How to restart plasmashell wayland from a tty

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1

I am using Neon with the latest set of updates. My graphics set up is as follows:

$ inxi --graphics
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA GA106 [GeForce RTX 3060] driver: nvidia v: 560.35.03
  Device-2: Logitech C920 PRO HD Webcam driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo
    type: USB
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6
    compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: nvidia
    unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa gpu: nvidia resolution:
    1: 1920x1080 2: 1920x1080
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: nvidia,swrast
    platforms: gbm,wayland,x11,surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: nvidia mesa v: 560.35.03
    renderer: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060/PCIe/SSE2
  API: Vulkan v: 1.3.275 drivers: N/A surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland

Every once in a while it appears that plasmashell hangs and all I see is a blank dark screen. I can use the Ctrl-Alt-F5 key combination to go to a different tty. Say, tty1 was where I was on origially, and now I have launched tty5. I would like to be able to restart plasmashell on tty1 from tty5. I looked at this post but could not get it to work. When I run the command w from tty5, I see that tty1 has:

USER     TTY      FROM             LOGIN@   IDLE   JCPU   PCPU  WHAT
vamsi    tty1     -                07:44   15:50m  0.02s  0.02s /usr/bin/startplasma-wayland

So, may be I am supposed to run something related to plasma-wayland? But I am not sure what that command is.

2

Try using systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell.service to restart plasmashell.

If it turns out you actually need to restart kwin under wayland, you could try systemctl --user restart plasma-kwin_wayland.service, though I don’t know how that will fare as far as keeping applications open or if some of them will be closed when you do that.

3

Thanks, that seems to have worked. But did not do exactly what I was hoping for. Typically when it hangs, I would have a bunch of windows, say Chrome and VS Code, open that I would like to preserve. Is that possible?

4

You can emulate what the “logout” widget does from the KDE desktop but instead via command line (like you could run this from that tty):

qdbus-qt6 org.kde.Shutdown /Shutdown logout

You’d just need to make sure package “qt6-qttools” is installed to have “qdbus-qt6” command available.

After it logouts out, then login again. If “System Settings” → “Session” → “Desktop Session” has “Session Restore” set to have “On last logout” checked, your apps and windows should be there.

5

Don’t do that, use kwin_wayland --replace instead. It at least allows apps that support compositor restarts to survive

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6

I put a script (filename ‘prestart’) in ~/.local/bin

#!/bin/bash

systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell.service

That’s all - just call prestart from krunner. (I use this on Wayland - it fixes panel glitches).

7

Ah, that’s good to know, and also interesting, since my understanding based on using X11 has been that you’re better off to use systemctl --user restart plasma-kwin_x11.service rather than kwin_x11 --replace, or is that incorrect?

This was also why I thought that restarting kwin_wayland via systemctl was the more correct approach.

8

yes, x11 is a bit different

9

The issue I am facing was reported here: Plasma 6.2: Black screen on wakeup
In my case, it’s not a laptop but everything else is the same. I am watching that issue to see if there is a fix.

10

I use these commands (they preserve your open applications)

  1. kquitapp6 plasmashell
  2. kstart plasmashell

If running kde 5.x.x

  1. kquitapp5 plasmashell
  2. kstart5 plasmashell

I put them in a function in my shell config.

1 Like
11

Alternatively:

Copy this to clipboard:

#!/bin/bash
systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell.service

Create your ‘command’:

kate ~/.local/bin/prestart

Paste and save

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/prestart

Run ‘prestart’ via krunner, or terminal, or whatever :wink: