A majority of KDE-based programs fail or fail to operate properly as root.

[niloc]

I recently upgraded to Gutsy. Odd things happen with any program that runs as root that has a graphical interface. For example, sudo kate /etc/fstab will result in this:

X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 171
 Major opcode: 149
 Minor opcode: 3
 Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
X Error: BadDevice, invalid or uninitialized input device 171
 Major opcode: 149
 Minor opcode: 3
 Resource id: 0x0
Failed to open device
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

kdeinit: Can't connect to the X Server.
kdeinit: Might not terminate at end of session.
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

kded: cannot connect to X server :0.0
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-6184' to 'kded'
kded: ERROR: Communication problem with kded, it probably crashed.
kdeinit: Shutting down running client.
---------------------------------
It looks like dcopserver is already running. If you are sure
that it is not already running, remove /root/.DCOPserver_*****-desktop__0
and start dcopserver again.
---------------------------------

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

kdeinit: Can't connect to the X Server.
kdeinit: Might not terminate at end of session.
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

kded: cannot connect to X server :0.0
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-6192' to 'kded'
kded: ERROR: Communication problem with kded, it probably crashed.
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
<Repeated several (hundred) times>
KCrash: Application 'kate' crashing...
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

drkonqi: cannot connect to X server :0.0

sudo vim /etc/fstab works perfectly for some odd reason.

A different error comes from sudo kcontrol:

<same bad device error as above, but normal users get it and those programs still run>
kdeinit: Can't connect to the X Server.
kdeinit: Might not terminate at end of session.
Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

kded: cannot connect to X server :0.0
DCOP aborting call from 'anonymous-6239' to 'kded'
kded: ERROR: Communication problem with kded, it probably crashed.
kio (KSycoca): ERROR: No database available!
kcontrol: WARNING: No K menu group with X-KDE-BaseGroup=settings found ! Defaulting to Settings/
ERROR: Communication problem with kcontrol, it probably crashed.
kcontrol: ERROR: : couldn't create slave : Unknown protocol 'file'.
kcontrol: ERROR: : couldn't create slave : Unknown protocol 'file'.

along with a "Could not find mime type application/octet-stream" error.
All of the tabs, options, and formating are gone so fixing the octet-stream error for root specifically is something I can't find out how to do.

Does anyone know why this wonkiness is happening to root? It's not nice that root can't even operate properly to do root-y tasks.

[Detonate]

Re: A majority of KDE-based programs fail or fail to operate properly as root.

When opening a graphical program from the command line, use kdesu, not sudo. ie:

kdesu kate /etc/fstab

To get rid of those pesky error messages see this thread:

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3083599.0

[niloc]

Re: A majority of KDE-based programs fail or fail to operate properly as root.

Well, I guess something somewhere got fixed, but now it loads with the application/octet-stream error and can't load or save files. The situation is the same with kdesu.

[3vi1]

Re: A majority of KDE-based programs fail or fail to operate properly as root.

Use "su -p" when you become root. Or, just add the following to .bashrc

alias su='su -p'

----------------------------------------------------

WHOOPS! I just noticed you were talking about while using sudo, not after SU'ing up to root.

I don't have this problem (potentially because of the alias I added in my .bashrc). I can 'sudo kate /etc/fstab' and it works fine.

Add the alias to your .bashrc, log out/in, and let us know if it works.

[niloc]

Re: A majority of KDE-based programs fail or fail to operate properly as root.

That didn't do the trick, but the good news is after the last update (which failed about 3 times, but still worked in the end), kcontrol once again works and kate can open and save files. The application/octet-stream error still happens even after adding it in kcontrol as root, but I guess that's more annoyance than a problem. My best guess was that an update needed to refresh some files and fixed the errors in the process(for the most part). Thanks for the help anyways, though.