black screen after log in

[Ernie S.]

My primary user is messed up after some updates. I'm suspecting something to do with aconadi.
Entering my password apparently does log me in and I get a cursor that responds to mouse or touch screen but the screen is black.
I've set up a secondary user and have access to my data, so I'm not dead in the water, but I would like to fix it.
When this first started, log in would hang with the progress bar about 15% shy of all the way right. Since blowing away the .kde folders with

sudo rm -R /home/ernie/.kde

log in progresses to 100% but ends in black screen.

Anyone see this?

[claydoh]

As you have a mouse cursor working, try hitting alt-f2 to see if Krunner opens, and if it does, enter plasmashell, which should start the desktop stuff (plasma).

Plasma crashed for some reason, and sometimes just restarting it fixes any problems.

Also note that most of the kde/plasma configuration settings and application data are now in ~/.config,along with other non -kde things.

[Ernie S.]

I'm logged in as my new user and just removed the first user's .config and plasma has crashed on this user too. alt+F2 does open a command window but krunner, Krunner konsole dolphin.... nothing executes. Can I execute a command on VT#7 on VT#1? How?

[claydoh]

How exactly are you deleting these files? --what program, what command or option did you use? You did not use sudo dolphin or something like that, did you?


From a ctrl-alt-f1, run something like this:

DISPLAY=:0 <programname>
ie

DISPLAY=:0 dolphin

add kdesudo before dolphin to have the file manager run with admin privileges,


if you happened to use sudo with any gui program at all, you can fix the file permission changes that may have happened like so:

sudo chown -R <your-username>.<your-username> /home/<your-username>

[Ernie S.]

I used tty 1
mv /home/ernie/.kde /home/ernie/.kdeold
rm -R /home/ernie/kde
why username twice?
would that be sudo chown -R ernie.ernie /home/ernie ?

[claydoh]

When deleting/moving the config files, that user has to be logged out of Plasma, even if parts of it are not running. Some settings are written back to the file at logout or at some interval, so often doing it while logged does not always work.


You need the username twice, because actually it for both the user account, and it's associated group. Technically it would be <user>.<group>, but since they are the same name.....

Also note ,as I mentioned, your actual plasma 5 specific configs are located in ~/.config, and not ~/.kde. Some application stuff is still in ~/.kde, but things are being moved over to the XDG standard directories with the new Plasma, and eventually KDE Applications as they are ported over to Frameworks 5

[Ernie S.]

I did the same with .config, actually I believe logged in as a different user with sudo privileges.

Thanks for clearing up the group thing. I suspected that.

My original user remains messed up. I will blow away /home/<originaluser>/.config and .kde from tty1 as the new user. Should that get me back in my home directory?

[Ernie S.]

Nope no joy

[Ernie S.]

Hey! I want to thank you for the help

[Ernie S.]

Strange I had removed .config and .kde on a tty as the primary user.
I chown'ed them as in: ernie@ernie-HP-ENVY:~$ sudo chown -R ernie.ernie /home/ernie
All is well.