[plug] Logitech cordless keyboard causing kwin lockups?

[Alex Nordstrom]

Hi everybody!

I posted the following some time ago to the debian-kde list, and did not 
receive any replies. Perhaps I'll have more luck here.


I have a problem with partial lockups involving Kwin, XFree86, the 
suspected culprit being a Logitech Cordless Desktop Pro (ergonomical, 
cordless keyboard and ball-based mouse combo), and I would like 
help with ideas for further trouble-shooting, solutions or 
recommendations for a possible bug report.


Symptom

CPU usage goes to 100% and visual applications become unresponsive. 
Switching to a virtual terminal is not possible, neither with the 
Logitech keyboard nor with another keyboard, as they are unresponsive. 
The mouse pointer remains active, but clicking anywhere has little 
effect.


Results of investigation

I can SSH into the box, and while somewhat slow, it is still quite 
responsive. top reveals XFree86 running at nice -10 using about 80% of 
the CPU, a kdeinit process taking about 10% and other processes 
accounting for the remainder, being at normal levels.

The kdeinit process in question identifies itself as a kwin session when 
checking the information for the PID using ps. Killing the process 
resolves the problem (but I then have to use the mouse and find the 
letters k, w, i, and n to paste into a run dialogue to get the ability 
to type and interact with the windows again).


Help wanted

Further ideas for pinning down the problem would be appreciated. Random 
facts:
- dmesg doesn't appear to have anything interesting to say.
- ~.xsession-errors contains a few "X Error: BadWindow", but I'm not 
sure that's related.
- There seems to be little I can do to provoke the error; it comes up 
intermittently, days apart.
- I have observed the problem on two separate computers (both running 
Debian Sid) with the same keyboard and mouse combo. The combo uses a USB 
port, and I also have a PS/2 keyboard hooked up to one of the 
computers, and an internal (PS/2?) keyboard in the other, which is a 
laptop.
- The problem has been around for several months (I've haven't had time 
or resources to deal with it, so I've simply not used the keyboard, to 
the detriment of my joints).
- (Since I originally posted this, I've mostly been using my laptop 
without the Logitech keyboard, but while the laptop is waiting to have 
a loose DC connection fixed, I'm back to using the Logitech keyboard on 
my stationary computer. It's been working fine for about three weeks, 
but just did it again. I'm now using a journalling file system, so I'm 
less worried about it, but it is annoying.)

Should I file a bug report? Upstream or downstream? With kwin or 
whatever is responsible for dealing with the keyboard?

Is this a known problem? A quick Web search didn't reveal anything, but 
I'm not entirely sure which terms to use. I didn't see anything similar 
in bugs.debian.org for kwin as far as I could tell. Which other 
components might I want to look at?


Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

-- 
Alex Nordstrom
http://lx.n3.net/
Please do not CC me in followups; I am subscribed to plug.