KDM crashes, complains about theme can not be used

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1

Anyone familiar with the following problem with KDM?

It crashes with the following message: The theme can not be used with the authentication method <<Generic>>.

So I tried switching KDM themes, but that did not work

I filed a KDE bug report for this:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=329523

Still in openSUSE 12.3. First encountered this problem on KDE 4.11.4, then I upgraded to 4.12 and it is still complains.

I have to uninstall KDM and use the ugly and very slow XDM in order to get into KDE.

2

I added the following to the /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc

PluginsLogin=classic
PluginsShutdown=classic

The error message went away, but I still got the crash message with the same output.

3

Which only makes the issue more mysterious, i.e. same crash, no messages. Regression IMHO. Would me posting my kdmrc at paste.opensuse.org help you?

4

My kdmrc file after I changed some values in KDE Control Settings for KDM.
SUSE Paste

A fresh kdmrc file before I started changing it.
SUSE Paste

KDM crashes with either one of these.

5

Any traces in /var/log/Xorg.0.log? In /var/log/messages?
Which is the theme you were trying to apply?

6

I have been using the default opensuse theme for KDM, and the SuSE Elegant KDE-Look.org

logging concerning KDM in /var/log/messages


2014-01-02T11:05:15.069346+01:00 machine xdm[754]: Starting service kdm..done
2014-01-02T11:05:15.070043+01:00 machine systemd[1]: Started LSB: X Display Manager.
2014-01-02T11:05:15.184961+01:00 machine kdm[776]: plymouth is running
2014-01-02T11:05:15.318780+01:00 machine kdm[776]: plymouth is active on VT 7, reusing for :0
2014-01-02T11:05:15.320970+01:00 machine kdm[776]: plymouth should quit after server startup
2014-01-02T11:05:16.362930+01:00 machine kdm[776]: Quitting Plymouth with transition
2014-01-02T11:05:16.389722+01:00 machine kdm[776]: Is Plymouth still running? no
2014-01-02T11:05:22.561269+01:00 machine kdm_greet[898]: Cannot load /usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory
2014-01-02T11:05:26.100093+01:00 machine kdm: :0[897]: Cannot read from greeter for display :0
2014-01-02T11:05:26.100625+01:00 machine kdm: :0[897]: Abnormal termination of (null), code 125, signal 0
2014-01-02T11:05:26.103197+01:00 machine kdm[776]: plymouth is NOT running
2014-01-02T11:05:27.540838+01:00 machine kdm[776]: plymouth should quit after server startup
2014-01-02T11:05:28.413969+01:00 machine kdm[776]: Quitting Plymouth with transition
2014-01-02T11:05:28.419960+01:00 machine kdm[776]: Is Plymouth still running? no
2014-01-02T11:05:30.886189+01:00 machine kdm_greet[2472]: Cannot load /usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory
2014-01-02T11:05:36.433343+01:00 machine kdm: :0[2471]: Cannot read from greeter for display :0
2014-01-02T11:05:36.433371+01:00 machine kdm: :0[2471]: Abnormal termination of (null), code 125, signal 0
2014-01-02T11:05:37.925272+01:00 machine kdm[776]: plymouth should quit after server startup
2014-01-02T11:05:38.735385+01:00 machine kdm[776]: Quitting Plymouth with transition
2014-01-02T11:05:38.738279+01:00 machine kdm[776]: Is Plymouth still running? no
2014-01-02T11:05:39.654062+01:00 machine kdm: :0[2526]: Abnormal termination of greeter for display :0, code 1, signal 0

Could not find any errors related to KDM or otherwise in /var/log/Xorg.0.log

One thing I had done a while before KDM started to act like this was to install packages for use of my fingerprint scanner. Though I haven’t used it yet, just installed some fprint and pam_fprint packages. Other than that just the regular updates of packages from opensuse and its latest KDE packages.

7

An distribution upgrade to opensuse 13.1 did not solve the problem. XDM is useless, so I had to install lxdm in order to get into KDE.

There must be something that makes KDM kdm_greet to crash. I would reckon that if I made a fresh install of opensuse 13.1 it would work fine.

8

Try to remove/rename the directory /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/ and reinstall kdm:

sudo mv /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/  /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm.bak
sudo zypper in -f kdm

KDM’s configuration should then be recreated from scratch with default values.

Does it work then?

If yes, you could remove /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm.bak completely.

If not, I guess you should also have a look at /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager and /etc/pam.d/, but I’m not sure what exactly could cause your issue.

9

I had a hunch. I uninstalled the fprint library, and I removed the following from from /etc/pam.d/common-auth

auth sufficient pam_fp.so

Then KDM was working fine again. Seems it did not like fingerprint as authentication method.