This has been posted on another forum, but no help was forthcoming
RosaFresh 2012.1 Desktop AMD 64bit

I am looking for ideas/suggestions to diagnose a problem with KDE. It refuses to start since my last lot of updates (approx 2 weeks ago) using packagkit. I can log in with KDM. The xserver starts and takes me to a terminal on a blank desktop. I think this is failsafe mode. Trying to find out what is causing the problem has been impossible for me.

The .xsession errors file reports
rxvt is unable to display UTF-8 encoding
You should use xterm instead.

I am not sure but this does not seem to be the reason for KDE not starting. I think it is more to do with xrender or xrandr2. These files have given me grief before. Any ideas on how to diagnose this. Plasma-desktop will start from the terminal but just boots into a black background with windows etc unable to be moved or resized.

Looking into xorg.log does not show much because the xserver is starting ok.

Where to look for kde specific logs ?

Can you check the session used in KDM? Perhaps it got changed due to an upgrade. Ensure it is "KDE Plasma Workspace".

My problem still exists and requiring a solution. Unfortunately I locked myself out of Forums for a while - so could not respond.

einar wrote:Can you check the session used in KDM? Perhaps it got changed due to an upgrade. Ensure it is "KDE Plasma Workspace".

No such luck - KDE is definitely selected to start.

The error report is "could not start kdeinit4, check you installation"

Please check ~/.xsession-errors and your X11 log to see if there are clues to the problem. Post snippets here, or if the logs are long, use a pastebin service.

Also, does pressing Alt + F2 show KRunner? This could simply be Plasma Desktop being unable to start.

The .xsession errors file reports

"rxvt is unable to display in UTF-8 encoding. You should use xterm instead."

Not sure what to make of this.

For what I can gather it's not really starting the Plasma session. Can you check what bcooksley said as well?

einar wrote:For what I can gather it's not really starting the Plasma session. Can you check what bcooksley said as well?

When I start the KDE session I get taken to a prompt "could not start kdeinit4, check you installation". Closing this takes me back to KDM. When I start the Failsafe session I get a console. From here I ran Alt+F2 - but nothing happened- no KRunner started : (

Still looking through logs atm.

does /usr/bin/kdeinit4 exist?

have you considered trying to force a reinstall of KDE ? might be that there was a bad upgrade

google01103 wrote:does /usr/bin/kdeinit4 exist?

have you considered trying to force a reinstall of KDE ? might be that there was a bad upgrade

1) Yes kdeinit4 is present.

2) What sort of procedure could be used to do this ? For example, in a previous life when updating kde4, I would upgrade kdelibs4 and kdebase files, and this would trigger most of the important packages to be upgraded. But times have moved on. Not sure what the procedure is now.

I don't use packagekit so no idea, maybe ask on Rosa forums as you might need to use a different tool like urpmi

what errors are given if you open a virtual terminal (alt+ctrl+F1) and type: startx

google01103 wrote:I don't use packagekit so no idea, maybe ask on Rosa forums as you might need to use a different tool like urpmi

what errors are given if you open a virtual terminal (alt+ctrl+F1) and type: startx

It loads a stack of modules until it gets to GLX. Still trying to capture the log. If I could find out how to bypass this module or load another driver it may help. Despite the module not appearing in xorg.conf it still loads. I guess it is embedded into the fglrx driver.

At the failsafe terminal, please try running "startkde" and watch the output which goes by. Chances are that it will trip over launching processes at one point or another. Please post the errors they generate.

I suspect one library or another on your system is out of date compared to the rest - causing the failure to start.

bcooksley wrote:At the failsafe terminal, please try running "startkde" and watch the output which goes by. Chances are that it will trip over launching processes at one point or another. Please post the errors they generate.

I suspect one library or another on your system is out of date compared to the rest - causing the failure to start.

This suggestion proved very helpful. Two errors emerged immediately - symbol lookup error from libXrender and some incompatibility from libXrandr . Both of these I was able to address with the Smart Package Manager. Kde now starts and functions normally. I still have some issues with other packages (not kde related) and will address these as I go.

Thanks : ) - very happy.

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