KDE not starting up on boot

**coolpcguy** · 20-Aug-2008, 00:48

hey there, I shifted to openSUSE 11 & KDE 4.1 recently, while till yesterday everything was working fine. Now all of a sudden, on booting, I get a console login. The system *does* goto run level 5, though. after logging in, I've to issue a startx for KDE to start.

Now the here it gets weirder

1. On issuing startx I get auto-logged in, even though I have auto-login disabled (I *did* have it enabled previously, afterwards I've disabled it)

2. The DE to which I get booted into is random - sometimes its KDE4.1, sometimes its KDE 3.5.9, sometimes its Gnome, although I didn't choose to install KDE 3.5.9 OR Gnome, prolly got isntalled because of some dependencies ? :-/ I have no idea.

3. Even on the rare occasions that I do get a KDE4.1 bootup, I plasma crashes with a sigsev

I tried removing .kde and .kde4 directories in /home but makes no difference

Any suggestions on
(1) How to get the GUI without having to issue startx?
(2) Ensuring that KDE 4.1 is what starts up ?

Help would be highly appreciated.

Another thing, I cant seem to mount my P1i as a mass storage device, which 10.3 did effortlessly. Now when I plug it in, KDE daemon (under KDE 3.5.9) shows New media - unmounted har drive volume, and when I choose open in new window I get a message

org.freedesktop.hal.storage.mount-removable no <-- (action, result)

But I _can_ mount it manually. Anyway I can get it to automount?

Thanks!
Sathya

**coolpcguy** · 20-Aug-2008, 01:29

EDIT: got the automount fixed.

**coolpcguy** · 21-Aug-2008, 12:03

umm a little help please ?

**Spyhawk** · 22-Aug-2008, 08:05

1/ I've exactly same

I don't know how to disable it (and i'm not interested in, so I never found this "bug")

2/ When your are on Desktop, choose "Logout". KDM will start. In "Session type" menu, choose "KDE4.1" (not default). Then Login.

3/ KDE4 is still under developpement, you won't be able to use plasma without (sometimes) random crash. And disable the "Desktop effect" under KDE4, it's not mature yet.

**coolpcguy** · 22-Aug-2008, 08:21

Spyhawk, thanks for the input
Unfortunately on choosing logout, I'm thrown back to console, so I cant get the screen for choosing session type.

Just topitch in, here's a look at my /var/log/kdm.log

Code:

This is a pre-release version of the X server from The X.Org Foundation.
It is not supported in any way.
Bugs may be filed in the bugzilla at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.
Select the "xorg" product for bugs you find in this release.
Before reporting bugs in pre-release versions please check the
latest version in the X.Org Foundation git repository.
See http://wiki.x.org/wiki/GitPage for git access instructions.

X.Org X Server 1.4.0.90
Release Date: 5 September 2007
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: openSUSE SUSE LINUX
Current Operating System: Linux sathya 2.6.25.5-1.1-pae #1 SMP 2008-06-07 01:55:22 +0200 i686
Build Date: 07 June 2008  12:37:27AM

        Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
        to make sure that you have the latest version.
Module Loader present
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
        (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Fri Aug 22 11:02:30 2008
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(II) Module "ramdac" already built-in
Synaptics DeviceInit called
SynapticsCtrl called.
Synaptics DeviceOn called
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/TTF/, removing from list!
Could not init font path element /usr/share/fonts/OTF, removing from list!
Driver not XRANDR 1.2 capable, ignoring DISPLAYMANAGER_RANDR_MODE_* settings
KCrash: Application 'kdmgreet' crashing...
Synaptics DeviceOff called

eems like KDE4.1 is starting, plasma doesn't load, when I issue plasma & at terminal, plasma gets loaded with widgets, ie, with the second Application launch bar and all:
here's a pic

PS: I have disabled desktop effects and Compiz-Fusion

**coolpcguy** · 27-Aug-2008, 10:42

Hey there. Well good news is that I've fixed the kdm_greet crashing issue, while going through the startup logs in YaST(God bless it!!) I found this particular entry

Code:

 kdm_greet crashes with code 125 signal 0

A quick Google search for "kdm code 125" gave me this page as 3rd result which mentions,

kdm was working perfectly until ... kdm_greet crashes with code 125 signal 0 after debugging with gdb, I find that findfont from xfree called by qt was in
cause. Then I made a fc-cache and all worked perfectly

So I do a fc-cache in console, restart and BINGO! No more crashes!!
One problem still remaims - it's booting into KDE 3.5.9 instead of KDE 4.1!
I had a look at /etc/X11R6/xinit/xinitrc.common which calls the startkde script
The startkde script loads KDE4.1 Besides there's a separate starkde3 script.
So any pointers on how to get KDE 4.1 starting ?

**davidgurvich** · 28-Aug-2008, 04:46

Have you updated from 10.3 to 11.0 instead of a clean install? I would guess that there are a number of files that need to be updated. You might check /etc/SuSE-release and 'uname -a' to confirm that you are running 11.0, then 'zypper up' and then 'zypper dup'. I haven't figured a way to do that from yast yet.

**coolpcguy** · 28-Aug-2008, 08:30

@davidgurvich It was a fresh install, I wiped out all of my previous openSUSE partitions and installed with KDE 4 as the DE. Will try the zypper thing soon