Hi all,

after the latest upgrade of my archlinux box the unlock screen of the screensaver uses black text on black background. The password field and the two buttons are visible, however. So, everything works, actually, but the screen looks ugly. If I knew where the colours are stored, I could readjust them. So, where are they stored?

The screen locker in KDE 4.10 and later is QML based I believe, so this is likely a Plasma theme issue.
Can you reproduce under a new user?

If you can't, try changing your Plasma theme to another one and then back to your current one, to force a full cache and configuration rebuild.

bcooksley wrote:The screen locker in KDE 4.10 and later is QML based I believe, so this is likely a Plasma theme issue.
Can you reproduce under a new user?

If you can't, try changing your Plasma theme to another one and then back to your current one, to force a full cache and configuration rebuild.

Looks a bit better with an other user. There at least the box "The session hasbeen locked by USER / Username / Password" has black text on grey background. The screen of the unlock screen itself keeps being black no matter what theme is activated. However, the desktop background is okay (chose Oxygen Air).

Login with my user didn't change anything for the better.

I remember that the last upgrade didn't run smoothly. Some GTK packages had troubles accessing the shared lib libpng. OTOH Plasma is a Qt thing, isn't it? So, no idea if this may be a hint.

bcooksley wrote:The screen locker in KDE 4.10 and later is QML based I believe, so this is likely a Plasma theme issue.

So, couldn't I change some QML? Any pointer to those files?

Plasma, like virtually all other KDE applications, is based upon Qt, yes.

I would advise checking ~/.xsession-errors to start with at this point, as the QML shipped with the system should behave properly, rather than giving black on black colours. It might also make sense to ensure all packages are properly updated, given the libpng issue.

bcooksley wrote:Plasma, like virtually all other KDE applications, is based upon Qt, yes.

I would advise checking ~/.xsession-errors to start with at this point, as the QML shipped with the system should behave properly, rather than giving black on black colours. It might also make sense to ensure all packages are properly updated, given the libpng issue.

A lot of entries in that file and I cannot judge whether they are critical or not.

In the meanwhile I del'ed /var/tmp/kdecache-USERNAME. Now I at least have again an unlocker box that's readable, phew. But the background still is just black.

From what I recall, the actual "background" behind the screen locker window is set at System Settings > Display and Monitor > Screen Locker.
The "Simple Locker" which is the default sets either a solid black background or the current Plasma theme default background if I recall correctly.

bcooksley wrote:From what I recall, the actual "background" behind the screen locker window is set at System Settings > Display and Monitor > Screen Locker.
The "Simple Locker" which is the default sets either a solid black background or the current Plasma theme default background if I recall correctly.

Checked: It's blue.

BTW, the files that had troubles being upgraded with the last system upgrade of archlinux, have been upgradeded now - with no effect on this issue.

If I wanted to reset kde, which files do I have to delete. It is the whole directory ~/.kde, right?

Yes, you would want to move ~/.kde/ as well as ~/.config and ~/.local. Note that if you have a ~/.kde4/ directory you should move that as well.
Given the nature of the data in these directories I definitely advise against deleting them outright - moving them somewhere else while outside of KDE will achieve the same objective.

Just to clarify the issue you are facing - could you post a screenshot of it please?

bcooksley wrote:Yes, you would want to move ~/.kde/ as well as ~/.config and ~/.local. Note that if you have a ~/.kde4/ directory you should move that as well.
Given the nature of the data in these directories I definitely advise against deleting them outright - moving them somewhere else while outside of KDE will achieve the same objective.

Just to clarify the issue you are facing - could you post a screenshot of it please?

Hm, I'm not sure how to do that: I have to unlock the screen to get at KSnapshot. And any other key combi like pPrint, Ctrl-Print, Alt-Ctrl-Print etc. etc. didn't work.

You could try taking a snapshot of the screen using the methods documented here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ta ... Screenshot

You would login on a TTY, then set the "DISPLAY" variable to allow yourself to access the graphical session.
The usual value for $DISPLAY is ":0.0"

poseidon wrote:Hm, I'm not sure how to do that: I have to unlock the screen to get at KSnapshot. And any other key combi like pPrint, Ctrl-Print, Alt-Ctrl-Print etc. etc. didn't work.

Fire up KSnapshot, but with a delay of a few secs, it should get hold of the locker screen

šumski wrote:

poseidon wrote:Hm, I'm not sure how to do that: I have to unlock the screen to get at KSnapshot. And any other key combi like pPrint, Ctrl-Print, Alt-Ctrl-Print etc. etc. didn't work.

Fire up KSnapshot, but with a delay of a few secs, it should get hold of the locker screen

Cool, that did it. But, right now I haven't a publicly available server to put that image on. I guess, direct upload isn't provided?

I have the same issue here on Manjaro. The unlock feature works but the background is black.

Direct upload to the forum isn't supported i'm afraid. What you can do however is post the screenshot to a public snapshot site such as paste.opensuse.org (which does support images).

Here's mine, nothing much to see though...
http://i.imgur.com/dWmylIt.png