Solved: Plasma corrrupt

[hviaene]

This is the second time in about two months that Plasma on my desktop (nVidia graphics) completely goes south. Yesterday all was OK, today after reboot and logging in I get a glimpse of the desktop, but immediately the screen goes completely black.
Deleting the .kde folder and logging in again does not cure it. Even creating a complete new user does not give any better result.
Two months ago, after trying a lot, checking the logs and not finding anything I completely reinstalled M6, but i rather keep this as a last resort.
For the moment Xfce is serving me, but I'd rather return to using Plasma.
I can provide logs whatever you deem necessarry.

[wintpe]

Hi
have you recently updated, and did you reboot soon after, or leave it running.

I ask as I have posted a similar question in the video section relating to a friends imac.

Can you specify exactly what nvidia card/chipset you have (lspci should identify the detected chipset by the kernel, but if you know the model even better.)

I ask re update as, i suspect something has changed, ignoring faulty hardware, if something changes theres usually a reason for it.

regards peter

[hviaene]

I always run the updates as soon they appear in the mga-applet, and then continu to work unless the specific updates (glibc, kernel) ask for a reboot, which then I do immediately. Th last kernel was some two weeks ago I giess. I halt and power off the PC every evening.
The graphics is GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 2. I have no suspicions on yesterdays update just from memory.

[hviaene]

Life is full of surprises: just after I wrote my previous posting, two sets of updates came in; one with firmwares and microcode, the second one on kernel version 56. After the update i did a warm reboot. And now Plasma seems to behave very well. I'll leave it at that, unless peter would like to have some other info. If not, I'll mark the post as solved one of the next days.

[morgano]

If you use proprietary Nvidia driver "current", you probably got that updated too.

[hviaene]

No, its the 340 driver, and the package is dated Jan. 2018.
I didn't suspect the driver being involved in this problem, since Xfce worked perfectly OK when Plasma went into its fits.

[jiml8]

I personally found the 340 driver to be very problematic, when I was running it a couple of years ago. I solved a lot of problems by moving off of it.

I always install my driver from the Nvidia website, and not from the Mageia repos. Reasons for that are ancient and possibly no longer valid, but I have never changed. I presently am on the 390 driver.

[jiml8]

Here is the thread that shows the fun I was having - which ultimately was tracked down to being the 340 driver.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=8839&p=53810&hilit=340&sid=732dbc8f5fd0d1527af702585db97012#p53810