for quite some time now, at startup i'm getting the error message "Error launching /home/ossi/Desktop/Autostart/irsetup.desktop. Either KLauncher is not running anymore, or it failed to start the application.". it appears, however, that the .desktop file is still executed. another autostart .desktop file is also handled without complaint. also, everything in the session runs fine, and there are no suspicious messages in .xsession-errors. but: ksmserver never leaves the startup state, and consequently does not react to shutdown requests; the only way to shut down is to kill it - not sure if this is related.

the problem does not appear every time. as i only ever restart kde after compiling a newer version, i thought it may be related to the initial kbuildsycoca run before ksmserver is launched. however, when i started a second session in parallel, the same problem appeared. after nuking both sessions and logging in again, the problem does not re-appear even after several attempts.