Background: I have an Acer Aspire laptop which has been running Slackware64-14.0 - the most recent version that will work with legacy Catalyst drivers. Now the open-source ati drivers are said to support video acceleration, I decided to try an upgrade to current.

So, I have a fresh install of 64-current (25th April) - however, every time I start KDE, I get the following message:

A quick google revealed that this has happened a number of times down the years, usually following an upgrade, and mostly on either Kubuntu or Gentoo. However, its difficult for me to translate the solutions offered there to Slackware! A post on Gentoo suggested running "upower -d", which I have done with the following result:

This doesn't help me very much!

Aside from the annoying error message, it appears that (in common with the aforementioned Kubuntu and Gentoo users) usb devices are not always recognised reliably when plugged in, and I cannot get the battery monitor to work on the panel.

Any suggestions from the experts?

TIA,

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Pete

How did you upgrade? Did you install any new applications and remove old ones?

Please note, an upgrade from 14.0 to -current is not supported and you should upgrade from 14.0 to 14.1 and then from 14.1 to -current to minimize breakage.

Hi there,

I actually fitted a new, clean, hard-drive and did a fresh install! I figured that way, if it didn't work, I could just shove the old hard drive back in again and carry on as before. I've never had a problem with -current installs in the past, but this one has caught me out! There are a couple of other minor niggles as well, but I reckon I can fix those OK. This one has me stumped, as I'm venturing into an area I know very little about!

Thanks for responding!

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Pete

That makes sense. When people say they did an "upgrade to current" you tend to be cautious, especially when it is from a release before the latest stable. I wasn't sure whether your "fresh install of current" was truly fresh or just "freshly upgraded". Better to be safe than sorry

So, back to your problem. Does it prevent KDE from starting up, or is it just extra information dumped in the console? I'm not running -current (I did all the upgrades to X, mesa, and the kernel to get video acceleration manually when the 3.18 kernel was in the release candidate phase), but I haven't seen any major issues crop up with KDE on the forum.

Where did you get the -current ISO? Are you sure the mirror was fully up to date (sometimes they can be a little behind when doing updates)? Did you check the MD5 to make sure the download wasn't corrupted or the burn incorrect? You could try redownloading all the KDE packages from a mirror and reinstall them.

Thanks again for getting back to me!

KDE starts up fine, but as soon as you get to the desktop, an error window pops up with a chime containing the aforementioned message. The problem with mounting some USB devices is now fixed (basically finger trouble on my part!), and I've compiled a new kernel-4.0 specifically for my machine. Hasn't solved the problem, though!

I keep a local mirror of -current on a portable drive, which I rsync with a UK mirror regularly (www.slackware.org.uk). Never had any issues with downloads from there before. The install was done from an SD card created from an iso-image.

I've done a slackpkg update since installing, which pulled in a couple of updates, but hasn't solved the problem. The system is basically running fine, except for the power monitoring. Aside from the annoying error message - which tells me something, somewhere, is wrong, I can't get a battery monitor to work - and this is a laptop!

TIA,

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Pete

Does your xorg log show any possibly pertinent errors?

And since you have a synced copy, try copying the KDE folder to your machine and force a reinstall of them in runlevel 3. I'm wondering if slackware.org.uk wasn't fully synced when you synced from them. It is possible that some KDE packages kept the same name, even if the build itself is different (I ran into an issue with that in the past with X). It might also be worth having slackpkg run clean-system to see if there's any packages in there that shouldn't be (obviously, leave your own compiled programs in there, but remove any others that might be remnants from a previous version of Slackware (that could've been carried through when you synced).

Thanks! That's certainly a few thing for me to check. It won't be for a little while, though, as its presently copying all my data over from the old hard drive and that will keep it busy for a while!

A google search has turned up quite a few instances of this happening on other systems, but none of the "cures" there have worked for me. I've checked permissions, and that I have the correct power management progs and utilities installed, but so far, to no avail. I may well have to do a KDE re-install, as you suggest.

I will report back success or failure - watch this space.....

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Pete

OK, I did a fresh download of KDE, and just to be sure, I also re-downloaded upower, pm-utils and powertop. Reinstalled the lot - and no change! Still getting the same error message.

Maybe time to submit a bug report?

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Pete

Did you check your xorg log? Also, are you a member of all the correct groups (ie, when you created your user, did you press the up button to add you to all the recommended groups)?

Hmph! Knew there was something I forgot! I could only find two error messages:

The other refers to a non-existent frame buffer module, which as I'm running without an xorg.conf is probably irrelevant.

Er, no, I wasn't aware of the UP button trick! Where do you use that? in useradd or kuser? However I am a member of all the groups that I've joined on my other machines. Maybe current requires me to be a member of yet another group? But hold on - I still get the error if I log on as root, so I don't think it can be that. Good thought, though! I will have another play along these lines....

UPDATE: Just tried logging on as root into KDE (I know, not recommended, but this is bug-hunting!). Still the same error, so I don't think its a group issue

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Pete

The systemd error is no big deal. You can safely ignore it.

As for the up button trick, it is one when you use Slackware's adduser script. Have a look at this for more info.

Unfortunately, I can't think of anything else to check. Hopefully someone else will pop in with their suggestions.

Well, thanks for trying, anyway. I think I might have found a bug!

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Pete

Hundreds in /var/log/messages.

Apr 28 19:47:15 hemi dbus[6129]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.UPower' (using servicehelper)
Apr 28 19:47:15 hemi dbus[6129]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.UPower' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 127

... also if you go into KDE's System Settings / Power Mangement, all the options are greyed out with associated error message directing one to Startup & Shutdown to "fix". That just brings the further error message:

KDE Power Management System could not be initialized. The backend reported the following error: No valid Power Management backend plugins are available. A new installation might solve this problem. Please check your system configuration

I'm guessing the problem came with Apr. 21st's upower-0.9.23-x86_64-1.txz upgrade, as I don't see any of the messages before then.

Currently Broke...

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hemi

Ah! So its not just me! Thank you very much for the update - looks like we'll have to wait for a "fix" from the maintainers.....

Cheers,

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Pete

Looks like Hemi was right! I've "downgraded" to upower-0.9.17 from slackware64-14.1, and the problem has gone away. Looks like upower-0.9.23 is borked, and I've filed a bug report.

Thanks everyone for your help!

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Pete