I have upgraded from 13.1 to 13.37 on three PCs. No problems on 2 of these (home server and laptop), but on the third machine (main Desktop, where most KDE customisation had been done of course), KDE refuses to start for the main user (me). It will start OK for root and xfce will start OK for me, so X is OK with the updated NVIDIA driver that I have also installed. The KDE splash screen starts up and four of the five splash icons come into focus, but the fifth one never does. Some disk rattling goes on for a while but then ceases.

I have tried renaming the .kde folder and .kderc but this has not helped. Are there other KDE config files that I could try renaming / removing? Or are there log files / error messages somewhere that I should consult.

Obviously I am not in a position to change any KDE system settings from the KDE application.

Just tried KDE with a newly-created user and it's the same as with my user - no desktop. So KDE is only starting for root. Some sort of permissions problem ?

Thanks.

Check your /tmp directory and see if you have write access to that. I had a similar issue in the past with KDE only working for root. Turns out I had accidentally 'chown root' on the directory KDE creates for each user in /tmp.

Thanks for the suggestion, but it's not a problem with acces to /tmp. I looked and kde had written stuff to .kde-<username> folders in /tmp, and I was able to create files there as a regulst user.

On the basis of messages I see on the konsole when I get back to it (having aborted the failed KDE startup with cntr-alt-BS), I think it is something to do with akonadi. I have asked on KDE lists as well.

Some places KDE stores files:

$HOME/.kde
$HOME/.kde/cache-`uname -n`: a sym link to /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER
$HOME/.kde/socket-`uname -n`: a sym link to $TMP/kdesocket-$USER (if $TMP is not defined then defaults to /tmp)
$HOME/.kde/tmp-`uname -n`: a sym link to $TMP/kde-$USER (if $TMP is not defined then defaults to /tmp)
$HOME/.config/Trolltech.conf (actually this is a QT4 file)
$HOME/.config/menus
$HOME/.local/share/akonadi
$HOME/.local/share/applications

Many times I have noticed KDE problems disappear by exiting KDE and then deleting the KDE cache located in $HOME/.kde/cache-`uname -n`.

Sounds like a permissions problem. As root try running chown -R $USER:$USER /home/$USER, where $USER is your normal account name, and then see whether KDE will fully start. If not, then possibly try starting X/KDE from run level 3 and then use strace -o $HOME/strace.log startx to create a log of what happens when running startx.

Thanks for the suggestions, Woodsman. I went through them and got to the end and was comparing the strace from root startx and a regular user startx when I got bored after a few hundred mainly identical lines. Went back to searching LQ Slackware forum since I thought that there was a mention somewhere about how to switch off akonadi by editing config files. It was then that I found this thread in which an identical KDE startup problem is described and solved by bgeddy. Embarassing to note that the answer is actually in CHANGES AND HINTS and consists of turning off compositing for X via a file in /etc/X11... . I assume that KDE tries to have it on by default for a new user, whereas I probably disabled it for root within root's KDE settings.

Here is now my question though : if compositing worked before (Slack 13.1, KDE 4.3) with older binary NVIDIA driver (and it did, although I never bothered with some of the more intrusive effects) why do I have to switch it off globally just to get KDE to start up after upgrading to latest NVIDIA binary and installing KDE 4.5 with Slack 13.37?

I am still marking this as solved, since initial problem is cured. Thanks.

My guess is compositing was not enabled as the default in KDE 4.3.x.

Yeah.........I was having the same problem and was starting to get gray hairs!!!!!

I used the usual method with slackpkg to upgrade from sw 13.1 to 13.37, all seemed well, until I tried to start KDE and it would get through the first four icons on the splash screen, but right before the big K would materialize, it would crash, every time, with a segmentation 11 error and other messages.

Using xwmconfig I took xfce, fvwm, and fluxbox for a test drive, even running K apps such as Kword, Kwrite, Kspread, Kcal, Konsole in those desktops, all worked fine, but KDE itself simply would not cooperate.

I saw it mentioned in many places, and it IS in the changelog that if KDE crashes on startup, to disable compositing, - which simply means that the video card cannot handle 3D ---by creating a file named disable-composite.conf thusly:

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/disable-composite.conf

Yeah, it was news to me that the traditional xorg.conf file is not used (although it can be) and that udev now handles this.

So I made the disable-composite.conf file with jstar, putting in the three lines of code it says to put, still got nowhere. On another thread I saw someone was having a similar problem, but running in a virtual box, and they said to put 7 spaces, that's SEVEN SPACES before the word option. I did that, and it solved the problem!!!

At the risk of being overly verbose:

this: (does not work)


Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection


is not the same as this: (does work)

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection


because in this line:

Option "Composite" "Disable"
^^^^^^<-----you MUST put seven spaces before the word option




EDIT: It's not rendering here as I've typed it, but just be sure to put 7 spaces before the word Option and you'll be fine


FYI, this machine is an old Compaq Deskpro, with a 500 mhz CPU and 128 megs RAM. At first I simply thought KDE had just gotten too bloated, but it does run on this machine, although of course it is slow. I call this my 'crash test dummy' machine, and I always use it for upgrade experiments before I try it on one of my good/important machines. I've had a few upgrade disasters, namely sw 12.2 to 13.0 and then from 13.0 to 13.1. Ultimately I did a clean 13.1 install from CD and found it much better than 13.0, and now that this upgrade is viable I look forward to using 13.37. SW 12.2 and KDE 3.5.10 remain on my 'main' machine as I am still very partial to that, and although it took some getting used to KDE 4 with all it's over widgetness and windoz-y manners, I do like it.

Hope the above helps someone that may have also gotten stuck with the whole 'compositing' issue

I'm having a similar problem on my Toshiba Satellite L750D laptop. I tried to Google for a solution but can't seem to find one. Don't know exactly where to look.

I'm able to log into KDE if I either set the graphics to 8 bit (256 colors) with xorgsetup or use session KDE-Failsafe, but can't get my display beyond 800x600x24bit resolution while running Slackware 13.37 in VirtualBox.

My display should be able to go up to 1366x768x32bit. I have managed to get the right resolution in Ubuntu after applying the updates. Oh GAWD! Please don't leave me stuck using You Bunted it!

Have you tried this command?

xrandr -s 1024x768

That usually works. What you might try is to load a slackware based live CD, such as slax, zenwalk live, or Vector Linux live. If You can adjust your resolution with that, then take a look at the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file it genereted.

Did you install the virtualbox guest additions?

Adam

I managed to get the 1366x768 display in fedora after doing a fresh install on a new partition then downloading the drivers from AMD's website. I think I'm going to stick with fedora because most things seem to be working even though the sound crackles a bit, so I'm in the process of tackling that problem and I can't really stand Ubuntu.

If anyone else with a Toshiba Satellite is having troubles, you may want to look at getting the drivers from AMD. It comes as a file with "run" extension so all you have to do is set the permissions to executable then click on it and the wizard installs the drivers and utilities. Although my card is model AMD Radeon HD 6520G, the driver for AMD Radeon HD 6xxxxM seemed to do the trick.

Also, I downloaded the version of fedora with KDE instead of Gnome. Even with that, I can use the software manager to add Gnome or anything else to it after installing fedora if I wanted to, but Gnome is just a waste of space to me.

@adamk75 I don't mean to sound stupid, but I've been trying to figure out where to get the guest addition. I did manage to get the extension pack so I could get support for things like USB 2.0 but I'm not clear if it's included with the extension pack or where to get it.

This will cure your kde problems


If X crashes at start, try disabling compositing. Create a file named

/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/disable-composite.conf with this in it:
Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection