I had to replace my hard disk, running Kubuntu 14.04. I could make some backups before removing the disk.

I have reinstalled Kubuntu 14.04. System boots fine, I can login and KDE apps start normally. However, if I try to recover my previous settings by replacing the ~.kde directory with its former self:

• I seem to recover most settings fine (desktop looks, autostarted apps, widgets, activities...)
• the start menu works, at the beginning, I can start Firefox
• There is a kate instance that tries to start all by itself (could be a leftover from when I saved the .kde directory)
• KDE apps don't start. Konsole, Dolphin, are added in the application bar, the spinner spins, but no window shows up
• Eventually the start menu, and the whole plasma workspace becomes completely unresponsive (but Firefox still works...)

Of course, if I reinstate the original .kde, everything works again.

I did the very same thing a few months ago (I'm not too lucky with hard disks...) and restoring .kde worked like a charm.

Any ideas? I can't find anywhere a log for KDE apps.

1) when everything is unresponsive is there a spike in i/o or cpu? use either ksysguard or combo of iotop and htop to check

2) run a KDE app that won't start in konsole to see if there's errors, other than FF do other non-KDE apps run ok?

3) reset Plasma to the default just to see if that's causing your unresponsiveness
desktop reset

Code: Select all

kquitapp plasma-desktop
 sleep 20s
 mkdir -p $HOME/plasma-config/
 mv $(kde4-config --localprefix)/share/config/plasma-desktop* $HOME/plasma-config/
plasma-desktop &

And the answer is:

"Application plasma-desktop could not be found using service org.kde.plasma-desktop and path /MainApplication."

Some processes such as Amarok are started (and went as far as displaying a valid list if tracks) but are unusable (won't play anything whatever the "play" button/menu/key used.

logout of KDE and in a virtual terminal alt+F1 remove all your caches:
~/.cache
/var/tmp/kdecache-username
/tmp/kde-username

after logging back in run

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 kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental  2> /dev/null

Thanks for the suggestion... Unfortunately this is my work machine and I was pressed by time, so I went the "easy" route and restarted with the .kde profile from the installation, which I'll slowly re-change to suit my tastes. I hope to be able to recover some settings from my previous KDE profile copying some files.

However, before doing so, out of curiosity, I tried you suggestion to restart the plasma-desktop app from a TTY, and I got two overlapping desktops, one of them having my favorite looks and working. But I couldn't get rid of the default one. But I remember seeing a lot of complaints about syscoca while it started, so your latest suggestion could be on the spot.

Thanks again for the help.