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From: notbob on 14 Apr 2008 15:34
I had my slack 12 system bog down (not freeze) and so booted top to see what
was going on. I came across a process shown as kwin-killer-hel and kill -15
it. That was not the problem. Firefox was, which I killed and alleviated
the bog. Now, googling for kwin-killer-hel, I get not a single response.
which, where, whatis, apropos, also return nothing. Anyone know what it is?

nb
From: loki harfagr on 14 Apr 2008 16:45
On Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:34:04 +0000, notbob wrote:

> I had my slack 12 system bog down (not freeze) and so booted top to see
> what was going on. I came across a process shown as kwin-killer-hel and
> kill -15 it. That was not the problem. Firefox was, which I killed and
> alleviated the bog. Now, googling for kwin-killer-hel, I get not a
> single response. which, where, whatis, apropos, also return nothing.
> Anyone know what it is?

"to know"'d be exageration, at least we can find where it comes from ;-)

# bzcat .../slackwar*/*/MANIFEST.bz2 | awk '/kwin.killer/{print $5 }' RS=
../kde/kdebase-3.5.9-i486-2.tgz

# tar tzvf .../slackware-current/slackware//kde/kdebase-3.5.9-i486-2.tgz| grep -i killer
-rwxr-xr-x root/root 10292 2008-02-26 21:40 usr/bin/kwin_killer_helper

now it's got a full name :D)
From: D Herring on 14 Apr 2008 20:41
notbob wrote:
> I had my slack 12 system bog down (not freeze) and so booted top to see what
> was going on. I came across a process shown as kwin-killer-hel and kill -15
> it. That was not the problem. Firefox was, which I killed and alleviated
> the bog. Now, googling for kwin-killer-hel, I get not a single response.
> which, where, whatis, apropos, also return nothing. Anyone know what it is?

KDE (and other window managers) can detect when an application "stops
responding" (i.e. doesn't accept a window-manager event). It then
pops up a box asking if you want to kill the application.

It sounds like firefox was thrashing your system, and the KDE app
wasn't able to fully load before you got top and kill running.

Modulo the actual pids, here's a simple, no-thrashing way to invoke
kwin_killer_helper:

In a console, spawn a KDE app and then attach (but don't run) gdb so
it stops responding.

> konsole &
[1] 3012
> gdb konsole 3012

Now click the close window (X) on the spawned konsole.

Wait a few. There it is.

*****
Window with title "Shell - Konsole " is not responding. This window
belongs to application konsole (PID=3012, hostname=localhost).
Do you wish to terminate this application? (All unsaved data in this
application will be lost.)

[Terminate] [Keep Running]
*****

Who is this new window?

> ps ax
.... /usr/bin/kwin_killer_helper --pid 3012 --hostname localhost
--windowname Shell - Konsole


- Daniel

P.S. Exit gdb with a few "q <enter>"s.
From: notbob on 15 Apr 2008 14:06
On 2008-04-15, D Herring <dherring(a)at.tentpost.dot.com> wrote:

> Wait a few. There it is.

Yes, I've seen the damn thing way too often since changing to firefox. I
should've known. I was getting tired at the term and forgot my slack
basics, like locate. I just did a locate for killer and there it was:

#locate killer
/usr/bin/kwin_killer_helper

#file /usr/bin/kwin_killer_helper
/usr/bin/kwin_killer_helper: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version
1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

I'm starting to wonder what the advantage of firefox is. It sure seems to
me it's becoming more a pain than a panacea. You've got to wonder when a
browser includes its own kill app. I've also noticed it's been going back
two places instead of just one when I hit back, whether kybrd or mouse.
This is not just on a single platform, as it does it both on an XP box and
my Slack 12 box (ff2).

Anyway, thanks for the info. I can now summon the demon at will.

nb
From: Eef Hartman on 16 Apr 2008 05:07
notbob <notbob(a)nothome.com> wrote:
> You've got to wonder when a browser includes its own kill app.

kwin-killer-helper is a KDE application, doesn't have anything
to do with the browser (firefox). Out of a "grep kwin_killer"
in my packages directory (fully patched slw 12.0):
kdebase-3.5.7-i486-3_slack12.0:usr/bin/kwin_killer_helper

Firefox just happened to be the TARGET of this application.
--
********************************************************************
** Eef Hartman, Delft University of Technology, dept. EWI/TW **
** e-mail: E.J.M.Hartman(a)math.tudelft.nl, fax: +31-15-278 7295 **
** snail-mail: P.O. Box 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands **
********************************************************************
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