KWin Wayland compositor crashes during screen lock on Intel Arc (Meteor Lake) GPU — keyboard unresponsive on lock screen

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BUG REPORT FOR: bugs.kde.org
Product: kwin
Component: wayland
Severity: major
Version: 6.6.0

TITLE:
KWin Wayland compositor crashes during screen lock on Intel Arc (Meteor Lake) GPU — keyboard unresponsive on lock screen

NOTE ON METHODOLOGY

This bug report was prepared with the assistance of Claude.ai
(free/non-subscription tier), an AI assistant by Anthropic.
Claude helped me systematically collect and analyze system logs,
identify the crash pattern, and prepare this report.
All logs and data are genuine and from my actual system.

SYSTEM INFORMATION

OS: Fedora 43
Desktop: KDE Plasma (Wayland session)
Display Manager: SDDM
GPU: Intel Arc Graphics (Meteor Lake-P, rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller:
Intel Corporation Meteor Lake-P [Intel Arc Graphics] (rev 08)
KDE Frameworks: 6.23.0
kactivitymanagerd: 6.6.0
xdg-desktop-portal-kde: 6.6.0
ksecretd (kf6-kwallet): 6.23.0
Qt6: 6.10.2
Display Manager: SDDM (Fedora 43 package)

DATA COLLECTION COMMANDS USED

SDDM logs from crash boot

journalctl -b -1 -u sddm

KWin, Wayland and crash related logs

journalctl -b -1 | grep -iE “kwin|plasmashell|wayland|crash|signal”

Full log window around crash time

journalctl --since “2026-02-27 17:00:00” --until “2026-02-27 17:30:00”

Coredump list

coredumpctl list

Coredump details

coredumpctl info 93556
coredumpctl info 93367
coredumpctl info 93404

GPU identification

lspci | grep -iE “vga|display|3d”

Last reboot time

last reboot | head -5

DESCRIPTION

On at least two confirmed occasions (Feb 27, 2026 ~17:16 IST and
Mar 1, 2026 ~09:41 IST), the KWin Wayland compositor crashed
silently while the screen was locked and the system was idle.

Upon returning to the locked screen, the keyboard was completely
unresponsive while the mouse continued to work normally. The only
resolution was a manual restart using the mouse.

This is a recurring and reproducible pattern — both crashes show
identical failure sequences in the logs, confirming this is not
a one-off event.

The system is a laptop running Fedora 43 with an Intel Arc
(Meteor Lake) GPU. The issue does not occur during active use,
only during idle/screen lock. The same hardware has no such
issues on Windows.

CRASH SEQUENCE (FROM LOGS)

Step 1 — KWin loses DRM/graphics access:

kwin_wayland: atomic commit failed: Permission denied
kwin_wayland: Atomic modeset test failed! Permission denied
kwin_wayland: Applying output configuration failed!

Step 2 — Wayland connection breaks for all running KDE components:

xdg-desktop-portal-kde: The Wayland connection broke.
Did the Wayland compositor die?
ksecretd: The Wayland connection broke.
Did the Wayland compositor die?
kwalletd6: The Wayland connection broke.
Did the Wayland compositor die?

Step 3 — Components crash trying to reconnect to dead compositor:

kactivitymanagerd: Failed to create wl_display
(No such file or directory)
kactivitymanagerd: Could not load the Qt platform plugin “wayland”
xdg-desktop-portal-kde: could not connect to display :0
xdg-desktop-portal-kde: This application failed to start because
no Qt platform plugin could be initialized.
ksecretd: Failed to create wl_display (No such file or directory)

Step 4 — Plasma session completely collapses, SDDM reports:

sddm: Authentication error: SDDM::Auth::ERROR_INTERNAL
“Process crashed”
sddm: Auth: sddm-helper startplasma-wayland crashed (exit code 1)

COREDUMPS CONFIRMED

Feb 27, 2026 crash:

17:16:50 PID 93367 kactivitymanagerd SIGABRT (kactivitymanagerd-6.6.0)
17:16:50 PID 93404 xdg-desktop-portal-kde SIGABRT (xdg-desktop-portal-kde-6.6.0)
17:16:50 PID 93448 xdg-desktop-portal-kde SIGABRT (duplicate restart)
17:16:50 PID 93493 xdg-desktop-portal-kde SIGABRT (duplicate restart)
17:16:51 PID 93532 xdg-desktop-portal-kde SIGABRT (duplicate restart)
17:16:51 PID 93556 ksecretd SIGABRT (kf6-kwallet-6.23.0)

All crashes share the same stack trace root:

#6 _ZL13init_platformRK7QStringS1_S1_RiPPc.cold (libQt6Gui.so.6)
#7 _ZN22QGuiApplicationPrivate25createPlatformIntegrationEv (libQt6Gui.so.6)

All components failed to initialize a Qt platform plugin because
the Wayland compositor was already gone.

TRIGGER CONDITIONS

  • Only occurs when screen is locked and system is idle
  • Never occurs during active use
  • Intermittent — not every lock event causes a crash
  • Occurs on KDE Plasma Wayland session only
  • Does not occur on Windows (confirmed dual boot)
  • Screen lock triggered automatically by KDE idle timeout

SUSPECTED ROOT CAUSE

KWin loses DRM master privileges during an idle/power management
state change, most likely related to the Intel Arc (Meteor Lake)
GPU driver interaction with KDE Powerdevil during screen lock.

Once KWin loses DRM access it cannot recover gracefully, causing
a cascading failure of the entire Plasma Wayland session.

This may be:

  • A driver-level bug in the Intel xe/i915 kernel driver
  • A KWin issue in not handling DRM master loss gracefully
  • An interaction between the two during idle state transitions

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

  1. Install Fedora 43 with KDE Plasma Wayland on a laptop
    with Intel Arc (Meteor Lake) GPU
  2. Use the system normally
  3. Allow screen to lock automatically via idle timeout
  4. Leave system idle for several minutes
  5. Return to locked screen — keyboard completely unresponsive,
    only mouse works
  6. Confirm: journalctl -b -1 | grep -iE “kwin|wayland|crash”

Note: Issue is intermittent — may require multiple
lock/idle cycles to reproduce.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOR

KWin should remain stable during screen lock. Lock screen should
be fully functional with both keyboard and mouse input at all times.

ACTUAL BEHAVIOR

KWin crashes silently during idle/screen lock. Keyboard becomes
completely unresponsive. Mouse still works. Only a manual system
restart resolves the situation.

WORKAROUND

None currently known.

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END OF REPORT