bcooksley wrote:Are you able to check your init system log to double check it is actually being started up?

It is definitely started up because the status command shows that it's running (even before I restart it).

Anyway, I solved this (sort of), so for now I'll mark the topic as solved.

If anyone's interested, here's what I did:
I commented out the following code in /etc/init/kdm.conf (meaning: I disabled it):

Code: Select all

$(plymouth --quit && plymouth --wait && sleep 1) || :
        if [ "$RUNLEVEL" = S -o "$RUNLEVEL" = 1 ]
        then
            Single-user mode
            exit 0
        fi


Why? Because I discovered (by running htop in the console mode) that plymouth --wait was left hanging and that killing it would start KDM. Now, I still don't know if this really is a bug in KDM or just something wrong with my system, so I won't report it yet. It'll probably be best if I wait for the next big upgrade and see if anything changes. Now it works fine; KDM starts normally every time. I also made some changes to my kdmrc file, namely:

+ changed ServerVTs from -7 to 7
+ left ServerCmd empty, set ServerTimeout to 120 and ServerAttempts to 5
+ set OpenTimeout to 180 and OpenRepeat to 7

I fixed the fglrx problem so it doesn't show up in the log anymore. However, there are some weird things showing up after I made these changes:
Inspiron kdm[1152]: X server died during startup
Inspiron kernel: [ 32.543724] init: plymouth main process (254) killed by ABRT signal

So, obviously, X dies at some point during startup, but it manages to start back up and KDM does load properly after all. I'm guessing it's because I allowed such a high server timeout value in kdmrc.

Thanks and kudos to you, bcooksley, for being so nice and helpful. And sorry if I was annoying or obnoxious, won't happen again, I promise.

Not a problem.

I would suggest filing a bug against your distribution, as KDE does not provide the KDM init script.

I reinstalled the headers for my kernel. I'm also running mint in a VM and I resintalled the VMWARE tools and this solved my problem.

skadinna wrote:.
.
.
If anyone's interested, here's what I did:
I commented out the following code in /etc/init/kdm.conf (meaning: I disabled it):

Code: Select all

$(plymouth --quit && plymouth --wait && sleep 1) || :
        if [ "$RUNLEVEL" = S -o "$RUNLEVEL" = 1 ]
        then
            Single-user mode
            exit 0
        fi


Why? Because I discovered (by running htop in the console mode) that plymouth --wait was left hanging and that killing it would start KDM. Now, I still don't know if this really is a bug in KDM or just something wrong with my system, so I won't report it yet. It'll probably be best if I wait for the next big upgrade and see if anything changes. Now it works fine; KDM starts normally every time. I also made some changes to my kdmrc file, namely:
.
.
.

Same problem as OP. Upgraded to KDE to 4.10 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

Commenting out that code snippet somehow worked for me. Thanks!

Issues such as this one are distribution specific and should be reported to them.