Hello,

I updated my Debian Testing system on Monday the 1st of March and, when logging into my KDE (v. 4.3.4) session the next day I was unable to interact with the desktop. Only thing I got was a black screen I couldn't make anything out of and I had to kill the X server or restart the system with the relative keyboard shortcuts. After looking for help on the "debian-users" list I was instructed to delete my .kde and .kde4 folders (whichever one existed - I only had .kde on my system) and log into KDE again. I did so from my GNOME session and it worked, even though I had to set all my KDE preferences again, but I am having trouble running some KDE effects that used to be running smoothly before those updates broke my KDE functionality.

To be more precise, my compositing type can only be set to "XRender" from the "advanced" tab of "Desktop Effects", if I am to activate compositing (as shown in the "Generals" tab). Even when I do activate compositing, though, many effects, including desktop cube and wobbly windows (which I use frequently for both improved functionality and aesthetics) cannot be activated. I actually get notifications from the KDE Window Manager that said effects could not be activated. This extends to other effects as well, such as Sharpen. I haven't looked into any more effects that don't work, however I believe it is a fair assumption that there might be more.

I realize that effects isn't the core of the matter when dealing with a Linux system (and especially a Debian system) but I don't see why I shouldn't try to return to the functionality that I had before the troublesome updates. I love me some smooth KDE effects.

My system runs on an Nvidia GT 220 with the latest drivers downloaded from the Nvidia website. I don't think this will be very useful but here's my .kderc file's contents as well:

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jason@debian:~$ cat .kderc
[General]
activeFont=DejaVu Sans,9,-1,5,75,0,0,0,0,0
desktopFont=DejaVu Sans,9,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
fixed=DejaVu Sans Mono,9,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
font=DejaVu Sans,9,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
menuFont=DejaVu Sans,9,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
smallestReadableFont=DejaVu Sans,8,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
taskbarFont=DejaVu Sans,9,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
toolBarFont=DejaVu Sans,8,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
jason@debian:~$


Please inform me if this is a problem known to other users and if there's some kind of working solution to it.

Thank you.

Can you please confirm that Direct Rendering support is available? The effects you cannot activate likely depended upon OpenGL.

Note that in this case, destroying the contents of ~/.kde/ was unneeded, and simply removing ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc would have been sufficient.

This is what I get when trying to run glxinfo to find out about direct rendering:

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jason@debian:~$ glxinfo | grep direct
Error: glXCreateContext failed

After googling a bit I thought I should try adding the following to my xorg.conf:

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Section "Files"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection


This I did, creating a xorg.conf which is as follows:

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jason@debian:~$ sudo cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf     
# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder75)  Tue Dec  8 21:04:28 PST 2009


Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Files"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers"
    ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection


However, glxinfo is still stubborn and gives me the same error. I'm thinking of re-installing the nvidia drivers, but I'll wait for any useful input from here, since I'm weary of what may happen with re-installation (I'm "worst case scenario end user", for the most part).

Edit: If it helps, "Enable direct rendering" is checked in the "advanced" tab of System Settings->Desktop->Desktop Effects.

I unfortunately don't know why that error would be occurring. Making a backup ( or else ensuring you have a method to recover the system if X is rendered unusable ) the reinstalling the driver would probably be a good idea.

Before you do that however, asking the NVidia settings panel to regenerate the configuration file.

After installing the same NVIDIA driver (I think it was the 190.53.xxx driver, I'm on a Windows partition right now and do not know which one exactly) all problems were solved. I got a bit of a scare first because installing the newest driver on their website led to X not being able to detect any screens and thus not start, but I was fortunate enough to have kept the old driver on my disk.

Marking this solved.

Installing the nvidia driver from their website often results in these issues after kernel or x upgrades, better to install the 'Debian' way, it cuases less problems in the long run and you can still have the latest driver from unstable, see the last post.

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40673