I have a very peculiar issue - I can't log in to KDE as one particular user (andrew, which is my regular account) though all other users including root, mythtv & other family members can log in without any problem. When I try to login as andrew the X server appears to crash as the screen goes blank and I have to press Ctrl+Alt+BkSp to get back to the KDM login screen.

The proximate cause seems to have been updating KDE to 4.4.5 using yum - I did this logged in as andrew in a terminal session using su - root, and the black screen problem arose next time I tried to log in.

I can log in OK as andrew using a different desktop manager e.g. Sugar. I am using radeonhd graphics driver; if I change to "vesa" in xorg.conf I can log in OK. If I change the home directory for andrew to that of another test user and change the file ownerships, I can log in OK. Therefore the problem must lie in a config file(s) somewhere in the andrew home directory tree, which is specific to KDE and also radeonhd. I have checked in all the obvious (and unobvious) places but can't find anything. There are no relevant SELinux errors or entries in syslog or Xorg.0.log. The .xsession-errors file from a failed login attempt is here http://pastebin.com/zMByPX4k - it isn't significantly different from a normal one, and as the entries are not time-stamped I am not sure which ones arise during the login and which when I restart the X server.

I am running F13 (kernel 2.6.33.6-147.fc13.x86_64) without any other significant issues.

Any advice gratefully received...

Andrew

Try renaming (NOT deleting) your .kde4 directory (or .kde if you don't have a .kde4 directory) and see if that fixes it. Then come back and let us know if that fixed it. Either way that should help us narrow down the problem.

Thanks for the suggestion to rename the .kde tree - I hadn't realised KDE would build a new one if it was missing. That got me logged in again OK. I then renamed the "new" .kde and reverted to the old one, but used symbolic links to splice in different sub-directories of the new tree in order to see what I had to do to be able to log in.

I turns out the problem must lie in $HOME/.kde/share/config as that was the only sub-directory in the "old" tree that gave a problem. I tried restoring from my most recent nightly backup prior to the problem but that didn't help - so it looks like a file change required by the KDE update failed to occur, rather than a file getting corrupted by the upgrade.

I haven't got time to work out by trial & error which file(s) in $HOME/.kde/share/config are causing the problem so I have just copied the "new" version, & then restored specific *rc files that have app settings I don't want to lose. Most other stuff is no big deal to re-do. Deleting .kde outright was never an option as I would lose email & contact data in Kontact.

Thanks, & hope this may be useful if anyone else has the same problem.

Andrew

AndyW wrote:T
I haven't got time to work out by trial & error which file(s) in $HOME/.kde/share/config are causing the problem

Most likely culprit in my experience: the plasma* files, and especially if you've compiled a plasmoid from source. Last time that happened to me, thankfully a while ago, it sufficed to re-compile the plasmoids I knew I had compiled myself and knew I was still using.

A corrupt kdeglobals file could also do this. A kwinrc configured to use compositing effects not properly supported (or with buggy implementations) by your graphics driver can also do this.

Thanks for the suggestions but no luck with any of these... I think I will stick now as pretty normal service is restored, & I can always go back to the old *rc files if I find there is an app where I still need to keep the previous config.

I think I saw a post from @bcooksley mention Plasma desktop in relation to a similar problem when I started looking at this last week. However I don't use compositing or have any custom plasmoids - apart from selecting Oxygen black theme instead of default I haven't changed anything.

You can always one-by-one copy the old config files over until you have the problem. Or at least you can do this for the ones you think you might want.

Hi all,

I'm having the same problem with topic's owner. However, even if I delete my $HOME and create and new _empty_ one, I still can not log in to KDE SC.

I'm using Arch Linux, KDE SC latest version. This started to happen right after I tried some plamoids from Arch Linux's AUR (compiling from source).

I have checked /var/log/kdm.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log but nothing's strange or seems to be wrong.

Looking forward you reply.
_stk

PS: I removed all of those plasmoids, still, nothing went right.

@_stk:
You say that you have the same problem as the original poster, but it would be nice if you could be a bit more specific:
- Can you login with other users?
- What happens when you try to login? Do you get a black screen or does X.org crash?

If you get a black screen, you can try to press Alt+F2 and try to run plasma-desktop (to see if it's just plasma-desktop that's crashed).

@_stk: Please post which graphics card your system has.

Hans wrote:@_stk:
You say that you have the same problem as the original poster, but it would be nice if you could be a bit more specific:
- Can you login with other users?
- What happens when you try to login? Do you get a black screen or does X.org crash?

Hi Hans,

When I was testing those new plasmoids, KDE SC 4.5.3 suddenly crashed. I switched to tty and restart KDM. Since then, I couldn't login using my "daily" account anymore.

In KDE's default splash screen, as you know, there is a small panel in the center of the screen which some icons will be showed up. The last icon is KDE's logo then we can access to Plasma. However, in my case, only the first icon (looks like a HDD) can be seen. After that, I see a black screen in less than 1 second and it goes back to KDE's login screen. There is no error information at all.

With other user accounts, everything works perfectly. I have tried these solutions but none of them makes things work again:

+ move my $HOME to another place, create a new _empty_ one.
+ make sure that my account and others all belong to the same user groups.
+ check /var/log/kdm.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log but there is no (EE) at all. There are mostly (II), (==), (**) and a few (WW) but don't seem to be related to my issue.

Beside, I still can login to fluxbox with that account (usign KDM). However, in Fluxbox, I can't start any _Qt_ apps. If I type in xterm, nothing happens, the terminal will return to shell prompt instantly.

For e.g,
$ konsole
$

bcooksley wrote:@_stk: Please post which graphics card your system has.

$ lspci | grep Gra
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)

Should I provide my kdm.log and Xorg.0.log?


Regards.
_stk

PS: Well, I may just delete the current account which causes trouble and switch to a new one and everything works fine again. However, I always prefer solving the issue than ignoring it. I truly appreciate your replies.

Can you check the content of ~/.xsession-errors after the login fails?

bcooksley wrote:Can you check the content of ~/.xsession-errors after the login fails?

Ah ha, now I can see something fishy with my computer. Thanks, I've totally forgotten about ~/.xsession-errors.

Code: Select all

$cat ~/.xsession-errors
gpg-agent[4085]: directory `/home/stk/.gnupg' created
gpg-agent[4085]: directory `/home/stk/.gnupg/private-keys-v1.d' created
gpg-agent[4086]: gpg-agent (GnuPG) 2.0.16 started
Agent pid 4089
startkde: Starting up...
Connecting to deprecated signal QDBusConnectionInterface::serviceOwnerChanged(QString,QString,QString)
kded(4114): Communication problem with  "kded" , it probably crashed.
Error message was:  "org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown" : " "The name org.kde.kded was not provided by any .service files" "

startkde: Shutting down...
klauncher: Exiting on signal 1
startkde: Running shutdown scripts...
gpg-agent[4086]: SIGTERM received - shutting down ...                                                                                                                               
gpg-agent[4086]: gpg-agent (GnuPG) 2.0.16 stopped                                                                                                                                   
unset SSH_AUTH_SOCK;                                                                                                                                                               
unset SSH_AGENT_PID;                                                                                                                                                               
echo Agent pid 4089 killed;                                                                                                                                                         
startkde: Done.                 

_stk

That is weird... can you try removing ~/.kde4/share/config/kdedrc?

bcooksley wrote:That is weird... can you try removing ~/.kde4/share/config/kdedrc?

Code: Select all

$ ls ~/.kde4/share/config/kdedrc
ls: cannot access /home/stk/.kde4/share/config/kdedrc: No such file or directory