Plasma intermittent problem, unresponsive windows since yesterday

Hi,

Since about yesterday my machine (desktop, ryzen 5 3600, nvidia rtx 2060 ) has either directly after boot or after a couple of hours started experiencing an issue with the Plasma desktop in that the minimize, maximize close buttons of windows no longer work, super no longer opens the menu and no shortcut in the menu bar can be clicked. Also the yellow stickies widget appears, and I may have tried it once many months ago but haven’t had it enabled since.

I can still alt-tab to kitty and reboot the machine. This is probably the most serious issue I’ve had since installing Fedora for the first time around when 34 was released. The journal says this everytime it happens. It has happened with the prior kernel version (boot option) as well as right after boot, which means no windows and few apps running.

sep 18 13:21:30 feds kwin_x11[2827]: qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 25282, resource id: 16993480, major code: 20 (GetProperty), minor code: 0
sep 18 13:21:30 feds kwin_x11[2827]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 25283, resource id: 16993488, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)
sep 18 13:21:34 feds kdeinit5[16801]: Qt: Session management error: networkIdsList argument is NULL
sep 18 13:21:36 feds plasmashell[2901]: trying to show an empty dialog
sep 18 13:21:36 feds plasmashell[2901]: file:///usr/share/plasma/shells/org.kde.plasma.desktop/contents/views/Desktop.qml:165: TypeError: Cannot read property 'showingDialog' of null
sep 18 13:21:38 feds plasmashell[2901]: trying to show an empty dialog
sep 18 13:21:38 feds plasmashell[2901]: file:///usr/share/plasma/shells/org.kde.plasma.desktop/contents/views/Desktop.qml:165: TypeError: Cannot read property 'showingDialog' of null
sep 18 13:21:52 feds kwin_x11[2827]: qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 28302, resource id: 16993553, major code: 20 (GetProperty), minor code: 0
sep 18 13:21:52 feds kwin_x11[2827]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 28303, resource id: 16993588, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)

Any suggestions on how to try and get to grips with the issue?

Edit. It seems the issue can appear and then be recovered from within a minute or an event of some sort. In this instance I was scrolling in a firefox window when the scrolling function ceased to respond just like every other window’s standard kde buttons. I tried alt-tabbing to kitty, which crashed according to a notification, then the UI became fully responsive again. It’s bits of the same messages in the journal:

sep 18 17:08:56 feds plasmashell[2877]: file:///usr/share/plasma/shells/org.kde.plasma.desktop/contents/views/Panel.qml:27:1: QML Panel: Binding loop detected for property "state"
sep 18 17:08:56 feds kwin_x11[2822]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 408, resource id: 17046114, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)
sep 18 17:12:39 feds plasmashell[3572]: ###!!! [Parent][RunMessage] Error: Channel closing: too late to send/recv, messages will be lost
sep 18 17:12:43 feds kwin_x11[2822]: qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 47062, resource id: 16948447, major code: 20 (GetProperty), minor code: 0
sep 18 17:12:43 feds kwin_x11[2822]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 47065, resource id: 17049762, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)
sep 18 17:12:45 feds kwin_x11[2822]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 48583, resource id: 17049943, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)
sep 18 17:12:47 feds kwin_x11[2822]: qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 49317, resource id: 17049944, major code: 20 (GetProperty), minor code: 0
sep 18 17:12:47 feds kwin_x11[2822]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 49318, resource id: 17049988, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)
sep 18 17:12:48 feds kwin_x11[2822]: qt.qpa.xcb: QXcbConnection: XCB error: 3 (BadWindow), sequence: 49901, resource id: 17050019, major code: 20 (GetProperty), minor code: 0
sep 18 17:12:48 feds kwin_x11[2822]: kwin_core: XCB error: 152 (BadDamage), sequence: 49902, resource id: 17050030, major code: 143 (DAMAGE), minor code: 2 (Destroy)
sep 18 17:12:52 feds kitty[3523]: detected unhandled Python exception in '/usr/bin/../lib64/kitty'
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]: Traceback (most recent call last):
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]:   File "/usr/bin/../lib64/kitty/kitty/boss.py", line 543, in activate_tab_at
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]:     tm.activate_tab_at(x, is_double)
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]:   File "/usr/bin/../lib64/kitty/kitty/tabs.py", line 822, in activate_tab_at
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]:     i = self.tab_bar.tab_at(x)
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]:   File "/usr/bin/../lib64/kitty/kitty/tab_bar.py", line 428, in tab_at
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]:     x = (x - self.window_geometry.left) // self.cell_width
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[3523]: AttributeError: 'TabBar' object has no attribute 'window_geometry'
sep 18 17:12:52 feds abrt-notification[16486]: [🡕] Process 3523 (kitty) of user 1000 encountered an uncaught AttributeError exception
sep 18 17:12:52 feds plasmashell[2877]: file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.notifications/contents/ui/NotificationPopup.qml:116:15: QML QQuickItem: Binding loop detected for property "height"

I haven’t really had a look at the journal lately unless it was for something specific, at any rate I’ve not seen these types of messages before and as it currently stands the system isn’t very usable. I hope someone can shed some light on this or that an update of…whatever is causing this can fix things : )

Well, the above issue became persistent yesterday evening, even at the Fedora login screen.

So I rebooted into the Win10 system in order to try and back up some things from the Fedora partition and… I experienced the same issue in Windows10(!); couldn’t click-activate the main menu or interact much with any windows. Tried a different mouse (am using a Rollermouse red) and it worked; also in Fedora. I managed to pull half a cardigan of compacted cat hair from the internals of the rollermouse and got rid of most cat hair from its bar and its housing and now, well KDE seems to work the way it should.

I still see one or two “BadDamage” in the logs but not precisely like above.

I guess the Rollermouse must have short-circuited somehow.