[Sort of Solved!] Plasmashell on F42 upgrade crashes immediately on login

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1

[Kinda solved, again]

See below. The culprit is the Dictionary widget. Whodathunk? The question is: why?

[Solved it, sort of]

I managed to stop plasmashell crashing, albeit unsatisfactorily. I tried editing ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc by what I assumed was commenting-out lines and sections that looked like they were related to the widgets I had configured on the desktop. This produced a desktop with most of the widgets removed but there were still artefacts - inactive pie charts e.g. - for some. More significantly it did not stop plasmashell from going into its crash-restart ad nauseam loop. Then I tried copying the plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc file from a new account created after I upgraded to Fedora 42. I had configured my usual widgets in that account and they were all working correctly. This changed the wallpaper to the Fedora 42 default (nice) but did not stop the crashing. Finally I just deleted (actually renamed) plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and restarted plasmashell and - hey, presto! - it’s stopped crashing although my desktop and panel are now completely different to how I had carefully curated them! Some work to do for me…

I searched the web for help on this subject and poked around in likely looking areas - ~/.config, /usr/share, /etc, etc. - without any satisfaction. I even asked AI. At least plasmashell is no longer crashing on my main account, but I’d really like to know a) what went wrong with my previous widget config and b) the proper way to fix this type of issue if/when it arises again. Mercy buckets.

[Changed the title to something a little less contentious.]

I just updated my Dell XPS 9530 (13th gen Intel i7-13620H) to F42. Immediately on logging into the system plasmashell crashes and then goes into a pretty tight loop of restarting & crashing, ad nauseam…, producing a cascade of error popups the like of which hasn’t been seen since the early days of Windows! This is 100% repro every time I log in. I’ve had to kill off plasmashell for good. The OS is operational - I’m using it now - I just don’t have a shell.

I have updated 4 machines to F42 so far - 2 laptops, 2 desktops - and they all have problems with plasmashell in different ways; the laptops crash frequently. I have enabled sending crash reports to fedora.org so hopefully whatever has gone wrong is fixed post-haste, but my experience with Fedora 42 so far is bad. I’m not doing anything crazy with plasma although I do have several widgets active - CPU %, memory %, battery, clock, network. I suppose I could try deleting those until hopefully plasmashell stops crashing?

It doesn’t appear that this is a problem that’s affect many users, at least not based on search results in this forum. That said, there is at least one report of the same behavior occurring: that was filed back in 2024, so unlikely to be Fedora 42.

Fedora 41 was working perfectly everywhere.

I just found this - Plasmashell crashes after Fedora 42 update - Help - KDE Discuss. A widget is fingered. Probably will be the same for me, although I’m not using the same widget as described (not that I’m aware of). I’ll see if I can’t kill off widgets, although plasmashell won’t stay alive long enough for me to do that. Anyone know of a config file somewhere that that info might be stored, and that I can easily nuke?

FWIW, this is the output from running plasmashell in a terminal session:

kf.plasma.quick: Applet preload policy set to 1
qt.core.qabstractitemmodel.checkindex: Index QModelIndex(-1,-1,0x0,QObject(0x0)) is not valid (expected valid)
qt.core.qabstractitemmodel.checkindex: Index QModelIndex(-1,-1,0x0,QObject(0x0)) is not valid (expected valid)
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/main.qml:178:25: QML FolderViewDropArea (parent or ancestor of QQuickLayoutAttached): Binding loop detected for property "minimumWidth":
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/main.qml:201:9
Toolbox not loading, toolbox package is either invalid or disabled.
file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff/contents/ui/main.qml:310:13: QML Image: Cannot open: file:///usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.kickoff/contents/ui/start-here
<Unknown File>: QML WebEngineProfile: Please use WebEngineProfilePrototype for profile creation from 6.9, as this function will be deprecated in the future releases
qt.core.qabstractitemmodel.checkindex: Index QModelIndex(-1,-1,0x0,QObject(0x0)) is not valid (expected valid)
[7597:7597:0526/230741.288486:ERROR:network_service_instance_impl.cc(709)] Failed opening SSL key log file: /home/user/ssl.key
[7597:7707:0526/230741.331958:ERROR:angle_platform_impl.cc(44)] ImageEGL.cpp:112 (operator()): eglCreateImage failed with 0x00003009
ERR: ImageEGL.cpp:112 (operator()): eglCreateImage failed with 0x00003009
[7597:7707:0526/230741.331977:ERROR:scoped_egl_image.cc(23)] Failed to create EGLImage: EGL_SUCCESS
[7597:7707:0526/230741.331981:ERROR:native_pixmap_egl_binding.cc(118)] Unable to initialize binding from pixmap
[7597:7707:0526/230741.331997:ERROR:ozone_image_backing.cc(309)] OzoneImageBacking::ProduceSkiaGanesh failed to create GL representation
[7597:7707:0526/230741.331999:ERROR:shared_image_manager.cc(255)] SharedImageManager::ProduceSkia: Trying to produce a Skia representation from an incompatible backing: OzoneImageBacking
[7597:7707:0526/230741.332002:ERROR:native_skia_output_device.cpp(261)] ProduceSkia() failed.
[7597:7707:0526/230741.332070:ERROR:raster_decoder.cc(1146)]   RasterDecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[7597:7707:0526/230741.332109:ERROR:raster_decoder.cc(1146)]   RasterDecoderImpl: Context lost during MakeCurrent.
[7597:7707:0526/230741.336393:ERROR:shared_context_state.cc(885)] Failed to make current since context is marked as lost
[7597:7707:0526/230741.336407:ERROR:skia_output_surface_impl_on_gpu.cc(2264)] Failed to make current.
KCrash: Attempting to start /usr/bin/plasmashell
KCrash: Application 'plasmashell' crashing... crashRecursionCounter = 2

plasmashell is faulting with a SEGV. I was going to include the diagnostic info but Dr. Konqi informs me that it’s not useful. 80 threads…

I’m running Wayland, naturally, with the latest KDE that came with Fedora 42. This laptop has an Intel iGPU and an Intel DG2 A370. Pretty certain only the iGPU is doing graphics work.

2

Aha! Wigets have been fingered. I created a new account on the laptop & logged in and plasmashell has not crashed!

So, the culprit must be one or more widgets, but plasmashell will not stay alive long enough for me to attempt to delete widgets via the UI, and essentially plasmashell is dead to me on accounts that have the guilty widgets enabled (TBF, it might not be the widgets that are at fault but some code deep in plasma/KDE).

I suppose the thing to do now is add the widgets in this new account until it crashes! Actually, that’s assuming that the widget/widget processing per se that is at fault. It could be that new widgets are OK but previous widgets somehow broke on update 41 → 42. Let’s try to find out…

3

Well, I added the widgets I normally use - clock, Total CPU Use, Memory Usage, Network Speed, and battery/power - and plasmashell did not crash. Logged out and back in, no crash. However, the widgets I just added nicely spaced on the right of the screen are scrunched up in the top left hand of the screen after logging back in.

So it would seem the culprit is upgrading with one or more widgets in use. Now if I could only discover how to delete the widgets I’ve already added to my other accounts without doing more damage.

4

For completeness I should add that I also have Individual Core Usage and Network Speed widgets on the panel (at the right, between the digital clock and peek-at-desktop). I just added these in my new account’s panel and everything continued to work OK. I have the panel set to auto-hide and I’ve changed the width from full to custom. None of those changes has made plasmashell crash on login.

5

Sort-of solved albeit not satisfactorily (see the top of the thread) by deleting plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc and starting over. I don’t know what I’m doing here, but there was no help forthcoming either. Bleeding edge stuff (not an exsanguinous new browser).

6

Gah! I spoke too soon! I re-added my widgets - analog clock, CPU usage, memory usage, network speed, plus individual core usage and network speed to the panel, re-organized and re-sized my panel, logged back in and it’s crashing immediately all over again!

Do I have to do a Windows and clean install Fedora?! For me, 42 is NOT the answer to life, the universe and everything. Very seriously, harumph!

7

Ladies and gentlemen, we got 'im! After a laborious process of trial and error, deleting plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc then adding one widget back at a time and logging out and back in again, it turns out that the culprit is none other than the innocuous-looking little Dictionary widget which I had in my panel, just to the right of the Fedora logo (which I now notice has changed to the KDE logo after all this to-ing and fro-ing). I didn’t even mention what I presumed was the inert Dictionary widget previously because most of the time it’s inactive! Or so I thought.

I don’t understand this however: I have two Dell XPS laptops, both upgraded to Fedora 42. One has a 4K screen and Intel i7-12700H processor, the other a 1920x1200 screen and Intel i7-13620H processor. They both have the same widgets on the desktop and in the panel prior to and after upgrading Fedora 41 to 42. plasmashell on the 4K/12th gen machine did not crash after upgrade whereas it does on the 1920px/13th gen machine until I removed the Dictionary applet from the panel (or rather backed it out after I added it after everything else and plasmashell resumed its crashing behavior).