KDE startup problem with Slackware 12.1
 

Dear All,
Over the weekend I finally had the time to upgrade my computer from Slackware 12.0 to 12.1 (I know, just in time for 12.2 to be shipped). I hate doing upgrades as they never go smoothly, and this time was no exception. The problem this time is that I can't get kde to start up. When I fire it up I get two error messages. The first is

Could not start kdeinit. Check your installation.

The splash screen tries to set up the interprocess communication for a while and then gives up saying

There was an error setting up inter-process communications for KDE. The message returned by the system was:

Could not read network connection list
/home/{username}/.DCOPserver_{hostname}__0

Please check that the 'dcopserver' program is running!

I've gone through a lot of forums and sites trying to run this down, all with no luck. Here's what I've tried so far:

1) reinstalled all of the packages in both the x and kde directories, in case there was a bad installation. This was done using the upgradepkg --install-new --reinstall /mnt/cdrom/slackware/{x or kde}/*.tgz command.

2)confirmed that the permissions on the /home directory are 755 and owned by root.root. Also confirmed that the user directory is owned by {username}.users.

3) checked to see if X, *dm, or dcopserver were running while the KDE startup was going. X is running, but no desktop manager or dcopserver is running.

4) confirmed that X is running okay by getting gnome to start up okay

5)created a new user and tried to start kde from there. The personalizer runs, but then gives me the same error.

6) removed .ICEauthority, .Xauthority, .kde/ .kderc .qt/ in the new user directory and tried again with the same results. Removed .ICEauthority and .Xauthority in my old directory with the same results.

7) checked /var/log/Xorg.0.log for error messages. None found.

8) checked /etc/X11/xinit/ to make sure that the default xinitrc files were okay.

9) compared settings with my laptop, which is running Slack 12.1 and KDE without a problem.

10) checked syslog and messages for errors. None recognized.

At this point I'm pretty much at wits end as to what is wrong and what to try.

When I did the upgrade, I followed the instructions in the UPGRADE.TXT file. I keep my home directory on a different partition. After going into single user mode I unmounted the home directory partition, did the upgrade using the upgradepkg --install-new commands, and then remounted the home directory partition when I tested the new kernel boot. I've already learned from past experience to change my inittab so that the default runlevel is 3 until I know the desktop manager is running okay, so I'm testing everything from the command line with startx.

Again, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan

Hello,

Maybe you could try to select again "xinitrc.kde" in command:

Also did you install any language package (kdei series) that you may have forgotten to upgrade?

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, changing the link to xinitrc.kde didn't make a difference. I also double checked that I don't have any of the internationalization packages installed.

A couple of other items. I tried deleting the contents of the /tmp directory, as well as resetting the links for socket-{hostid} and tmp-{hostid}.

One more piece of information. When the X-server exits I get the following messages:

startkde: Starting up...
dlsym strcpy error:(null)
startkde: Could not start kdeinit. Check your installation.
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
dlsym strcpy error:(null)
Could not register with DCOPServer. Aborting.
ERROR: Couldn't attach to DCOP server!
startkde: Shutting down...
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
Error: Can't contact kdeinit!


Thanks,
Dan

Just a quick guess here. This all sounds like a permissions issue. Assigning permissions to username:users is a bit different. Usually the ownership is username:username and then any specific subdirectories that are shared are assigned differently. Try the following typical permissions:

chmod 750 /home/username
chown -R username:username /home/username

Also verify that your user account is a member of the users group.

I checked on both the machine being upgraded and my laptop. In both cases, except for root, the group is users, not the username. However, I tried your suggestion anyway. What I got was

chown -R daniel:daniel /home/daniel
chown: `daniel:daniel': invalid group

Any other ideas of things to try?

Thanks,
Dan

Hello,

I have not seen in your list of actions that you tried to delete the .DCOP* files in your home directory before starting KDE. But I guess this was tested in step 5) with a new user.

Also you may have some .ICE* or .DCOP* files in /tmp. You can try to remove them as I think (I'm at work so I can not check on my box) that they are symlink to those files in ~/.kde directory.

You're right. Shortly after I posted my original message I realized that I forgot to mention that I had already deleted the symbolic links in my .kde folder. Since it was getting large anyway, I also deleted the entire contents of my /tmp folder. Neither of these efforts had any effect.

Some more information on the problem. This morning I fired up gnome so that I could get some work done. During a lull I decided to try and start up kmail, just to see what happens. Here is the result:

suson@newton:~> kmail
dlsym strcpy error:(null)
ERROR: KUniqueApplication: Can't setup DCOP communication.

I also saw the dlsym error when I tried to start up kde via startx. Any thoughts on where that is coming from and how to eliminate it?

Thanks,
Dan

I am getting the same problem (with kdm) after I upgraded to the latest NVidia drivers 180.22. This happened on 3 different machines. Before installing the driver everything was fine, afterward I get the dlsym strcpy error:(null) and kdm stops.

X seems to be starting fine. I don't use KDE so from runlevel 3 I can startx fine into WindowMaker.

Same here. Only with the 180.** drivers.
With kde4 it crashed plasma but i could start it manualy say in /root/.kde/Autostart/...

Dan Suson: Can you log into the KDE desktop using your root account? or do you get the same DCOP error message?

I also upgraded to the NVIDIA drivers (version 180.06), but this problem is independent of which driver I use. At least I think this is the case. I've used an xorg.conf file that did not include the nvidia driver in it with the same result. (I just confirmed this by moving the nvidia driver out of /lib/modules/.../drivers/video and replacing the xorg.conf file with xorg.conf-base).

I've also tried to start up a kde session as root, with the same results.

I don't know if this will help, but I'm going to try and rebuild the kde-base package. I'll report on whether this worked or not afterwards.

Dan

Hello Dan,

Instead of rebuilding the kdebase package, I would suggest that you do a refresh reinstall of 12.2 (just backup your data before).

You said that you also installed GNOME which is no longer part of Slackware (since 10.1 if I'm correct). So it could be that the way you installed GNOME may have modified some files. Those changes may not have had an impact on 12.1 but could have on 12.2.

Then if everything works, you can proceed with installing extra packages (nvidia driver, GNOME...).

I did not mention this before, but I am running slackware 12.2. I tried the usual stuff (deleting .DCOP*, .kde etc in the home directory, as well as everything in tmp).

I also tried reinstalling kdebase just to see if the NVidia install had changed something. Nothing worked.

I downgraded to 177.82 and everything works fine. I am becoming convinced that it is a problem with their latest driver. There are a lot of related complaints on their forum.

More information:

I removed the various KDE packages and tried to build the source code directly. Starting with the kdelibs package (the first one needed by kde), I get as far as ksycoca.kidl and get the dlsym strcpy error: (null) error. So, I can't build kde to get around this problem. I'll keep trying through this week, but if I can't get it to work I'll have to go back to slackware 12.0 since at least that works. As always, any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Dan