Manjaro has become unresponsive & unstable

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Hi folks! I’m having some problems with Manjaro. I have no idea what caused/triggered this problem. I did not change anything. I didn’t update anything. There was no system update either.

Screen was turned off due to inactivity as I set it up to turn off screen in “Energy Savings” setting. That’s been my settings for months without any issue. I don’t think my current issue is related to this.

A few hours later, when I was back on the computer, there was a “Notifier” icon in the “System Tray”, next to the bluetooth icon. When I hovered over the notifier icon, it disappeared.

When I hovered over other icons (bluetooth, screen brightness, volume, battery, networks) in the system tray, they disappeared too.

I restarted the computer. It didn’t help! I restarted, choosing a different kernel. It didn’t help either.

Maybe it was the same or another notifier icon in the system tray, when I clicked on it, small option window popped up, to select some options, I think it was about rendering if I remember correctly.

There were some options, Vulkan, OpenGL (and some other ones I don’t really remember). I chose “Vulkan”, which made things worse.

Now the application launcher doesn’t respond as if it were frozen. The semi-transparent panel turns black. Once I launch any app, I can’t exit out. It doesn’t respond. It may be due to kwin_x11 crash.

I tried to find and launch the setting for the notifier, which I recently changed to “Vulkan”, but I could not find any options or settings to make the change. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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A couple of possible suggestions: have you tried removing the panel and creating a new one; also have you tried a Wayland session?

I suspect some panel setting(s) have been corrupted, somehow.

Also, in Konsole (or Yakuake via F12) try running e.g. htop to see if there are processes hogging the system.

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I can only remember 2 situation’s where i saw a message pop ups there.

  1. After a Desktop crash or switching between TTY & Desktop forth and back, that the Desktop session was restored.

or

  1. That my battery on my Laptop is Low.

For the next time, create a timeshift snapshot and restore your working system. I know this doesn’t help you right now :wink:

:crazy_face:

From my understanding, Vulkan is a option for 3D Application’s for Hardware acceleration. Possible you mistaken it with Wayland? Which can be switched in SDDM (Log-in Menue at the bottom left)

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After running htop, it shows line after line,

/usr/bin/kwin_x11 --crash
.
.
/usr/bin/kwin_x11 --replace
.
.

I just tried Wayland. Wayland session seemed fine. I rebooted and logged back in to my X11 session, which is the one I use. X11 session seems to be fine now. I don’t know how, but logging in to Wayland session must have or seems to have reset or refreshed or replaced something in X11 session. To be sure, I need to use the system for a few days to see if any issue comes up! I’ll report back.

Thanks!

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I do have a TimeShift backup, but as a general rule, I’d rather hold off on resorting to TimeShift backup until/unless the problem is a major one!

Well, I was simply referring to the initial problem. Nothing was done or changed to trigger the initial problem prior to changing the setting to “Vulkan”.

I’m going to try to see if I can find out what that “rendering” thing was. Stay tuned! :wink:

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Did you used Timeshift before this day? Could this probably the reason why you evade the rollback function?

I mean its understandable, when you don’t used it yet.
That you fear it because you don’t know if you can rely on it.

From SSD wear perspective i have the same viewpoint to evade it, when its possible.

But the point is that you don’t really remember which changes you did to your system and if you compare the time difference (wasted time). Even if you lucky to find the error and solved it right now or the amount of time that you put to find this error and it stays unsolved.

Compared to a Timeshift rollback, which probably only takes 10min to boot in a live boot and start timeshift GUI and choose your snapshot, only to follow the easy steps from the super userfriendly GUI. Should be a clear winner here, since you did a goodjob and have a timeshift snapshot (i hope Rsync) right in front of you. This is the situation where you actually could use it.

Or are there other things that hold you off, which make it more difficult to going this way? Like Btrfs, Root Encryption or a enormous big Root Partition?

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Manjaro has become unresponsive & unstable

So, it has become either:

  • Stable in its unresponsiveness; or
  • unresponsive in its stableness.

Because the double negative says it has become Unstably Unresponsive, so stable and responsive.

I couldn’t help myself. Sorry, not sorry. I’ll let myself out.

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I’ve used TimeShift in the past. It’s very easy and reliable. I’ve never had issues. I strongly recommend having TimeShift backups.

I have a dedicated external hard drive for my TimeShift backups. I do a complete backup of whole system once every 3 weeks and keep a record of 6 months of backups on the drive. Anything older than 6 months gets deleted by the new backup I perform every 3 weeks.

I see what you mean, but I don’t look at it as time wasted. I think it’s a matter of perspective. I first like to try to look into the problem and analyze it and try to solve it. Through the process of doing so, one thing leads to another and I end up learning other things that I wouldn’t have…. otherwise, had I just gone ahead and resorted to TimeShift backup.

For simple issues that could be resolved with simple fixes, I think, jumping the gun and resorting to TimeShift backup is an overkill. Of course, there is a use and a time and a place for a TimeShift backup, but I rather assess the problem first to decide if it’s warranted to resort to TimeShift. After some assessment, if I come to a conclusion that the the problem is way over my head or if I get no help/resolution from the forum, then I have no problem resorting to TimeShift.

I guess, my old habits from the days of Commodore 64 still stuck with me. :wink: It was an 8-bit computer and couldn’t get much done with it unless you resorted to “Assembly Language” coding, which was so much fun and very intriguing for me. Back then, the games were not as advanced as they are now, but they were so much fun and almost all games were entirely coded in Assembly Language. The language was time-consuming and “mind bending”, but there was something special about it. Once I got into the world of “Assembly Language”, it, kind of, rearranged and changed my thinking process. :wink:

I found out that it was “Plasma Renderer”.

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:rofl:

I guess, it is a result or a product of partitioned (or rather) isolated thinking process on my part, if it ever makes sense to you.

When you experience some aspects of the issue, in a way that it seems to branch out to other problems, you (“I” in this case) kind of break it down into smaller chunks and pieces where you had “unresponsiveness” when you tried to a)exist out an app, or b)shut down or c)restart the operating system or d)add another user account.

Then you step back and look at the whole operating system, behaving in an unpredictable way, and say “unstable” as an all-encompassing statement and include both in the subject title for emphasis and, dare I say!, for sh.ts and giggles too. :wink:

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Just reporting back!

As BG405 recommended, I logged in with Wayland session. And somehow it fixed the issue with the X11 session. Thanks BG405!

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When he fixed your issue, you should give him the solution.

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My bad! It was a mistake on my part. I clicked on the wrong one! Now he has the solution. :smiley:

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