Are you able to start it manually? If this doesn't work, ensure no other power manager is running, and remove the powerdevil configuration file.

bcooksley wrote:Are you able to start it manually? If this doesn't work, ensure no other power manager is running, and remove the powerdevil configuration file.

i could find the config file, but how do i check if there is another power manager running?

on openSUSE they might have powersaved running. Not sure if this is the case in 11.1. It can be disabled through Run Level Editor in YaST.

bcooksley wrote:on openSUSE they might have powersaved running. Not sure if this is the case in 11.1. It can be disabled through Run Level Editor in YaST.

apparently, in opensuse it is called powerd? the description is:
UPS monitoring daemon

if that is the case, it is not running, nor does it start at boot/kde login.

No, I think it was removed in openSUSE 11.1. Are you able to start Powerdevil manually?

bcooksley wrote:No, I think it was removed in openSUSE 11.1. Are you able to start Powerdevil manually?

i'm looking at yast and there is a powerdevil package, but it isn't installed. is that because powerdevil is "built-in" to kde 4.2?

As far as I am aware Powerdevil is part of KDE 4.2, but is probably seperately packaged. You may wish to install it.

bcooksley wrote:As far as I am aware Powerdevil is part of KDE 4.2, but is probably seperately packaged. You may wish to install it.

powerdevil is included in 4.2. i can affirm that because trying to install the powerdevil package conflicts with many kde4 packages, which likely means that the opensuse team that packaged 4.2 made the packages conflict with the powerdevil package because it is already included in kde 4.2.

The only thing possibly left is trying another ( fresh ) user. If it doesn't work under that user, check for updated packages, then report to the openSUSE repository maintainers.

bcooksley wrote:The only thing possibly left is trying another ( fresh ) user. If it doesn't work under that user, check for updated packages, then report to the openSUSE repository maintainers.

the strange thing is, this is all on a new installation. i didn't touch any settings relating to power when installing...

Then it could only be broken packages, assuming everything is updated fully. I self compile my KDE, and have no problems ( apart from DPMS not switching the screen off with Powerdevil )

thanks bcooksley, deleting the powerdevil config solved the issue.

however, i still have the kde-gtk engine issue...