Error: "Unable to initialize frontend:KDE"
 

Hello,

(in Re: Debian unstable)

Almost every time I do an "apt-get" or a "dselect" and then watch the console output, there is an error like:
There is no debian Qt.pm package.
Then again what is "@INC"? (never heard of it).
Is it failing to initialize "front end KDE" because there is no Qt.pm ?
or ....
it can't find Qt.pm because KDE needs to be "found" first so that it gets instantiated?

btw all this is happening from a console within KDE

It is probably something trivial, but .... I could use a hint .

Many Thanks

Here's just a hint - I'm not sure I can help beyond this, though. Qt.pm is a file in the package libqt-perl. (Note: http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages is very useful :-) ). So, apt-get install that (if you already have it, then 'apt-get --reinstall install libqt-perl' or 'dpkg --purge --force-remove-essential libqt-perl' and 'apt-get install libqt-perl' to completely reinstall all config files and everything).

smith847be,

Thanks, I was suspecting a perl library being the culprit but didn't know which one.

Progress report 01:
Unfortunately before seeing your response, I used "dselect" and started including some perl libraries.
One of those (can't remember which) had a long list of dependencies and "dselect" wanted to remove 128 packages (the whole KDE and more).... I had to abort that try, but dselect kept remembering and prompting me to remove stuff. Since I didn't know how to reset "dselect" I went in and re-picked all packages (one by one) that dselect wanted to remove.

Result:
The ""Unable to initialize...." error is gone, but now there is a new error:
While doing an "apt-get upgrade" there are a lot of lines like: "frontend: cannot connect to X server :0.0"
and "dpkg: error processing .... blah ... blah ...".
So a lot of packages now stay unconfigured.


It looks like I made a mesh with the dpkg dependencies ? ....

Massai,

Just for info, one of the blokes at my LUG is on the debian developers list (which I presume suggest's he know's quite a bit about the distro), he advice to me when I had debian (and hard disc knoppix) was to avoid dselect like the plague, and that it was a total pain in the arse.

Just go for straight apt-get.

Don't know if that "pearl of wisdom" will be of any help?

good luck

regards

John

Thanks,
indeed I am finding out the hard way about the pitfalls of "dselect".
It was a scare having to go in and reset over 100 packages just to get the database straight (I should read the man pages more carefully, since there is a way to quit dselect and have it revert to the previous selection set)

From now on I will try to stick with apt-get or the (frontend) KPackage.

--

Alright, in regards to "Progress report 01" - I'm guessing that the root problem with that trying to remove KDE was with the qt libs, if it wanted to remove all/most of KDE, which can be a huge pain (I had a big problem that seems similar to yours - see this thread for mine: http://linuxquestions.org/questions/...hreadid=127388 - although its not much of a help). Unfortunately, I don't know much about dselect - I use apt-get for everything. I'm not really too sure about the unable to connect to X server thing. Do programs work fine within KDE? Maybe try just launching any K___ program from a terminal. That will dump you output of any errors, fatal or non-fatal; that might at least give a hint as to the problem. The only other thing I can think of right now to try would be just do 'xhost +localhost' from a plain terminal (i.e. no 'su' command). Then try 'apt-get upgrade'. That command will allow any program on your local computer to connect to X (if this is a permissions problem). Perhaps also - although I don't quite see why this would matter - since you originally had a problem with a QT library extension (for perl), try apt-get --reinstalling libqt3c102 and/or libqt3c102-mt. Those are the core QT libs for testing & unstable.

...or synaptic - which interfaces directly with apt-get, but is a graphical frontend (apt-get install synaptic)

UPDATE:
This one had something to do with permissions (to use the Xserver).
When I logged in as root (instead of just "su" on a console) the configuration proceeded normally.

Still don't know exactly what it was (it will probably come up again next time).

UPDATE (on my post):
then if you get that problem again, quick fix is 'xhost +local:root' - which will allow root programs to connect to a user's X session. You can probably ignore the rest of my previous post, then. Just that I'd recommend synaptic if you want a graphical package manager front-end. I'm not sure why anything that apt-get does would need to connect to the X server - weird.

smith847be,

Thank you, I will keep your suggestion in mind.

Every little thing counts, even the comments that are not directly related to the problem. So now all these thoughts are archived here and I can always refer back to them on a rainy day.

(A rainy day happens quite often being a newbie, although I have the Debian Reference Manual and a couple of books handy, I still don't have a good grasp (don't have any grasp actually) on how things REALLY fit together, and how to correctly troubleshoot)

--