KDE mediamanager not working

esteeven · 11-19-2006, 02:38 PM

This is an odd one. I am running Dapper. Suddenly, my card reader fails to work. I insert a Compact Flash card and it is detected but the "open here" dialogue fails/freezes. This also happens with CD-ROMs and DVDs. Clicking on the "Storage Media" option produces "The KDE mediamanager is not running." ----- which I find odd. I have done nothing . Not even a recent update. Everything was working last week. Interestingly, I can mount everything manually on the CLI. Why had KDE stopped helping?

Cheers

esteeven · 11-20-2006, 03:20 AM

Very odd. I tried to log in to KDE from KDM this morning and I was returned to the log in. I tried with another account and this also failed. My first thought was that KDE was broken so I logged in on the CLI and installed FLuxbox. That failed to log in too. I suspect that I have a problem with KDM but that doesn't clear up the mediamanager issue. I suppose X may have broken too ---- for whatever reason. I will try to boot from a live CD tonight when I get home to test that.

pengu · 11-20-2006, 09:53 AM

for the login issue, try

Code:

sudo apt-get install gdm

the mediamanager problem is strange... I would reinstall the kde base

Could it be a problem with your root partition? I had strange things like that happen once, and it turned out my root partition was damaged.

Before anything, I would start up a live CD and save all your data

esteeven · 11-20-2006, 02:35 PM

hmmmm. Very odd. I have done various installs and removals of software packages but I still can't log in to X. As an experiment, I tried logging in to my root account using "startx". I didn't like doing this BUT I was able to log in and KDE worked without problems. So, I removed KDM and tried "startx" from the CLI ---- (for my own account) --- and got " /usr/bin/startx: line 169: /dev/null: Permission denied" .... I don't understand [a] how this can happen or [b] what /dev/null is and why permission has suddenly been denied.

edit to add details:
also, my card reader works flawlessly as root.

esteeven · 11-21-2006, 03:15 AM

My first action when I got up this morning was to do &chmod 666 /dev/null. Now the system all works and logins are fine from the CLI or from KDM. What I don't understand is how /dev/null could get its permissions changed without root doing it. And, what exactly is /dev/null?

Also, my card reader works, along with automatic recognition of DVDs and CDs etc.

Lucky me!