[Solved] KDE not starting

[dibl]

Re: KDE not starting

There's been so much bashing about on that system that it's a little difficult to narrow the potential sources of trouble. If Snowhog's suggestion does not reveal a full filesystem, then it's probably root permissions attached to something in the user's directory.

Regarding the Nvidia driver, I would get out of X with Ctrl-Alt-F1, log in to the CLI, then do these:

sudo service kdm stop

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf_bak

sudo nvidia-xconfig

sudo service kdm start

If the problem was related to the video driver, that should get you going.

If you find you're still locked out of the user's X login, then I'd go for the nuclear option, at the /home/user$ prompt (don't you dare do it at the root prompt!):

sudo rm -rf .*

That will empty your user's folder of all KDE and custom settings, so your next login will be "as new" to a default KDE desktop. But any data folders or normal files will be left untouched (assuming you don't name your data files with a leading dot).

Then shutdown and restart the system.

[kln]

Re: KDE not starting

First reply to Snowhog query.
(I do a console login not from GRUB but from the login screen>shutdown button>console login)

$df -h
/dev/sda1 use 63%  mounted on /    (it matches what it says in Dolphin, more than 4Gb free out of 12Gb)
none      1%        /dev
none      1%        /dev/shm
none      1%        /var/run
none      0%        /var/lock
/dev/sda5   90%       //storage partition

[kln]

Re: KDE not starting

creating a new X conf file and resetting nvidia wasn't enough (it just produced a nvidia beta driver splashscreen before the login screen). I also in the same time deleted .X/ICEauthority and .kde, but altogether, no improvement.

But nuking the system as you say

$sudo rm -rf .*

in /home/username
worked perfectly !!

Thanks Snowhog & Dibl for helping !! I won't mess around with kdesudo/sudo so much within GUI ...
Glad this is solved at last !
kln

[dibl]

Re: KDE not starting

Thanks Snowhog & Dibl for helping !! I won't mess around with kdesudo/sudo so much within GUI ...
Glad this is solved at last !

Yay! Solved, plus some character-building, eh?

Seriously, the only two KDE packages that I ever run as root are dolphin and kate. Dolphin in "kdesudo" mode, when I set up a new system, or add a new hard drive/partition, is a handy way to make some user data folders on the new filesystem, and set them to user permissions.

Kate in "kdesudo" mode is of course a handy way to edit system configuration files.

Except for these, or analogous limited purposes, you're well advised to steer clear of running GUI packages in root mode.