Version: (using KDE 3.5.10) OS: Linux Installed from: Mandriva RPMs I am reporting this from an alternate account as my main account never gets past "Loading desktop"... this is obviously critical to me :( What I was doing: k3b was burning a DVD after using 4L-gui to burn a label for the first time. As I've had for several years now: multiple instances of claws-mail, firefox, xterms, emacs, python, etc... Being very late, my mind wandered to the external monitor which I've never been able to successfully setup as an extra monitor... all my efforts indicated that both monitors must be the same size, and all I could ever display was a copy of the laptop's screen (it's a ThinkPad G40 which has 2 display adapters -- this is essentially a desktop CPU in a laptop case). What I did: I clicked on the "Screen resize & rotate" icon, and selected VGA->upside-down out of curiosity -- all hell broke loose... 1. the VGA monitor went dark 2. the LVDS screen lost detail (app windows changed color and lost text, KDE background went black, then all was lost. 3. X server crashed with no info that I was able to capture 4. KDE attempted to restart (destroying the Xorg.0.log a few times before I got some control back) - startx was just dying at this point Tried to find the cause and discovered several files where the screen information was changed, so I manually corrected the orientation. Any attempt at starting kde for this account would now only go to "loading desktop". Going back to .kde/share/config, I noticed it was now missing virtually every *rc file which was in use when I tried VGA upside-down... I've copied over most missing *rc files from the alternate account which is seldom used, all to no avail.... I can't get past "loading desktop" How to reproduce: No idea since I can't get back to my original state Expected behavior: That there should be NO reason for a crash to take out all manner of files: {kcmrandrrc, krandrrc, gtkrc, gtkrc-2.0, kcontrolrc, kgammarc, kmix*, knotifyrc, kontactrc, korgacrc, kpdf*, kpowersaverc, ksensorsrc, noatunrc, rssservicerc, uiserverrc, (others?)} I would urgently appreciate a clue as to how to recover my main account, even if I have to redo all KDE settings... in the meanwhile, I'll try to move .kde out of the way... [hitting Finish on this report in case I lose this session too]
Created attachment 30627 [details] What my .kde/share/config looked like at crash Contrast with a fresh .kde/share/config which still doesn't work...
Created attachment 30628 [details] .kde/share/config contents now -- still won't start properly
[sigh: bugzilla doesn't keep "Additional Comments" when attachments are uploaded] Trying again... after moving .kde aside, I only get a small subset of .kde/share/config -- at least, I made a copy of that directory (see attachment) after the crash; but after a few attempts to restart KDE by editing kcmrandrrc and krandrrc to match the alternate account which still works. I'm out of reasonable ideas to recover my main account and will probably only make matters worse if I continue... Any clue appreciated.... Thanks!
This may be a sign that things are still going downhill... attempts to switch user and logging in (kdm) now give a KDE3.5 splash screen with no icons; only the text which stops at "Loading desktop" I'm tempted to mark this bug critical; but I believe that's a KDE developer's choice...
This is pretty much all the "useful" info I get in /var/log/messages: Jan 26 11:39:43 kc kdm[4433]: X server for display :1 terminated unexpectedly Does KDE have a logging facility that I can turn on? I'm not finding much to help me on docs.kde.org, archives and other places. Thanks.
Re Comment #4: all accounts are missing the splash screen icons -- does this imply that they could be affected by a non-root user? I never log in as root other than via "su -" and the most drastic command I issued was "cd /home/pfortin; mv .kde .kde.off" in the hopes of letting KDE restore whatever it needed, to no avail. I'm obviously nearing my wits end... :(
SIGH... I gave up on KDE 3.5.10 and installed 4.1.3 and am somewhat OK with the new look etc; BUT each and every .kde directory got its rssservicerc file clobbered in the transition (I haven't check all the other files yet... :( $ ll -d .kde* drwx------ 4 pfortin pfortin 4096 2009-01-26 05:23 .kde/ drwx------ 7 pfortin pfortin 4096 2009-01-26 15:55 .kde4/ drwx------ 4 pfortin pfortin 4096 2009-01-26 11:13 .kde.fresh/ drwx------ 4 pfortin pfortin 4096 2009-01-26 05:23 .kde.off/ drwxr-xr-x 7 pfortin pfortin 4096 2007-11-01 10:31 .kde.rotate.bug/ The last one was in use at the time of this crash and renamed (and why the 2007 date). KDE4 was never started here until WHY would ANY version of KDE go snooping and changing in directories that aren't officially known to it? $ ll .kde*/share/config/rsss* -rw------- 1 pfortin pfortin 51 2004-11-30 09:20 .kde.off/share/config/rssservicerc -rw------- 1 pfortin pfortin 51 2006-09-17 10:10 .kde.rotate.bug/share/config/rssservicerc -rw------- 1 pfortin pfortin 51 2004-11-30 09:20 .kde/share/config/rssservicerc each containing: [RSS Links] links=http://www.kde.org/dotkdeorg.rdf
Closing -- I've not seen this after 4.4