Weirdness (K/Ubuntu related) ?????

Ok, so I have an 80 yo great aunt, who happens to dual boot windows and Kubuntu.

Originally she had a nice up to date Kubuntu 8.04 that ran fine, but when 8.10 was released, she had a look at it and thought it might be a good idea, she managed to do a dist upgrade.

Now she wasn't happy with it, but she did find the "shipit" page at the Ubuntu site and ordered a "factory version" copy of 8.10 - which turned up after the crimbo period.

So, I went over and did a re-install of it.

After about a week, she said she was having problems, that the net connection was temperamental and that there was some other odd stuff going on (she didn't elaborate) and could I go over and put it back to 8.04 (and KDE 3.5.whateveritwas).

I did this last weekend, but the weirdness continues..........

The strange happenings are stuff like this, that with the KDE, it doesn't matter what "style" we select for her, we get a complete window, but there is no minimise/maximise/exit options in the top right hand corner of open windows. Also, if we do something that needs a password, the dialogue input box appears but it won't allow me/her to put her password into the box.

Additionally, if there's an open window, that window seems to loose all "right click" facilities, though if I right click on an area of clear desktop it still shows the right click menu.

Now the only thing I can think of that all that has in common is that it might be something to do with her /home having some remaining config files for some apps or kde that are KDE 4 ones, left over from when we had that installed, that are still taking charge of the applications even now that we've re-installed the earlier KDE 3.

Nothing else makes sense that I can think of.

Does anyone know whether I'm headed along the right lines or have I completely missed the point of what might be going on ?????

Plus does anyone know what I might be able to do about this, as the install/re-installs have all been done by just installing to the same partitions but not touching her /home to protect her data ?????

TVM in advance if anyone can point me in the right direction or suggest possible cures for this weirdness

regards

bigjohn

Upgrading from kde3 to kde4 and/or downgrading from kde4 to kde3 without (re)moving ~/.kde could very well be the origin of the issue.

So if possible I would suggest to backup then erase ~/.kde and see what happens.

If all goes well it should be possible to use the backup to restore selectively important data, as contacts or mail.

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier Upgrading from kde3 to kde4 and/or downgrading from kde4 to kde3 without (re)moving ~/.kde could very well be the origin of the issue. So if possible I would suggest to backup then erase ~/.kde and see what happens. If all goes well it should be possible to use the backup to restore selectively important data, as contacts or mail.

Ok, so as my aunt is the only user on her system if I remember the terminology correctly (sorry, I'm a reasonably experienced user but I don't have much in the way of technical ability) the ~/.kde would be the hidden file in the /home ......

I don't know what she'd want to keep data-wise though, well until I can get up there at the weekend.

Still, backup shouldn't be a problem as I can just drag/drop most of her important files etc to the FAT32 partition I made when we set the system up (so she could get an of her photos etc across to photoshop to meddle with) and then back again to restore that kind of stuff.

I presume I'm thinking on the right lines for this ???

regards


bigjohn

You are right, ~ is a shortcut for /home/username/ and .kde is a hidden folder (or directory) in it.

What she could miss if you erase it are mostly the contacts, calendar and mails if she uses kde apps such as kontact, kmail and/or korganizer and knotes. On kde3 these data are stored in sub-directories of .kde/share/apps, e.g.
1) .kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf : contacts as Vcards
2) all the files in .kde/share/apps/kmail/mail folder
3) .kde/share/apps/korganizer/std.ics (calendar ans appointments)
4) .kde/share/apps/knotes/notes.ics (notes)

I am not sure this is complete.

Originally Posted by Didier Spaier You are right, ~ is a shortcut for /home/username/ and .kde is a hidden folder (or directory) in it. What she could miss if you erase it are mostly the contacts, calendar and mails if she uses kde apps such as kontact, kmail and/or korganizer and knotes. On kde3 these data are stored in sub-directories of .kde/share/apps, e.g. 1) .kde/share/apps/kabc/std.vcf : contacts as Vcards 2) all the files in .kde/share/apps/kmail/mail folder 3) .kde/share/apps/korganizer/std.ics (calendar ans appointments) 4) .kde/share/apps/knotes/notes.ics (notes) I am not sure this is complete.

I seem to recall that she uses thunderbird for email so that it should be fine as I seem to recall that the various files i.e. contacts and any emails that she's kept are either in the /.mozilla directory or /.thunderbird (I think we installed thunderbird in her windows install as well, just in case she was stuck and had to use that for email) - so it should be reasonably straight forward.

Thanks for the guidance I'll probably be trying this tomorrow as she txt'd me to say that she was out today (bless her, she does charity stuff for a local homeless charity since my uncle passed on in the middle of last year).

I'll post any results of how I get on afterwards.

regards

John

p.s. I suppose worst case scenario is that once I've moved the stuff she wants to keep - if the deleteing the ~/.kde file doesn't work or it screws up more than I'm hoping - it would be safe to re-install but also format the /home and then replace the backed up files.....

I don't see any reason why you would have problem erasing the ~/.kde directory.

At worst, after backup of ~/.mozilla and ~/.thunderbird directories you could have to erase /home/grand_aunt (or ~) before re-installing, but I do not think you will have to re-install and even in this case you should not have to format /home.

Let us know what happens.