Randomly, I get a plain background with no way to login. Even on a brand new computer with a fresh install (kdm4.11.4/Mageia4) a few weeks ago, I'm still getting this. Twice now. This causes significant loss of workflow -- not data; but having to recover 8 desktops heavily loaded with apps, editors, etc wastes much time. This time, I had removed the power plug for a battery reserve check. Left the computer for a few moments. When I returned, the background image was up (normally, this would only occur if I closed the lid), so part of the power handling/saving decided to put up a login screen. But, no userid/password fields. No idea if this is related; but after trying various key combinations, found that ESC would toggle between the screen saver and the login screen background; but no way to login. Switched to a tty and attached to kdm with: strace: stuck on: select(12, [4 6 7 8 9 11], NULL, NULL, NULL) gdb: single stepping until exit from functin getdomainname which has no line number informaton. 0x00007f14dd67f433 in getdomainname () from /lib64/libc.so.6 bt full: no usefull info; but... #0 0x00007f14dd67f433 #1 0x0000000000219000 #2 0x00000000002182b0 #3 0x000000000021c490 #4 0x0000000000017000 #5 0x0000000000000003 #6 0x0000000000000000 Issued "ret" several times to walk out of the stack; but no change -- ESC still toggled between screen saver and login background. (Ctl+Alt+Bksp)*2 restored the login; but all my workflow was reset...
Found this in /var/log/messages... Aug 16 16:23:04 prf kdm[20072]: Cannot lock pid file /var/run/kdm.pid, another xdm is running (pid 1233) Aug 16 17:28:54 prf kernel: kdm[1233]: segfault at 0 ip (null) sp 00007fff542e47b8 error 14 in kdm[400000+29000] Process 1233 is the one I attached strace & gdb to... Question: what would trigger kdm to try to start again while one is already running? Recall that I was running on battery... did a sleep signal kick in while I was away from the computer for a few moments? Was this the trigger to go into a kdm login mode? Was that blocked by a stalled dbus? See also bug 338332
No recent occurrence.