I needed a test VM at work the other day so I just went with Debian because why not, during the install I chose KDE plasma as the DE. I did nothing else with it after installing it and after leaving it alone for a while (somewhere between 20-60 minutes) the CPU useage shot up to the point vSphere sent out an alert and the VM was unresponsive (the web console just showed a blank console which I couldn’t type in) It did this every time I booted the VM.
It seems to be the combination of vSphere Debian and KDE that causes this as I installed GNOME on the same VM and it was fine. I also created another Debian VM this time choosing GNOME during the install and that was also fine, until I installed KDE on that and then it started doing the same thing. I also created an Arch VM with KDE and that didn’t have any issues.
Any idea why this combination causes issues? Journalctl output of the last boot from both Debian VMs below:
Original VM: https://text.is/032Z Secondary test VM: https://text.is/JR45
Removed by mod
I just left it as default which is 1 display and 8mb video memory
8MB?! That is abysmally low for KDE. Depending on the apps you’re using, I’d recommend allocating at least 256MB, if you’re going to use it for actual productivity tasks.
Edit: Here’s a screenshot from nvtop showing my VRAM usage on KDE 5.27:
As you can see, Plasma alone is using 209MB, and Kwin 175MB, and this is with nothing but just Plasma and Konsole running on a very basic desktop (no fancy widgets, just one panel). Now this is at 2880x1800, so if your VM is running at a lower resolution you’d need lesser VRAM, but you can use that as a reference to see how much VRAM KDE really needs.
I’m sorry but I’ll need more information to do any problem solving. I personally don’t know vSphere but if you’ll post the output of the logs I can help.
What is the purpose of this? Debian is stable but many users find the software to be outdated.
I’ve just edited the main post with links for the journalctl output. The purpose was just to test some network config, I managed to do what I needed anyway but I’m just curious as to why I had issues with these VMs!
It looks like it isn’t happy. Usually this is the result of a hardware issue so keep an eye out for any other systems having issues. You may have a faulty ram.
Other than that, I would wait for someone who is better at KDE. The longs clearly show it trying to start and then failing.
Seconding the RAM issue possibility. If you can, shut down the host and run a memory test over a few days to see if it trips. Memory tests can take days to trip in some circumstances, in others, it’s immediate.
