Re: kwin

On Tuesday 30 of September 2008, Tilo Renz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a problem with kwin in a kiosk environment: kwin terminates
> unexpected. I already browsed the kde Changelog and this mailing-list, but
> didnt find something similar. I hope this is the right place for this kind
> of problem.
>
> In case of error, the Phone-Support-Team tells us, no errors where shown,
> just the desktop isn't working any longer. If we check the processlist on
> the faulty machine, no kwin-Process is found. Restarting kde solves the
> problem temporary.
...
> Here are my qestions:
> - How can I gather more Information about the running (and probably
> stopping or stopped) kwin?

 Find out why it terminates - get core dump, run in gdb (if there is really no 
crash dialog, which is rather unusual).

> - Running inside gdb seems impossible,

 $ gdb kwin
 (gdb) run --replace

(And later 'kwin --replace' e.g. from Alt+F2 to prevent focus problems without 
kwin running. The same way, you want to run the gdb not in the same X session 
to avoid focus problems.)

> and I don't have physical access to the machines. How can I enable the
> creation of coredumps, if kwin crashes? 

 'export KDE_DEBUG=1' should make KDE apps normally dump core in case of a 
crash.

> (Althoug I'm not sure if it crashes or just terminates)

 Running in gdb can tell.

> - Is there a possibility to turn on extended or debug-Level Logging? (Not on
> all machines, I hope a small subset will suffice to spot the error)

 Not with non-debug builds, and even then it'd be unlikely to provide any 
useful information.

> - Maybe the problem isn't a kwin-Problem, but general kde or kiosk-related.
> Suggestions?

 This doesn't seem to be kiosk related at all. Please normally create a 
bugreport at bugs.kde.org.

-- 
Lubos Lunak
KDE developer
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