Error: Could not start kstartupconfig.
 

I just got SuSE Linux yesterday and have looked through it and things but this morning when I went on it i got the error "Could not start kstartupconfig. Check your installation." I read in another topic the guy just did this
chmod -R hhlost:users /home/hhlost
so i tried the same code except replaced hhlost with my name and it says scott:users is not a valid mode any suggestions?

I can't help with your problem, but the command you used has the wrong syntax:

'chmod' is for changing the permissions of the file, while 'chown/chgrp' are for changing the ownership. So I would guess it should read: 'chown -R scott:users /home/scott'.

Did this work? I am having the same problem and this fix certainly didn't work for me. (using CHown)
Kurt

My problem was that I changed a username and it didnt create a home folder.
Then I had to create the new directory /home/username
Then chOWN worked for me:
'chown -R username:users /home/username'.

Just this week I experienced this on two computers with SuSE 10.0. They both have 120GB HDD using XFS. In addition to the kstartconfig error, I also had received a "Could not start kdeinit. Check your installation" error. The solution to "fix" the problem was to copy the offending users home directory to a backup one (i.e. user to user2). Then, log in as root, and removed the user through Yast2, deleting the home directory. Then readd the user. Simply just deleting the .kde directory DID NOT solve the problem. It is possibly a masqueraded DCOP problem, or such. Another coworker suspects that it may be XFS, which is possible. Unknown though. If I find out more, I'll be sure to post.

Edited to add:
This was "sudden", and occurred after a "normal" user initiaed reboot. kstartupconfig and kdeinit apparently were returning an errorcode of 127, which is probably a sign problem and is really -1.

Our problem was the PATH variable was not being set correctly, because someone copied a new .bashrc file over the old one, setting PATH, but not doing a PATH=$PATH.

Just wanted to say that first off I am new to the forums, but was very impressed.

I just bought and installed Suse 10.0 as a dual boot on my Inspiron 8200 and experienced the same issue.

The above chown -R command fixed me up perfectly.

Thanks for the help, I am sure I will need much much more. So far my pcmcia card wireless network is not working, but I will try some research befor I start begging for help. Thanks again.

I get this error too.

I just bought openSuSE 10.1 Alpha 4 from linuxcd.org and I installed it on my computer using optimal settings (no changes), and I go reboot the computer and before loading my user profile I get this error "could not start kstartupconfig" and the same thing when actually trying to go into the user account.

I tried the ways metioned so far in this forum, and none works, the chown command didn't work anyways and I wouldn't see why if it's only effecting the user, after all this message is coming up in the user selection screen.

This is annoying me as well, I tried installing it on another computer to make sure there wasn't something up with my hardware, but same problem. And I'm not about to re-install using GNOME (I don't like GNOME).
Does anyone else know how to fix this?
I'm about to just go back to Debian. LOL.

For some reason it's working for me now, I'm no longer receiving an error.

And I don't know why this made kde start working either.
But what I did was I loaded an alternative window manager and was playing to see what it could do, and then I remembered that I had an error with kdeinit after the kstartupconfig error sometimes... so I went to shell and for the heck of it, I typed in kdeinit and ran it, it linked some files and then had an error, well I restarted linux after that about to give up and then it loaded, strange. but now it loads my profile automaticly without me even telling it to do that, oh well. lol

Yes, a mistake...
 

It should be:

chown -R username:group /home/username

username = your login name
group = probably "users"

:scratch:
I believe that was estalished about 8 months ago ;)

X, Path config
 

Hi all,

I had the same problem after I updated Java in my SUSE 10, AMD 64bit system. I got the following errors:"Could not start kstartconfig." and "Could not start kdeinit."
Also, when I tried logging in otherwise (failsafe/ command line), I wasn't able to use the BASH shell. Hence none of the commands like chown, cp, etc would work! This is how I solved the problem

I logged into the shell prompt (using System->Command line) and reset the PATH variable by executing:
export PATH=$PATH:/bin:/usr/bin/

Then I was able to use all the basic commands. So, then I executed:
chown -R username:users /home/username

I logged in as root (su), and deleted the .X0-lock file in /tmp directory. I also updated the PATH for all users in the .bashrc file.

Thats it! It all works fine now.

hope this helps,
Ganesh :Pengy:

I just experienced this problem (kde not int he path) during a conversion from a nfs hosted home directory (old system was solaris 8 x86) to local home directory. The old OS had hard coded that system's path into the .profile and did not reference /etc/profile. the user's .profile encluded all the regular targets but not Suse 10's /opt/kde3/bin in the path.


So so far the points to check when trouble shooting this problem are:

1) does the user own thier home directory (and probly the ~/.kde as well) ?
2) Does the path as set by the user's shell include the kde binaries? Check /etc/profile, ~/.bashrc (or .ksrc etc) and ~/.profile.
3) If the above two seem correct, delete the old X lock files that user owns in /tmp.

Error: Could not start kstartupconfig
 

:confused: Hi there and thanks for the previouse info on how to solve this problem, but! now heres the problem but first it seamed to have worked but actualy my user name folder and any other user name folders now nolonger exist, was able to log in as root and create a user and log in which had been imposible before but now everything has been set to default and have losed three months of email and bookmarks, funy thing is the hdd is the same size as before this hapend, have made serches for files that are missing and no sign of them, i dont care to much about the files but my email had a lot of precious mail in it, if the drive has not changed size could it be posible that sertain info may still exist but be in disguyes, hiden some how, please help

Do you know if you experienced a power outage or some other event that resulted in an improper shutdown that might have taken place during write to the disc?

I ask because all the symptoms mentioned in this thread, with the inclusion of the disappearing directories, happened to me this past weekend, and it turned out it was caused by someone having hit reset during a disc-write operation and this corrupting the file structure in a way fsck couldn't fix upon boot. I didn't so much fix the problem as restart using a backup of my home directory, which I make fairly frequently to avoid these problems.

Try running fsck --check /dev/<device name>, (e.g. /dev/hda6 would be for hard drive a, partition 6, but use whichever ones you have) from a terminal and see what happens.