Hello,

I'm having a problem with my mandriva 2011 installation.
I have it set up to automatically boot in the morning and shutdown at night and I use it as a webserver and minecraft server.
It is set up to automatically start the x environment which I believe is KDE.
However after a few days of not actually using it, I can suddenly no longer start any program in KDE.
Everything I do from the console is running fine, but in KDE programs never show up.
I see the icon of the program I'm trying to start bounce for a bit in the taskbar, but after a min or so it's gone. No errors, nothing.
As far as I know nothing changed from a few days back when it was still working normally.

As I saw that there were some updates I allready did the updates through the console with: urpmi --auto-update and rebooted, but no changes to my problem.

Hopefully somebody can point me in the right direction as I have no idea where to even start looking.

Does Krunner still function?

If you press ALT+F2, does anything come up?

If it does, type 'xterm', then in the opened terminal try to run any KDE app and see what errors you get - run 'konsole' in xterm, for example

If I press ALT+F2 a little screen shows where i can type a command, I'm guessing that's Krunner.
However it doesn't recognize xterm as a command and so does nothing when I press enter.
I can however enter konsole in there, but this gives the same outcome as running konsole (or any other application) from the application window.

Get xterm installed and try

Will do that tomorrow, it's bedtime over here in the Netherlands

Ok installed xterm.
Shows up in krunner, but doesn't show up when I try to start it. It actually doesn't even show an icon in the taskbar which the other applications do.

Any way to start xterm from a remote console perhaps?

Check in your home log .xsession-errors or see if it's named differently in Mandriva (should start with .x or .X)
Are there any errors?

If not, let's see if we can catch an error by trying to run a graphical application from crontab:

And as the last line add:

Only instead of '45' use the next minute.

Save and wait for that minute to come, then check /var/log/syslog for CRON errors.

Ok just took a look at .xsession-errors, it has quite a few lines in there, but I think most aren't actually errors, but I'm not sure what I should be looking for.
I could add the file as an attachment if that's any help.

As for the crontab option, I'll try that when I get home, because I'm at work now and only have a ssh connection to my server, so I wouldn't be able to see if anything starts in the x-environment.

Ok I executed the cronjob.

Nothing showed, and the log shows the following at the time of the cronjob:

crond[1702]: (root) RELOAD (/var/spool/cron/root)
crond[8146]: (root) CMD (DISPLAY=:0 konsole)
crond[8149]: (CRON) EXEC FAILED (/usr/sbin/sendmail): no such file or directory
crond[8146]: u.

(yes i should fix sendmail, but I don't think that's it)

So if I'm analysing it correctly, it executed the display 0 konsole command without errors ?

Something came to mind, which may or may not have anything to do with my problem:

I remember that in previous versions I used to be able to switch between virtual desktops, now I don't seem to have that option in the current version anymore (at least not directly), but isn't it possible that the programs do get started, but that they are being started on another screen which I don't see?

Anybody? or Should I start collecting my files and scripts for a fresh install?

Before doing that, try one more test: create a new user, log in as the new user, and test KDE functionality under that login.

If the KDE programs work, that would point to something gone screwy in your /home/[username]/ dot-something-or-other configuration files.

You're spot on with your suggestion.
I made a new test user and with that user I can start all KDE applications just fine.
Any way to get the other user working again, or should I delete it and recreate it ?

Thanks for the help btw

Cool. As my old boss used to say, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

Regarding your question:

It depends on how valuable the data in that user's home directory is and how valuable that user name and uid are.

There are several alternatives.

If the data is not valuable, blow away the user and its home directory and start over. If there's only a bit of valuable data, back it up to another location, then do the blowing away.

If the data is valuable, you can test to figure out which configuration file is corrupt by renaming one to something like dot-[filename].old, logging in (which will lead to the recreation of the file at default when you log in or when you start the program that file is associated with), and testing, then repeat for each one in turn. That will be time-consuming, but it will enable you to identify the cause precisely.

I would start with the dot-kde (~/.kde) file.

The other brute force method would be to delete all the hidden config files, log in, and let them all get recreated at default and test. If there are any that you have customized (for example, my Fluxbox menus and startup files are heavily customized), you can save them out and bring them back when you are ready. Then, if the malfunction occurs again, you can troubleshoot those files.

Well the data itself isn't a problem, the uid might be.
I'm guessing things like a cronjob that run with that specific user, use the uid and not the username and will therefor no longer work if I drop the user and make a new user with the same username.
There's also a couple of settings I changed to get audio working through hdmi, which seem to be user specific (new user isn't giving me sound).
But I did those settings some time ago and no longer remember which settings I changed (damn me and my lazy ass not documenting these things).

Now if it's the only way to get kde working normally again I will just dump the user and create a new one, but if there was any way of keeping the current one it will save me a lot of time.

I'll guess I'll start playing around with the dot-files to see if I can get the user working again.
At least I know where to look now.

Thanks again for the info and help and I'll mark this thread as solved for now.