kde login hangs; also, suse 9.3 can't recognize its DVD
 

two questions, probably not related.

question 1. i have a network of workstations running suse 9.3; user logins via NIS, home directories served via NFS. periodically a user finds themselves unable to log in; the login process seems to freeze in the middle of loading KDE, showing just a blank green suse wallpaper. ctrl-alt-backspace successfully restarts X. logging in with Gnome or other WM's is fine, as is logging in at runlevel 3. however, startx into KDE has the same freeze; error messages show complaints from the sound server about not being able to open a device, and then hangs.

attempted solutions: erasing the user's .kde directory, wiping out everything in /tmp and /var/tmp related to kde or other IPC and lock files; no change. the only successful solution seems to be creating an entirely new account and migrating the user's files over to it, which seems awfully drastic!

question 2. some of the machines don't seem to be able to recognize the suse install media (CD or DVD). this is box sets, not burned ISOs. when trying to install packages in yast, it asks to insert the SuSE 9.3 DVD, or CD, even when it's definitely in there. the 'change install location' part of yast also can't recognize the CD or DVD; it will create empty options pointing to "dvd:///" or "cd:///" and give an error that it can't find Suse install information at that location. i've seen other posts out there which suggest that you can then simply edit that line make dvd:/// point to /dev/hda, which is where it ought to be, but i don't see any option to edit it - just Add or Delete.

thanks,

--skullmunky

Cdrom issue
 

:study:
Can you play a music cd in the drive?
If so, then I had a similar problem with Suse 8.2. You will have to go into Yast and set
"ide-cdrom=scsi".
I can't remember exactly where in Yast, maybe someone else can help with that. The Suse knowledgebase has changed so much since I last used it that I can't find the original post.
Best of luck!

(fix)
 

i disabled auto-load in KsCD and now it works; at least on one machine. this also prevents kscd from arbitrarily assigning CDDB names to the install DVD.

now, in YaST, when i choose a DVD source, i get

dvd:///

without any /dev entries, but it seems to be ok.