So, I made a mistake with my /home/user/.[$config-files] and moved them all out of my home dir.

Logged out and used KDM to do a console login, moved the files back. Then logged out and waited for KDM to resume the login screen. Did an X restart from KDM login screen and then relogged in to KDE. Man, all my config had gone (not unexpectedly) and things were really screwy.

So instead I decide to logout, move .kde to a backup and allow the system to recreate it afresh. Reboot.

Back in to KDE, no internet connection. Any app I open and attempt to type in locks up without the text appearing, eventually each app crashes, then the desktop crashes leaving me with a pulseaudio-applet that has now been put in a window as the only thing on screen, the rest is blackness ... remember this is a fresh KDE now.

I can get a krunner using alt+F2 but there's no point starting anything from it because I can't enter text, except occassionally and in some apps it seems to work (like krunner), though mouse interactions work OK.

I can open things like systemsettings and change the config as long as it doesn't require typing. I can also do things like enter a TTY console (ctrl+alt+F1) and start an xterm in my KDE session ( "xterm -display :0") and the xterm can be used and interacted with, yes I can even type in it. But a konsole won't work and crashes.

There is nothing in syslog, messages, dmesg that corresponds in time with the apps crashing and no major errors being reported. Note that X doesn't crash.

Is it possible to start KDE apps from the TTY console into the KDE session so I can strace or gdb them?

So, any ideas how on Earth to save this system?

I can't do a simple reinstall because the issue has taken down my internet connection. My 'net is an eth0 connection to ADSL router+modem; I do "ifconfig eth0 up" but I dont' think the DNS is being handled properly, I still can't get a connection to anything useful; all browsers crash within about 20 seconds though I can redirect by specifying an address via krunner.

Help!?

1st I'd create a new user and see if he/she works

from the terminal (ctrl+alt=f1 making sure kde is not running) or init 3 you can type kdm or startx kde and you should see messages

check out /var/log/kdm.log should hold your kdm errors

First thing I would do is go to a text console login after bootup by holding Ctrl+Alt and pressing F1 and log in with your user.

Then create a fresh new user:
sudo adduser newusername

Give the user a password
sudo passwd newusername

Login with your new user in KDM

This should give you a fresh start, if you have any problems after that something else is probably broken. At least this should help you to fix other things while in KDE, you could always copy parts of your configs in the old .kde directory back into the new users one afterwards.

Probably many other ways around this but this is off the top of my head.

Good luck.

EDIT: beat me to it

I've tried creating a new user but for some reason couldn't log in, just refused to let me in past KDM greeter - I think it was a password problem, from what I gather using adduser I need to use crypt to set password and I don't have it installed. I did make a new user using kuser but KDM still wouldn't let me log in with it.

I do have another non-root user on this box and they don't appear to be affected, except that there's no web access for them either. The other user is a cut down KDE for my 5yo so it's not even got the application panel just a few large icons for loading games on top of a desktop image.

Having looked around I see that 4.5.3 has some major problems for others, I did a recent upgrade, perhaps this is the underlying issue. also that there are 2 kdecache directories, so I'm going to try deleting those when I get home.

have you restarted the dsl router? might be the internet issue - don't see how kde would affect your dns functionality. Do you have any Kubuntu live disks, if so do they access the net ok?

The problem with the new user is likely that the home directory doesn't exist - adduser doesn't create it by default, only when "-m" is passed does it do this.

Apologies for not replying back sooner - am trying to use links!!

Have looked in kdm.log and I have messages about "QFile::remove" and "QFont::from string" that seem to be errors (but aren't marked EE).

There's also some stuff about not connecting to ibus-daemon.

I've deinstalled the updates and gone back to default kde-4.5.1 using ppa-purge via the chroot of a kubuntu live disk.

At the moment I can boot and most of the time login, but sometimes it freezes and I have to Alt+SysRq+K to kill X and can usually after a couple of times type into the login greeter without it freezing. Once in then some apps will accept keyboard input but most won't. Though they accept mouse input - Alt+F2 runner usually works so I can type there and then copy-paste if necessary. Firefox and Thunderbird both produce a corrupted window with some parts showing and some not even with -safe-mode. Errors I've found relate to libXcursor (lots of times) against Firefox when run inside gdb; also others about console-kit-daemon (which I remember having before and so have force-removed it using dpkg).

I'm trying making a new user again, thanks for suggestion (there's no -m option but skeleton home files copy by default).

Which graphics card does your system have? The new configuration files may have enabled functionality which isn't supported by it.

My card is an nVidia 7600gt (IIRC). I'm using 10.10 maverick for amd64 with the stock (main not local) apt/sources.list repos (I used ppa-purge to go back to KDE-4.4.1).

Since my last post I've reinstalled kubuntu-desktop (sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade && sudo aptitude reinstall kubuntu-desktop). Installed and removed ibus, network-manager. Installed lots of fonts and done a fc-cache update (I think that was a major problem, the fonts were screwed up and FF couldn't load because the default font was missing, I'm guessing there though). I've also reinstalled language tools. Switched off compositing. Tried xubuntu-desktop (similar lockups), tried gnome-desktop (similar lockups). Whatever it is seems to be below the desktop level.

So, in many ways the system is working, but it's not in so many others.

Sporadically I can't enter my login details in the greeter but it's not a keyboard error as I can still login via the tty console.

Several apps will accept typing in, including now Firefox. Others that work are anything x (xterm). krunner works about 95% of the time, other times it locks on attempts to type in. kmenu works about 5% of the time, mostly locking up. Plasma-desktop lasts about 30 minutes and then spontaneously crashes (leaving a single pulseaudio-config tray icon that has not been put in it's own window, the window chrome is still there) but can be restarted with krunner or if krunner locks up via the console. Konsole breaks always, as does yakuake (which uses konsole.part I believe). All apps will allow mouse manipulation but not keyboard entry.

Getting online now is fine - I connect using "sudo dhclient eth0" as I removed NetworkManager to rule it out of the equation.

Ksystemlog ran for a bit, then crashed - I see errors about NetworkManager popping up, but like I said I've remove NetworkManager so that's not the cause.

I've tried a new user again, as suggested, but it's the same story.

My most pressing issue is to get thunderbird up for email whilst I scrimp for a new harddrive so I can do a safe from scratch install. The kubuntu 10.10 live disk runs (despite having a couple of errors from the download!!) without any of these problems.

So I've installed thunderbird-dev and run thunderbird -g.

Code: Select all

[New Thread 0x7fffd85f9710 (LWP 3012)]

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x00007ffff0b887ad in _IO_file_doallocate (fp=0x7fffd7358400) at filedoalloc.c:103
103     filedoalloc.c: No such file or directory.
        in filedoalloc.c
(gdb) bt
#0  0x00007ffff0b887ad in _IO_file_doallocate (fp=0x7fffd7358400) at filedoalloc.c:103
#1  0x00007ffff0b95dbc in _IO_doallocbuf (fp=0x7fffd7358400) at genops.c:423
#2  0x00007ffff0b942f4 in _IO_new_file_underflow (fp=0x7fffd7358400) at fileops.c:570
#3  0x00007ffff0b95dfe in _IO_default_uflow (fp=0x7fffd7358400) at genops.c:440
#4  0x00007ffff0b8a32e in _IO_getline_info (fp=0x7fffd7358400,
    buf=0x7fffff5fefc0 <Address 0x7fffff5fefc0 out of bounds>, n=8191, delim=10, extract_delim=1, eof=0x0)
    at iogetline.c:74
#5  0x00007ffff0b89209 in _IO_fgets (buf=0x7fffff5ff130 "\240W\271\360\377\177", n=<value optimised out>,
    fp=0x7fffd7358400) at iofgets.c:58
#6  0x00007fffefe8fec0 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1
#7  0x00007fffefe9020e in ?? () from /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1

[...]

#58195 0x00007fffefe90240 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1
#58196 0x00007fffefe90240 in ?? () from /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1
---Type <return> to continue, or q <return> to quit---

Yup, that's over 58000 identical errors for libXcursor.so.1 and counting, no wonder I can't get thunderbird up. I have of course run "sudo aptitude reinstall libxcursor1" but it didn't help anything. I must have purged and reinstalled about half my system by now.

Thanks for all suggestions so far, any other ideas please?

Can you please check in dmesg to see if any errors relating to your hard disk are appearing? That backtrace seems to indicate a problem with reading a file from disk, which shouldn't happen.

Otherwise, it may be a corrupt cursor that it is trying to use. I'm not sure which cursor it is trying to use however, and don't know which package they are in. Cursor themes can be found under /usr/share/icons I believe.

Thanks for the suggestion on cursors - I have reinstalled cursor themes packages. I'd also be surprised if xfce, gnome and kde all use the same cursor theme - I'll give it a go, this thing is getting personal now.

More attempts now - I've checked the hardware using memtest and by running both Kubuntu live and Open Suse live CDs and have no problems with them (or at least none that relate to the problems here).

dmesg doesn't give me anything useful.

I've also installed all the error reporting packages and some dev/dbg packages now but for some reason I'm still not getting the crash reports pop-up.

Plus, removed all virtualbox (which was giving me a dpkg error about versions that went with "dpkg --clear-avail") and have tried to reinstall thunderbird but it's no better. Also can't remember if I mentioned that I took off the nvidia drivers and installed the nouveau driver instead. Still no different. I also tried GDM, no change.

So, it's something that affects all the DEs but not the console or a live CD. It's not a main RAM problem. It's not the video drivers. Sound doesn't stutter. It doesn't seem to be font based and it affects native and gtk apps but not X apps it seems. It's not the user config as a new user has the same issue.

Trying to order a new HDD but browsers seem to be worse affected than other apps and FF crashed on me ... will order and then install from one of the live CDs, probably OpenSuse 11.3.

I've a few more days to try and crack this thing, and it would still be handy to get in to my email before the new HDD arrives ...

Any further suggestions gratefully received, thanks.

Just as something to try, open System Settings, and set your cursor theme and icon theme again.

bcooksley ... you da' man!

dmesg didn't give any errors about it, there were other xsessions errors that I just spotted that seemed more likely, but ... I did a coincidental clean out of both the user and root .ICEauthority (which I don't think mattered), then I did:

Code: Select all

sudo rm -i $(locate theme | grep curs)

and deleted all the cursor theme files. Restarted X from the KDM menu and then logged in.

Voila!!!!111onee!

So, happy - this has taken my computer offline for a whole week (173 emails waiting, after TB's spam filter).

Grace and peace to you.