Trying KDE again after being a Gnome user since 2005. I'm really liking KDE but just ran into an issue. When I log out I get a black screen with just a mouse pointer in it. I don't get back to the graphical login screen.
Kubuntu 11.04 64-bit

Googling suggests this has been an issue going back to at least 2006 and not confined to *buntu versions. That's why I brought the question here and not there..

I edited kdmrc to uncomment the line "Terminate-server=True" and now I get back to the graphical login but is that really the best solution?

I tried sending bug reports but the wizard kept telling me there wasn't enough useful information. I'd like to fix this correctly if possible and understand why it happened on a fresh install.

I am liking KDE enough that I will probably switch from Gnome to KDE within the week. Just going through all my programs to be sure I can find a suitable KDE equivalent. I kinda liked Evolution over KMail, and I really dislike Thunderbird, so I think I can learn to like KMail

Other than that, I like K3B, Amarok, DigiKam, and Plasmoids are just rockin' my world.

Thanks for any help.

The best way to try and troubleshoot this would be to recomment the kdmrc option, then logout again, and once it has hung at the blank screen switch to a virtual terminal and use htop/ps/tool of your choice to identity applications still running under your username.

Thanks, bcooksley. I recommented that line in kdmrc and ran through several logouts.
First just hitting Leave, then Logout, then logout again to make it log out now instead of counting down. That's how I was logging out.

Black screen with mouse cursor. cntrl+alt+F1 and log in and run top. Showing kde4d running as my user name but not using much CPU or memory (like 3 or 4 percent).

shutdown -r now and try again. Logged in and then logged out the same way. At the black screen with mouse cursor I noticed the cursor change when I moved the mouse. Apparently the login dialogue box was there, but I couldn't see it. Entered password. Nothing for several seconds so I went to TTY again. Then I heard the sound you get when you land on desktop after logging in, but alt+F7 didn't get me to that desktop.

So back to the TTY I run top and see Xorg using 100% CPU.

Shutdown -r now and try again. Logged in and notice my Pager on the panel had changed from 2 rows to one row. Not sure if that's significant or not. Logged out, but THIS time I let it count down and log out on its own.

This time it goes to the log in screen as it should. Hmmmm... Log in again. Log out and let it count down. It goes to login screen. Log in AGAIN and log out and force logout by hitting the log out button before it finishes counting down.
It goes to login screen as it should.

I'm going to log in and out after a complete shut down and try this again, but right now I can't MAKE it go to a blank screen again.
Did it change some setting when I let it count down to log out at least once?
I'm too new to KDE to know what's going on, but I'll keep trying to see if I can break it like a n00bie would so we can fix it if it needs fixing. I'll work on this and report back

Ok I'm not sure what or how it was fixed, but I can no longer make it go to a blank screen. Log out is working fine.

solved

ok, problem is back. I have switched my main from Ubuntu to Kubuntu. I had to uncomment the line that says Terminate-server=True in kdmrc again. If I try to just log out, it logs out and goes to a blank screen with a cursor.

The login dialogue box is actually there. I just can't see it because the screen is blank (black). However if I move the cursor slightly, I can see it change over the area where the password entry line is. I enter my password and it logs back in (I can here the music it plays when you get to the desktop) BUT the display is still black with just the cursor.

In my previous install to the eSATA external, I re-commented that line in kdmrc and then had the system log out by letting it count down to log out. And that seemed to reset something and everything worked normally. I'm not having that experience now that I've switched my main install over to Kubuntu.

I tried commenting and uncommenting that line, several reboots, several attempts to just log out. I can't seem to get back to a login dialogue unless I keep that line uncommented.

Any assistance will be appreciated. I can get to a TTY. What should I be looking for? Is there a log file someplace that might be more help?

Unfortunately I have no further ideas. It seems that the system has logged out, but the X server has been left in a inconsistent state somehow by KWin. One thing to check might be that all applications that were running as your user did exit when you logged out.

Actually I've been closing all applications prior to logging out. This is a clean install of Kubuntu 11.04. I have installed the fglrx driver and hopefully today I'll get a chance to recomment that line and try again just to see if it was a display driver issue as I was using the stock open source driver before.

Despite this one glitch everything appears to be working well although I do occasionally still get error pop-ups when shutting down or restarting telling me that pol-kit (or something similar) has encountered an error and quit. No big deal as everything starts back up just fine. I like KDE and it's apps. I'm not seeing any glaring performance issues. I was told by some to expect it to be slower than Gnome, but I'm just not seeing it. I only have a dual core processor, but I suspect the 8 gigs of memory helps a lot.

So I'll keep chasing this black screen on logout thing and report back if I turn up anything significant.

Appreciate the help as always.