KDE 3.2 unstable on RH9
 

Is there any way of integrity-checking a KDE installation? I'm running 3.2.0-0.1 on a Toshiba laptop with Redhat 9. Since upgrading KDE, my machine has become unstable. Although 3.2 is beautiful, I would prefer to have my machine's former stability back and the less elegant and attractive desktop I had before!

Some examples of oddness:
1) can't run ksysguard anymore - returns error: 'connection to localhost has been lost!'
2) sometimes lots of disc activity without me having started any programmes.
3) regularly hanging when alt-tabbing between open programmes - again, lots of disc activity usually happening at this point, but no way of recovering, so I have to cut electricity, which I expect is not good for the hard-drive.
4) strange tendency to stick when I click menus - never seen this before: when I click on a menu nothing happens - I can move the highlight up or down between programmes with the cursor keys, and select with Enter, or go back one level with Esc, but can't select with the mouse.

I installed using --nodeps (following advice I read, I think, at linuxquestions.org), so I wonder if I missed something out.

Any help much appreciated... (I've posted this query on kde-forum, too, but that seems to be a pretty sleepy list at the moment)

MS

You have probably two versions mixed, it may give such results. I suggest you to remove newly installed packages and then think: you may delete KDE coming with RH or stay with it (KDE 3.2.1 will be out soon, BTW). Or, if you have more time and are not afraid of compiling programs from source you can install KDE from source (to a different directory) and then decide every time which one to use (installing a compiled from source KDE to /usr/local doesn't break current installation).

Edit; forgot about one important thing. After deinstalling new KDE you'll need to install the old one package after package again (they were probably overwritten).

Ouch!
Okay, can you say that in newbie? ;~)
How do I go about removing 3.2? And I guess I could reinstall 3.1.4 from my RH disks?
Thanks for your help.

OK. First find out which KDE 3.2 packages you have. To do this, run command:
rpm -qa|grep kde
You'll get a list of all KDE packages. You'll see two types of package names: 'somathing-3.2somethingelse' (for KDE 3.2) and 'something-3.1somethingelse) for KDE 3.1. Then browse the list and for every package from the first group run
rpm -e packagename --nodeps
It's a command to remove a package.

Then, find packages from the second group on RH install cds. Compy them to disk to make things easier. Move to the directory they're in and for every package in the group run
rpm -U packagename
It updates a package.

Okay, I've done step 1, and you're right - it does give me a list of mixed versions. But most are 3.2.0-0.1, excepting:

lockdev-1.0.0-23
lockdev-devel-1.0.0-23
switchdesk-kde-3.9.8-15
kde-i18n-British-3.1-2

Is there some way I can just update these?

(In case I've obviously missed something in my install, here's the rest of what comes up :

kdebase-3.2.0-0.1
kdegraphics-3.2.0-0.1
kdepim-3.2.0-0.1
kdeadmin-3.2.0-0.1
kdebase-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdeedu-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdegraphics-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdemultimedia-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdepim-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdeutils-3.2.0-0.1
kdeaccessibility-3.2.0-0.1
kdeartwork-3.2.0-0.1
kdebindings-3.2.0-0.1
kdegames-3.2.0-0.1
kdelibs-3.2.0-0.1
kdenetwork-3.2.0-0.1
kdesdk-3.2.0-0.1
kdeutils-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdeaddons-3.2.0-0.1
kdeartwork-icons-3.2.0-0.1
kdebindings-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdegames-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdelibs-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdenetwork-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdesdk-devel-3.2.0-0.1
kdevelop-3.0.0-0.1
kdeaddons-atlantikdesigner-3.2.0-0.1
kdeedu-3.2.0-0.1
kdemultimedia-3.2.0-0.1)

just an uninformed suggestion that may help out a bit.... you could have one quirky background service (or a strange combination of active services) that is hosing things up. I had similar instabilities and found that disabling this stupid "canna kanji server" (I dont speak or write Japanese for crying out loud) solved a whole slew of problems and stabalized my shit in short order.

in Redhat you can go to START-> SYSTEM SETTINGS -> SERVER SETTINGS - > SERVICES (service configuration applet) and deselect items that you dont need... here are some examples:

APM if you dont run it on a laptop
CANNA/Any language or keyboard imput selector/local changer if you dont type multiple languages or frequently change locals.
TELNET/RSH/ETC if you never access the pc remotely

remember, disabling them for startup doesnt mean that you cant manually start them later if you need them (you can use the same applet).

alot of people ive spoken to about this made the mistake of upgrading KDE while KDE was up and running, i did this also and it worked, but was very unstable.

dropping to init 3, forcefully removing all the kde3.2 packages with --nodeps and re-installing worked great.

Thanks to all,

qwijibow, that sounds good - I was running KDE when I installed, so I'd like to try your suggestion. Take me through the steps you suggest: again, what do I actually type to remove current installation, and what to reinstall?

Hey, I figured out how to do what qwijibow suggested, and some things seems to be better. But I still can't get ksysguard to work - any suggestions?