I've been running KDE4 with Suse 11.2 for about a year or so now, with no problems. Yesterday, the background to my screen suddenly went black. Open windows were unaffected, but I could see my theme, the task manager, etc. I couldn't open any programs other than the ones already open (and ones that they launch).

This problem was system-wide, in that it affects all accounts on my machine.

I thought I'd solved the problem after discussion with someone by email, by forcing KDE to recreate itself. I did this by

mv ~/.kde4 ~/oldkde4

then relogging. This, in itself, seemed to make matters worse, so I went

mv ~/.kde4 ~/newkde4
mv ~/oldkde4 ~/.kde4

and relogged. To my surprise, everything worked thereafter for a few hours.

I think this was coincidence, because, after a few hours, the same thing happened and the "fix" didn't work anymore.

I checked .xsession-error and it says

/etc/X11/xim: Checking whether an input method should be started.
sourcing /etc/sysconfig/language to get the value of INPUT_METHOD
INPUT_METHOD is not set or empty (no user selected input method).
Trying to start a default input method for the locale en_GB.UTF-8 ...
There is no default input method for the current locale.
Dummy input method "none" (do not use any fancy input method by default)
startkde: Starting up...
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_klauncher.so
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kded4.so
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kbuildsycoca4.so
kbuildsycoca4 running...
kdeinit4: preparing to launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kconf_update.so
Invalid D-BUS member name 'idle-hint' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'is-local' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'x11-display-device' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'x11-display' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'display-device' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'remote-host-name' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'session-type' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection
Invalid D-BUS member name 'unix-user' found in interface
'org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Session' while parsing introspection X
Error: XSyncBadAlarm 166 Extension: 146 (Uknown extension) Minor
opcode: 11 (Unknown request) Resource id: 0x0 X Error: XSyncBadAlarm
166 Extension: 146 (Uknown extension) Minor opcode: 11 (Unknown
request) Resource id: 0x0 kdeinit4: preparing to
launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_kcminit_startup.so kdeinit4: preparing to
launch /usr/lib/libkdeinit4_ksmserver.so <unknown program name>(4335)/
KStartupInfo::createNewStartupId: creating:
"Marianne;1283173265;746516;4335_TIME0" : "unnamed app" kephald
starting up XRANDR error base: 176 RRInput mask is set!!
".xsession-errors" 369L, 28810C


Anyone got any ideas? This is making things extremely difficult for me, to say the least. Rapid responses would be highly welcome!

Turns out to have been caused by inadvertently writing to the root filesystem and filling it up. Once the files were identified and deleted, everything worked again.