look.org Web page for Veromix (the first link above).