https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=513850
Bug ID: 513850
Summary: cat /dev/urandom from konsole freeze the whole desktop
(maybe for notification flood?)
Classification: Frameworks and Libraries
Product: frameworks-knotifications
Version First unspecified
Reported In:
Platform: Other
OS: Linux
Status: REPORTED
Severity: normal
Priority: NOR
Component: general
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]
Target Milestone: ---
SUMMARY
When running commands that output raw binary data (specifically cat
/dev/urandom) inside Konsole, the terminal emulator interprets specific byte
sequences as valid escape codes for Desktop Notifications. Because /dev/urandom
generates data rapidly, this results in a high-frequency flood of
notifications.
Within seconds, this overwhelms the notification daemon/Plasma Shell, causing
the entire desktop environment to freeze. The system becomes unresponsive to
input (e.g., the Super/Meta key does not function), and journalctl shows no
specific error logs regarding the crash, likely due to the nature of the
resource exhaustion/input lock.
STEPS TO REPRODUCE
Open Konsole in a Plasma Wayland session.
Run the command: cat /dev/urandom
Allow the command to run for a few seconds.
OBSERVED RESULT
Konsole begins parsing the random binary data. "Phantom" notifications appear
repeatedly and rapidly on the screen. Within a few seconds, the entire
graphical session (Plasma/KWin) freezes. Keyboard shortcuts (like the Super
key) stop responding, and the system appears to be under a Denial of Service
state caused by the notification spam.
EXPECTED RESULT
Should not freeze the entire desktop because of these notifications.
SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
[andrew@arch ~]$ kinfo
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.21.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.18.1-zen1-2-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-Core Processor
Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (31.0 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Even though there are many notifications, they don’t seem excessive, yet the
desktop remains frozen for a long time relative to the number of notifications.
cat /dev/urandom is just an extreme example. In fact, this also happened to me
when I accidentally ran cat without properly handling stdout, and my entire
desktop froze for a long time (30–60 seconds).
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