It was a day like any other day, except today kde4 plasma decided not to work. kdm was fine. I logged in. I was greeted by a black/blank screen. When I moved the mouse over the black/blank desktop, plasmoid outlines would make an appearance. I hit alt-tab, f2, and there were just faint white outlines(with no content) being displayed. This problem is isolated to me, other users are okay.

First, is there any way to save this kde4 plasma desktop? Any commands, any actions that I can take to force my kde4 plasma desktop back to life? Temporary directories and cache are always cleaned on reboot. What else?

Otherwise, I do have backups of my home directory. I'd rather just restore kde. Just restoring the .kde4 directory is not enough. What else do I need to restore?

Your assistance is much appreciated.
Thank you.


opensuse: 11.2
kdebase4: 4.3.5

try this, it will indicate if your plasma config files have gotten corrupted (ps - not my code)
it will move your config files and restart plasma with (hopefully) a functioning default plasma desktop

if your plasma rc files are corrupt best to rebuild them

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

I don't have konsole or any kde app available. The desktop is black with plasmoids shadows when I scroll over with the mouse. I can edit files from ctl-alt-f2 terminal, but I can't execute commands from konsole. I tried the kde safemode that's in the session-type drop down, but same results.


Thank you.

just run the commands from terminal (alt+ctl+F1), then return to kde (alt+ctl+F7)

fyi for you (being openSuse):

kquitapp plasma-desktop
sleep 20s
mkdir -p ~/.kde4/plasma-config
mv ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop* ~/.kde4/plasma-config/
plasma-desktop

You may need to run the following prior to that to gain access to D-Bus:

Code: Select all

export DISPLAY=:0.0
source ~/.dbus/session-bus/*