Help Lost my desktop

[kenj70]

I'm having to use my backup rig right now. I was playing around with the Digital Clock Widget, making it bigger, when the KDE Neon Desktop went away. Not knowing any other way to recover I restarted the PC and all came back normal including my larger size widget. So, I resized it some more - and the same thing happened. I restarted the PC and resized more slowly this time - but it happened again. I guess it's three strikes and you're out because now the Desktop does not come back after a restart.

I had previously set a shortcut Ctrl-T to run Konsole and, strangely, I can bring up Konsole. When I run 'whoami' it gives my login name even though the new boot session never prompted for a login!

Can you guys help me out?

-=Ken=-

[GreyGeek]

Try
sudo systemctl restart sddm

[vinnywright]

bring up your konsole and do

plasmashell &

,,,dose your desktop come back ?

VINNY

[kenj70]

OK, gave me a Logon screen. Typed password and got error message popup saying, "The following installation problem was detected while trying to start KDE: No write access to 'home/myusername/.ICEauthority'. KDE is unable to start.

[kenj70]

Too late vinny. I already tried GreyGeeks method and now I'm in a loop. Dismissing the error message gives me the graphical logon screen but pops up and error message saying, "Could not start ksmserver. Check your installation. I will try a restart to see if I can get to the Konsole gain...

Nope. Further in the hole. I selected Restart from the logon screen and the system restarts but now I am in that loop with no access to a terminal.

I wonder if I could log in as a different user - such as root?

I just noticed at the bottom of my logon screen is an option for - Desktop Session: Plasma or Plasma (Wayland) What about that?

[vinnywright]

AAaaa your .Xauthority has been taken by root .

at the login screen press "ctrl+alt+F6" you will get a TTY login , login , then

sudo rm -rf .Xauthority

log out and press "ctrl+alt+F7"you should be back at the login screen "SDDM" , login

VINNY

[kenj70]

Same loop vinny. I was able to follow your steps exactly but not working yet.

BTW, what is SDDM?

[vinnywright]

dose this show a lot of stuff

find  ~/ -user root

and if you can right it down (if it's a lot you may half to pass it thrue "less" ...like

find  ~/ -user root | less

VINNY

[vinnywright]

I'v gota go to the store ,,,,will check back in 15 min.

VINNY

[kenj70]

It returned six lines with one permission denied.

/home/myusername/ .ICEauthority
/home/myusername/.xsession-errors
/home/myusername/.dbus/session-bus/long string of numbers
/home/myusername/.config/gedit
/home/myusername/.config/gedit/accels
/home/myusername/.cache/dconf
find: '/home/myusername/.cache/dconf': Permission denied

[GreyGeek]

Open a terminal again and as root
chown myusername:myusername /home/myusername/eachfile
on each of those files. They are owned by root.

You could use the recursion form. Check "man chown" to see how.
chown -R /home/myusername/

[vinnywright]

every thing in /home/you should be owned by you and in your group ,,you will need to use "chown" to change it back to you,you , use your good box to google (for Ubuntu) it and then do it from the TTY , I'm cooking , but will check back in a bit .

you may be good for now with trying the thing I told you to do in post #6 but with .ICEauthority instead

VINNY

[kenj70]

bring up your konsole and do

plasmashell &

,,,dose your desktop come back ?

VINNY

While waiting I tried 'plasmashell &' in the tty session and it came back:

qt.qpa.screen: QXcbConnection: Could not connect to display Could not connect to any X display.

HEY, sorry guys. I kept refreshing my page waiting for a reply - and I just now noticed the forum had already added another page! So I have been waiting ~ half an hour for a reply! Doh!

[kenj70]

My rig boots to login screen. Login seems to go well signing on as Plasma 5.12.4 with the little "busy" gadget spinning but - eventually it gives up and leaves me with a black screen. I use Ctrl-T to bring up Konsole. I use 'find ~/ -user root and it returns no files. Still stumped.

[vinnywright]

My rig boots to login screen. Login seems to go well signing on as Plasma 5.12.4 with the little "busy" gadget spinning but - eventually it gives up and leaves me with a black screen. I use Ctrl-T to bring up Konsole. I use 'find ~/ -user root and it returns no files. Still stumped.

now that your back in , but with no desktop , use the

plasmashell &

in the konsole you can bring up .

I must ask , have you been running GUI apps launched with "sudo" instead of "kdesudo" ?

VINNY