Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

[JJMak]

Greetings all.

I'm having some really annoying problems that I've tried to search for resolutions on but either find threads with no final resolution, steps that I do not see (like saying KMenu > This >That > Another, but This and That don't exist on my menu) or just no response at all.

I'm not exactly new to Linux but not a regular user or power user of Linux (although I've been doing Computer and Network support for 14 years on Windows and Novell systems and Cisco devices, I'd like to think I have the skills to figure some of this stuff out myself if they were easy enough fixes.).

I installed 8.10 and struggled for months trying to get VNC connections to the machine while it sits at the Login screen (like I can on Windows using a Remote Control package). No "guide" I found ever worked for me. The idea was that we don't let our teenagers on the computer without our knowledge, so we have to log them on.

So I finally decided to just let them login but I would control Internet access via my router.

I saw that KDE 4.2 was available so I added it. Now I have some odd problems.

The first is when I am logged in as my account which is a SuperUser, my windows have no title bars. I can fix them temporarily, but the next time I log in they are gone again. I need a more permanent fix for this. The odd thing is that when I log in my son's non-su account, his windows have title bars. So it doesn't seem to be a global configuration problem, but a user configuration problem.

Now here's the other odd problem. In my account my animated cursors look fine. No problems at all. Yet in my son's account, when you are on the desktop or some menus, the cursor turns into a square that looks like a scrambled screen. Again, this is only a problem on one account and not the other.

My last annoying issue is with Sudo. Flash is not installed on my son's account in Firefox even though it is in my account. When I try to install it, the deb package installer prompts for a password but does not accept the root PW I set. And if I try to install it from the Terminal, SUDO won't accept it either. I thought sudo is supposed to let you run things as root. But it seems to not use root, it uses the logged in user who is not an su.

I'm making my son use Kubuntu because I'm tired of the time I spend cleaning viruses off of Windows. But I seem to be spending as much time just trying to configure basic services on Kubuntu.

I love the idea of Ubuntu and its variants, but these issues I see and difficulty in finding resolutions without some type of higher level knowledge/expertise is one of the reasons I still think that this is still not a viable alternative to any of the more mainstream OS's. Say what you want against Windows, it's much easier to support.

I'd really appreciate some resolution to these issues. I'd hate to go back to reinstalling Windows on this machine.

Thanks.

[claydoh]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

Greetings all.

I'm having some really annoying problems that I've tried to search for resolutions on but either find threads with no final resolution, steps that I do not see (like saying KMenu > This >That > Another, but This and That don't exist on my menu) or just no response at all.

Probably you are seeing older, kde3 specific posts, or no one here has your specific problems. I do suggest, if you haven't already, to search on ubuntuforums.net as many issues are not gui-specific so what works in Ubuntu usually works in Kubuntu.

I'm not exactly new to Linux but not a regular user or power user of Linux (although I've been doing Computer and Network support for 14 years on Windows and Novell systems and Cisco devices, I'd like to think I have the skills to figure some of this stuff out myself if they were easy enough fixes.).

I installed 8.10 and struggled for months trying to get VNC connections to the machine while it sits at the Login screen (like I can on Windows using a Remote Control package). No "guide" I found ever worked for me. The idea was that we don't let our teenagers on the computer without our knowledge, so we have to log them on.

So I finally decided to just let them login but I would control Internet access via my router.

I saw that KDE 4.2 was available so I added it. Now I have some odd problems.

The first is when I am logged in as my account which is a SuperUser, my windows have no title bars. I can fix them temporarily, but the next time I log in they are gone again. I need a more permanent fix for this. The odd thing is that when I log in my son's non-su account, his windows have title bars. So it doesn't seem to be a global configuration problem, but a user configuration problem.

Kubuntu does not use su. Can I assume you have enabled the root account, or are you referring to the initial user account created during the install as the SU account?

As K(U)buntu does not use the root account I have found many small glitches like this when I used to enable root (a very long time ago) and I have heard over time similar problems from those that do today.

Now here's the other odd problem. In my account my animated cursors look fine. No problems at all. Yet in my son's account, when you are on the desktop or some menus, the cursor turns into a square that looks like a scrambled screen. Again, this is only a problem on one account and not the other.

This could be a kwin effects problem, which you can test by trying to enable/disable them (the settings are user-specific). I used to see this one myself in kde4.1, but have not seen it in 4.2. I think it is particular to the video card/driver being used as not everyone got that problem.

My last annoying issue is with Sudo. Flash is not installed on my son's account in Firefox even though it is in my account. When I try to install it, the deb package installer prompts for a password but does not accept the root PW I set. And if I try to install it from the Terminal, SUDO won't accept it either. I thought sudo is supposed to let you run things as root. But it seems to not use root, it uses the logged in user who is not an su.

No, sudo gives the current user superuser priveleges, if allowed.
Look here for some good info

You can change to the user with sudo privileges in a terminal to run commands:

su $user-name-of-sudo-user

then you enter the sudo user's password

if you need to run gui apps then run them using kdesudo in place of sudo in your 'root' terminal

As to the flash issue, if you initially installed flashplayer as the sudo user, it should have installed systemwide, so hopefully doing that should fix this.

I'm making my son use Kubuntu because I'm tired of the time I spend cleaning viruses off of Windows. But I seem to be spending as much time just trying to configure basic services on Kubuntu.

I love the idea of Ubuntu and its variants, but these issues I see and difficulty in finding resolutions without some type of higher level knowledge/expertise is one of the reasons I still think that this is still not a viable alternative to any of the more mainstream OS's. Say what you want against Windows, it's much easier to support.

I'd really appreciate some resolution to these issues. I'd hate to go back to reinstalling Windows on this machine.

Thanks.

I had a similar situation, but flipped around. I had to install windows to run an Access-based time and scorekeeping application for a flyball competition. Access does not run in Wine, so I spent the better part of 3 days part-time figuring everything out (I haven't installed windows in some years now) so I do feel your pain in some ways

I am following this how-to for vnc, as I currently have both a dsl and a cable net connection which makes it easy to check out. It is kde4 specific, though you can use whatever text editor you wish.

[claydoh]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

Well I also forgot to mention that the programs krdc and krfb , both installed by default , are also useful tools for remote connections.

Also, following the how-to linked above, I am currently connected to my Intrepid kde4.2 machine (cable) from my Jaunty laptop (slow dsl)

[JJMak]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

Thanks for the replies. I think I tried those as well, but it's been a while.

[JJMak]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

OK, this is frustrating, annoying and irritating all at once. I'm quickly losing my patience with Kubuntu. I'm really feeling that dealing with Windows viruses is 10 times better than dealing with these Kubuntu weird issues where no resolution seems apparent.

I'm pretty sure these issues started after installing KDE 4.2 from the Intrepid-backports. Sue me for trying the "latest and greatest".

I continue to have trouble with no Title Bar in KDE 4.2. But only in 1 profile. I have two accounts in Kubuntu. Bob and Jim. The first is my stepson's, the second is mine and is a Sudo capable user.

If boot up fresh and log in to Jim, I have no Title Bar in any windows I open and they are permanently docked to the top left of the screen. I can't move them at all, not using any tips anyone gives (like Alt-Left mouse button).

If I boot up fresh and log in to Bob, I have Title Bars in all my windows and no problems with cursors or anything like that. Why would KDE function properly under Bob and not under Jim?

Also, if I boot up fresh and log in to Jim. Sometimes when I log out of Jim, the cursor turns into a screwed up square graphic and the login menu never reappears.

Sometimes I can log out of Jim and get the login menu. Then when I log in to Bob (after having first been in Jim), the cursor is all screwed up, but usually only while on the desktop or in select programs (meaning that the cursor is screwed up when I go to open Firefox from the Desktop but inside of the Firefox window the cursor is fine).

I can also run some things in Konsole using su. I do su and give the PW I use for Jim and then get a different prompt, then run things like su apt-get update and su apt-get upgrade. These commands work like this, but if I try to run something like su kate /etc/fstab to edit the file I get errors and it never loads. And trying Kdesu kate and giving it my Jim password fails.

This is a standardly configured Dell Optiplex GX260 with 1GB of memory. I believe it's a Radeon R200 video card. Last weekend I spent a few hours trying to see if it was an issue with it not using the right drivers for the Radeon. I thought I had it figured out but these problems still exist.

If I can't figure out some of these problems soon, I'm probably going to dump Kubuntu and go back to Windows. I'm no guru, but I have an excellent working knowledge of and aptitude for computers (I have a Degree in CompSci where I learned programming on UNIX and VAX and I've been running Windows and NetWare servers at work for 14 years). If someone needs more knowledge than I possess to properly configure and run Kubuntu, then good luck to them and give me Windows back. The "Dark Side" doesn't need cookies to lure the masses. Anyone who says "K/Ubuntu just works" is lying through their teeth or just got supremely lucky that the hardware they run it on was easily auto-configured.

Thanks.

[flarson]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

In 14 years how often have you heard user swear up and down that they tried everything, that they did nothing to cause it to fail, that it just crapped out all by itself, and when you find the problem how true were those statements.

[JJMak]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

I never said I tried everything and I never said I did nothing to cause it to fail. In fact I am admitting that I believe the problem started when I upgraded KDE to 4.2 which seems to be "unsupported"(?) on Intrepid.

What I'm looking for is actual solutions to these problems. I've seen many posts about losing the Title Bar and have done what was suggested in a lot of those posts and still have that problem. The suggestions seem to fix it for others, but not me.

My one big question is why would the window problem happen in one profile and not the other? Obviously it must be some type of "per user" setting causing it. But I can't seem to figure out what. And a follow-up big question would be why does the cursor problem only start after logging into and then out of my profile?

It's probable that as an administrative user, I might have done something that started this after the KDE 4.2 install. Something that can't be done in the other profile because they are not a SUDO capable user. But what is it? And is there a way to reinstall 4.2 or go back to 4.1 to try to fix these issues?

[claydoh]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

If it happens in one user account, and not another, it is most likely a corrupted config file in ~/.kde/share/config. Which one, I could not say off the top of my head. I highly doubt it is a sudo issue, as the user is not using admin privileges unless you explicitly run a command or program with it. Adjusting your personal settings/etc would not use sudo at all.

You do not need to reinstall to fix this. The easy way to check things is to rename your ~/.kde/share/config folder and logout/login. You will be back to the default desktop settings. If that fixes the problem, then all you have to fix is your personal settings for your desktop and apps. If it doesn't work, then try renaming the entire ~/.kde folder, which will set everything in KDE back to the Kubuntu defaults. If that works, then you would have to migrate any needed data from the renamed folder as well as edit your settings.

The big square cursor sounds like a driver/desktop effects problem. If you can, try enabling/disabling them, but without knowing your hardware setup I can't give too much advice there.

If you need to run any gui app with sudo, you need to use 'kdesudo'; i.e:

kdesudo kate

Graphical applications need this to run correctly with admin privileges.

[JJMak]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

Thank you!

We have some success now. I renamed config to configold and logged back in (oddly, the configold seems to be gone, did the system rename configold back to config?).

The Title Bar is back and I can move windows around. The only problem now is that my Title Bar does not reflect the theme I am using. I have Oxygen selected, but the Title Bars look like a solid Blue bar and different minimize, maximize and Close buttons. Changing the theme doesn't affect the bars at all.

As for the cursor issue, this still persists. But again, this is only an issue when I log into jim first, logout and then log in to bob. If I log into bob at a fresh boot, the cursors are fine. The cursors are always fine in jim. Something that logging into (or out of) jim does affects the cursors in bob. So in a way, it doesn't sound like a driver problem to me, otherwise I'd expect to see the issue no matter when I log in or as whom.

As for Desktop Effects, any time I try to turn them on, it fails. So I don't think they are a cause.

Is there anything I can post that might give some insight and help troubleshoot?

[Drellir]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

May I ask how this is done with step to step information
quote:
The easy way to check things is to rename your ~/.kde/share/config folder and logout/login. You will be back to the default desktop settings. If that fixes the problem, then all you have to fix is your personal settings for your desktop and apps. If it doesn't work, then try renaming the entire ~/.kde folder, which will set everything in KDE back to the Kubuntu defaults.

How do I rename my config folder ?

regards
Drellir

[kubicle]

Re: Cursor and Window issues and Sudo problem

How do I rename my config folder ?

In dolphin, right-click on it and choose rename.
In CLI, you can use the 'mv' command (mv ~/.kde/share/config ~/.kde/share/config_old)