[edit]solution[/edit]

Alright, I'm stumped. I recently installed KDE 4.2 on my system, and I've been having a horrible time getting everything working all day long. I finally have *almost* everything up and running again. However, I've run into a problem:
kdm is not executing the Xsessions script pointed to by my kdmrc file. I do, however, know that the Xstartup script is executing properly, as I added the line:

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exec echo "Hello World!" >> /home/foobar/ERRORLOG

to the Xstartup script located in the same folder as the Xsession script. A similar line placed at the top of the Xsession script yields no effect, so I am presuming that kdm is not even executing the command. As such, kdm does not open the desktop environment that I tell it to - it always opens up the failsafe (xterm).

From xterm, I can get kde up and running just fine by executing "startkde". In fact, I have temporarily edited my kdmrc file to use "/usr/bin/startkde" as my failsafe client.

Anyways, this is the relevant portion of my kdmrc file:

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# Core config for all displays
[X-*-Core]

Resources=/usr/share/config/kdm/Xresources

Setup=/usr/share/config/kdm/Xsetup

#this one executes during login
Startup=/usr/share/config/kdm/Xstartup

Reset=/usr/share/config/kdm/Xreset

#this one does NOT execute (but should!) during login
Session=/usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession

FailsafeClient=/usr/bin/startkde
#used to be:
#FailsafeClient=/usr/bin/xterm


And this is what /usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession looks like:

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#! /bin/sh
# Xsession - run as user

#why doesn't this execute?
exec echo "Hello Xsession!" >> /home/foobar/ERRORLOG

session=$1

# Note that the respective logout scripts are not sourced.
case $SHELL in
  */bash)
    [ -z "$BASH" ] && exec $SHELL $0 "$@"
    set +o posix
...


I'm at the end of my rope here, and I'm completely confused as to how I can get this working the way it should be. I highly doubt that using "startkde" as the failsafe is the best way to do things. I am also pretty certain that I am referring to the correct files, unless of course my file system is lying to me.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

On openSUSE, the configuration of KDM is not used, instead it uses the configuration of XDM. You may wish to check this.

It's definitely not using xdm's config, as xdm is not starting xterm, but kdm is.

More information:
After a bit of research (IE, finally figuring out where the log file was), I discovered this line in /var/log/messages:

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Feb  9 18:31:10 localhost kdm: :0 '[19432]: Session "/usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession" execution failed: Permission denied


ls -l /usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession yields this output:

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-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1929 Feb  4 18:47 /usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession


just in case kdm needs to write to the file, for some odd reason, I even temporarily did a chmod 777 on it:

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-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 1929 Feb  4 18:47 /usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession


no luck - kdm still is not reading the Xsession script.

Do you have Apparmor or SELinux active on your machine? If so, try shutting them down. They are known to cause obscure access denied issues like this.

Hello,

I had the same problem, and thanks to you I notice the message in /var/log/messages

The solution is not the file itself, but the path. Check all directories!

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-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1929 Feb  4 18:47 /usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession


As user I had no permission to /usr/share/config

So I made

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chmod 755 /usr/share/config


Good Luck.

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 * If you experience weird application behavior (missing texts, etc.) run as root:
 * # chmod 755 -R /usr/share/config /usr/share/config


I just emerged kdelibs and notice this message.

imhotep wrote:Hello,

I had the same problem, and thanks to you I notice the message in /var/log/messages

The solution is not the file itself, but the path. Check all directories!

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-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1929 Feb  4 18:47 /usr/share/config/kdm/Xsession


As user I had no permission to /usr/share/config

So I made

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chmod 755 /usr/share/config


Good Luck.

That fixed it, thanks for your help!