This KDE 4.4.5 on a Debian Squeeze system. Thinkpad T61, Nvidia Quadro NVS 140M

In the Konsole I have adjusted the font size to Monspace 8 points and the color scheme "Black on White" in "Edit current profile"
Changes are being performed in all open Konsoles.
I have only one profile ("Shell")
Every new Konsole I open has the correct font and color scheme.

However when I restart KDE, the color scheme reverts to White on Black. The font size remains what I set.

In .kde/share/config/konsolerc I see these settings:

Code: Select all

DefaultProfile=Shell.profile
DefaultSession=shell.desktop
<snip>
class=konsole-mainwindow#1
defaultfont=DejaVu Sans Mono,8,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0


In .kde/share/apps/konsole/Shell.profile this is set:

Code: Select all

[Appearance]
ColorScheme=BlackOnWhite
Font=Monospace,8,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0


So it looks like in the profile the font and color scheme are set correctly. Yet every time I restart KDE the font is set correctly, but the color scheme is not. What am I missing?

jlinkels

Very interesting, it seems that profile overrides aren't working on your system. Konsole has had a raft of fixes included in both KDE 4.5 and KDE 4.6 I believe, so this issue may already be fixed. Are you able to upgrade to either to try and reproduce?

I cannot upgrade on this particular machine because at this moment it runs Debian Stable and I use it for production.

What is weird is that I have 3 other machines now running KDE 4.4, two Debian Stable, and one Debian just-before-this-stable-release (that is, somewhat older than the current Stable but not much) and I have not observed this problem on one of the other.

On one of the other machines (also a laptop but with a much slower processor) when I start a Konsole, the background is first green, and as it finishes loading it loads the correct scheme. This one also runs Debian Stable so the code should be identical.

It is a bit irritating, but fortunately not critical. Can you think of some workaround?

jlinkels

jlinkels

To ensure this isn't caused by some system wide configuration, can you try under a new user?

Brilliant idea...

I created a new user (only root & me were installed on that computer) so this user did not migrate from KDE3 like I did.

The settings for the new user were retained fine. Weird uh?

jlinkels

Very much so. Please try removing the ~/.kde4/share/apps/konsole directory, whilst Konsole is not running (I recommend a virtual terminal, whilst logged out of KDE for this), then try reconfiguring Konsole.

Intially it did't retain the color settings after deleting the konsole directory.

But I noticed something else.

When I test the restarting of KDE I issue

Code: Select all

/etc/init.d/kdm restart

from the virtual terminal.

During testing, I closed all Konsole windows as to be sure that any settings would be written. So when I restarted KDE, all Konsole windows were closed. At the starting of KDE the session was restored and all Konsole windows were opened again.

Then I tried this again, but I did Leave -> Logout from the KDE menu. This time everything was restored in the session, including open windows and Konsole colors.

So I tested it once more, restarting the computer by using the KDE menu. This time everything was restored as well.

This would mean that settings are only saved properly when KDE is shutdown from within the menu, not by an external signal.

It is still strange that the profile showed certain terminal colors, which were different after a restart. I assume that during the session restore the Konsole settings were set first according to the profile, then later being overwritten by data from the session.

What effectively happened is that settings were overwritten again and again at startup from an arbitrary old session which happened to be stored when I last logged out using the KDE menu. I am not sure this is a feature or a bug. Personally I would say that any changes in settings should be written to their configuration files (which is done) but that session restore does not overwrite such data. Or even better, that a session be stored at a SIGHUP signal to KDE.

The cause seems to be found. Many thanks for you assistance.

jlinkels

It is probable that the applications had no chance to save their session, as they only do so when asked to by the session manager.

By restarting/stopping kdm, you are forcing X to shutdown, which leads to all applications, including the session manager to encounter a "XIO Resource error" leading to them immediately exiting.