Hi all,

I'm hoping this is a fairly simple one!

The short version is that I've messed up the workspace settings for my user by filling up my hard disk. I've resolved the disk space issue, but the user's workspace settings still seem to be messed up, and I'm wondering where to look to reset all or part of the workspace to default settings (so it's usable once again) without losing all other user data and settings.

The long version, including screenshots, is here.

Thanks very much in advance for any knowledge or advice you're able to share.

Rob

> at this point, [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F1] or [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F8] don't seem to help either
I don't think this has anything to do with your plasma settings.
Ctrl+Alt+F* are kernel shortcuts - if they don't work, that means your kernel just stalled (or your keyboard wire dropped out of the slot - try to ping the machine from another one and check whether it still echos.

"filling up my hard disk" sounds like the actual issue.

To reply to your original question, settings are found in ~/.config, you notably care about everything plasma* kand k* (while "k*" will may hit some unrelated configs, better have a look)

Move them to another location, but I doubt this will solve anything.

EDIT:

I just read luebking's post. The advice below is applicable for KDE4. I was not aware that settings have moved to ~/.config! Having said that, between the info below and luebking's info you should be able to get things going again.

Ensure you've got enough space by doing a

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df -h

Boot into kdm, go into tty3 for example by pressing CTRL+ALT+F3, log yourself in and do a

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mv .kde .kde.bak

Now go back to kdm by pressing CTRL+ALT+F7 (might be 8, depends on your setup) and log in.

Everything should be fine apart from that you've now got your standard KDE settings. If you done special things to dolphin for example, look for a file called dolphinrc in your .kde.bak directory (use sudo updatedb and locate file name to do just that) and copy it over in the corresponding place of your new .kde directory.

PS.: ncdu is also a nice tool if you're looking for space hoggers...

Thanks for your input guys,

Removing my config files and having them recreated with default settings did fix half the problem - specifically that I now have a usable workspace for the 'rob' user. What didn't get fixed is the general UI freeze (it seems [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [F*] shortcuts do still work) where the whole display just gets stuck on a given frame a few minutes after login. Videos continue to play (audio), but the image stops, as does all cursor movement and anything else visual. Things might still be functioning correctly behind the scenes, but no screen output.
This freeze doesn't happen for the 'rob3' user. At this point, it seems like the best solution (as and when time permits) is probably just to wipe the partition, after taking a complete backup of the user's home folder, then reinstall the OS with the same username and copy over individual config files as needed, hoping not to hit the dud config file (if that aspect of the problem is even config-related - I suspect driver problems) - a more sledgehammer approach to resetting things to defaults and working from there.

Once again thanks for the input.

Rob