could not start kdeinit5. check the installation

[MarcChamberlin]

I kinda suspect the last round of updates I got, for my Leap42.2 x64 server. made the poor thing sick and my first round of attempts to doctor it back to health have failed, so I need a helpful guru to help me back along the road to recovery…

After a reboot, the system comes mostly back up fine, most of the underlying services I want to run, such as Apache2, Tomcat, Named, SSH, etc are running fine. (However, my Axigen mail server is not responding to email correctly which may be another thing that broke.) But the main thing I am wanting to fix first is I have no display of my desktop and I get the error message shown in the subject line. If I click on the OK button to dismiss this error message I am left with a black screen and the mouse cursor arrow, which is responsive to the mouse. Googling for help suggested I do a zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change to do a distribution upgrade. I did so and there were a few places where I had to change the vender from Packman to openSuSE but other than that the upgrade process appeared to perform OK. But still no joy getting past the inability to start kdeinit5 when I rebooted…

Any one with bright ideas on where I show go from here? Incidentally, I can SSH in to the server. Thanks in advance, Marc…

FYI -

zypper lr -d
Repository priorities are without effect. All enabled repositories share the same priority.

| Alias | Name | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service

—±------------------------------------±----------------------------------------±--------±----------±--------±---------±-------±----------------------------------------------------------------------------±-------
1 | download.opensuse.org-non-oss | Main Repository (NON-OSS) | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/non-oss/ |
2 | download.opensuse.org-non-oss_1 | Update Repository (Non-Oss) | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/42.2/non-oss/ |
3 | download.opensuse.org-oss | Main Repository (OSS) | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/oss/ |
4 | download.opensuse.org-oss_1 | Main Update Repository | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/leap/42.2/oss |
5 | download.opensuse.org-oss_2 | Main Repository (Sources) | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/oss/ |
6 | http-download.opensuse.org-57844ed6 | home:j-engel | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/j-engel/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/ |
7 | http-download.opensuse.org-f9bbad0f | openSUSE:Leap:42.1 | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/leap/42.1/repo/oss/ |
8 | openSUSE-42.2-0 | openSUSE-42.2-0 | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | yast2 | hd:///?device=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-PNY_USB_2.0_FD_070B68A299C14275-0:0-part2 |
9 | packman.inode.at-suse | Packman Repository | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_Leap_42.2/ |
10 | repo-debug | openSUSE-Leap-42.2-Debug | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/oss/ |
11 | repo-debug-non-oss | openSUSE-Leap-42.2-Debug-Non-Oss | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/non-oss/ |
12 | repo-debug-update | openSUSE-Leap-42.2-Update-Debug | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/leap/42.2/oss/ |
13 | repo-debug-update-non-oss | openSUSE-Leap-42.2-Update-Debug-Non-Oss | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/leap/42.2/non-oss/ |
14 | repo-source | openSUSE-Leap-42.2-Source | No | ---- | ---- | 99 | NONE | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/oss/ |
15 | repo-source-non-oss | openSUSE-Leap-42.2-Source-Non-Oss | Yes | (r ) Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/leap/42.2/repo/non-oss/ |

[gogalthorp]

zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change is used on Tumbleweed NOT on Leap.

Generally speaking you do not want to to do a DUP only dup on Leap

If you need proprietary multi-media driver they must come from packman but this may not be needed on a server

So what video card??

Your repos look OK

Where did you get Axigen from? Perhaps it needs updated or recompiled for the new environment.

[MarcChamberlin]

@gogalthorp

zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change is used on Tumbleweed NOT on Leap.

Generally speaking you do not want to to do a DUP only dup on Leap

Thanks gogalthorp; for taking the time to reply! Good to know/learn about the no-allow-vendor-change option. Sometimes the devil is in the details and documentation is almost non-existant! I was simply trying to be conservative and following in the footsteps of others but didn’t realize there would be a difference between Tumbleweed and Leap. Anywise, I tried doing a simple zypper dup and got a lot of updates, but still no joy making my poor server any happier.

@gogalthorp

If you need proprietary multi-media driver they must come from packman but this may not be needed on a server

I do, I run a web server which both processes and serves out multi-media content, so yeah packman is necessary.

@gogalthorp

So what video card??

My video is built in to my motherboard and is the Intel HD Graphics 530

@gogalthorp

Your repos look OK

Where did you get Axigen from? Perhaps it needs updated or recompiled for the new environment.

I got the RPM file for Axigen directly from Axigen and installed it myself. I do have their latest version. For the moment I have completely disabled it so as to simplify the mix of issues and want to concentrate on getting my desktop back up and displayable. As soon as I have my desktop back, and a better work environment, I will tackle the services issues next. (I have now discovered that Fail2Ban is also sick, so I disabled it as well.) So 2 of my services are down for the count, but AFAIK the rest are coming up OK. This all happened right after I did an update so I strongly suspect something about that update made my server unhappy…l

[hcvv]

First a forums technical thing:
I see your are rather new here: Welcome to the openSUSE forums. There is an important, but difficult to find feature on these forums.

Please in the future use CODE tags around copied/pasted computer text in a post. It is the # button in the tool bar of the post editor. When applicable copy/paste complete, that is including the prompt, the command, the output and the next prompt.

Then: gogalthorpe warned you:

Generally speaking you do not want to to do a DUP only dup on Leap

but the first thing you do is:

I tried doing a simple zypper dup ...

Now it is for sure you did it wrong!

The way to apply Patches (that are the security/recommended updates from the official Update repos) is

zypper patch

or the YaST equivalent: YaST > Software Management > Online Update.
To get all newer versions published on all the repos you are subscribed to, and that includes the patches mentioned above

zypper up

which will NOT do any vendor changes and is what you want.

You use

zypper dup

for e.g. a distribution update, that is when you upgrade from one openSUSE level to another by changing your repos and then dup to the new ones.
Or when you want to do a vendor switch to Packman (something you need to do now btw after your zypper dup):

zypper dup --from 9

or it’s YaST equivalent.
Or when you are running Tumbleweed (which you are not):

zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change

And there is lots of documentation. E.g.

man zypper

[MarcChamberlin]

Thanks hcvv for all your clarifications, yes I am new to this forum and am not familiar with zypper. I have mostly relied on YaST2 and the KDE software update applet in the past to keep my systems up to date. So this is a learning experience for me…

I have tried using both YaST and doing a zypper up via SSH and both are reporting that my system is up to date and there is nothing more to do -

# zypper up
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

Nothing to do.

So I am still lost in the woods with an unhappy server… Marc…

[hcvv]

I know your problem is hidden somewhere in your first post here, but it is hidden in a lot of
things you say that work OK. So please, can you now try to tell us precise where and when you get a problem. It is not clear to me. You seem to have a desktop running on what you call “a server”. Probably KDE? Do you get the login screen or not? Can you login? Etc., Etc. We can not look over your shoulder, thus we depend completely about your report about what you do, see and get.

[MarcChamberlin]

@hcvv

I know your problem is hidden somewhere in your first post here, but it is hidden in a lot of
things you say that work OK. So please, can you now try to tell us precise where and when you get a problem. It is not clear to me. You seem to have a desktop running on what you call “a server”. Probably KDE? Do you get the login screen or not? Can you login? Etc., Etc. We can not look over your shoulder, thus we depend completely about your report about what you do, see and get.

Sorry for the confusion Hank, I will try to explain again, and I apologize in advance if I am not using terminology correctly…

I call the computer, that I am having troubles with, my server. Yes it is also running the KDE desktop to make it easier for me to maintain and do development work on it. I run a small SOHO network and my server runs a bunch of services to support me, my family, friends, some non-profit organizations and even a couple of small business. (I run it out of my home). There are a number of services I have running on it, Apache2, Tomcat, Axigen, Named, DHCP, VSFTPD, Fail2Ban, etc.

I will try an be thorough in my explanation of what I see so far that is happening, maybe some of this is related and will shed more light on what might be wrong…

When I reboot my server it does go through most of the normal startup sequences of things that get done. GRUB and the boot menu runs fine and allows me to select which version of openSuSE I want to run. Default is Leap42.2. Then I get the openSuSE logo displayed and I can escape out of that to watch the output from the scripts as things like mounts are done and services started. The only error messages I get, during this startup sequence, is several messages saying that the Fail2Ban service is failing to start.

[FAILED] Failed to start Fail2Ban Service.
See 'systemctl status fail2ban.service' for details.

and while on the subject of Fail2Ban (which is not my primary concern at the moment) here is the output from doing a systemctl status fail2ban.service. I don’t know if this is important or not or even related to my main issues -

# systemctl status fail2ban.service
● fail2ban.service - Fail2Ban Service
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fail2ban.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
  Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/fail2ban.service.d
           └─SuSEfirewall2.conf
   Active: failed (Result: start-limit) since Mon 2017-07-03 22:10:42 PDT; 14h ago
     Docs: man:fail2ban(1)
  Process: 2741 ExecStart=/usr/bin/fail2ban-client -x $FAIL2BAN_OPTIONS start (code=exited, status=255)

Jul 03 22:10:41 bigbang systemd[1]: Failed to start Fail2Ban Service.
Jul 03 22:10:41 bigbang systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 03 22:10:41 bigbang systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Jul 03 22:10:42 bigbang systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Service hold-off time over, scheduling restart.
Jul 03 22:10:42 bigbang systemd[1]: Stopped Fail2Ban Service.
Jul 03 22:10:42 bigbang systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Start request repeated too quickly.
Jul 03 22:10:42 bigbang systemd[1]: Failed to start Fail2Ban Service.
Jul 03 22:10:42 bigbang systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jul 03 22:10:42 bigbang systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Failed with result 'start-limit'.

All the other services, including my Axigen mail server appear to start up and run OK. However the Axigen mail server is now refusing to accept any connections from client email applications or from a web browser (on port 9000) which gives me access to the administration tools for Axigen via a web GUI. So something is making Axigen sick as well, and that is far more important to me that I get it back up an running soon. FWIW I can interact with Axigen via it’s command line interface (CLI) and it does react to configuration changes made that way. But the CLI is a real PITA to use and not all that useful to me, but at least it does tell me that the Axigen service is partially working and I may be able to make some headway using it for now.

I do not have KDE configured to give me a login prompt, instead I am automatically logged in and normally when the startup scripts are finished, KDE simply displays my desktop to me on the monitor attached to the server. But, as I mentioned, that is also failing. Instead, after the startup scripts finish, I am presented with a single dialog box that says -

Could not start kdeinit5. Check your installation.

and there is an okay button that I can click on. Clicking on the okay button dismisses the dialog box but nothing further happens on the display. I am simply left with a blank black screen and a red mouse cursor. The mouse cursor does respond to mouse movements.

As I also mentioned, even though the KDE desktop failed to present itself, most of my services are running okay. I can for example, browse my websites that my Apache2 and Tomcat servers support, DHCP is working fine, Named is resolving URLs, etc. I have not tested every service I am running on my server yet, (like VSFTP, Bacula, VPN etc.) but it appears the most important ones (except Axigen, which IS critical) are working.

So my strategy is to first get the KDE desktop back up an working, then tackle Axigen and figure out what is making it sick, if it is still broken after recovering the desktop. Then I’ll check out and fix any of the other services that are broken later. I only mentioned the failure of Axigen and Fail2Ban in the hope that someone may be able to see a connection as to why the KDE desktop is failing to materialize. It seems odd to me, that all three things failed at once and usually that indicates some underlying mechanism, that is common to things that fail at the same time, is broken…

HTHs Marc…

[knurpht]

Hi, let’'s start at the beginning:

• what is the videocard, did you install any driver for it?
• Can you, using Alt+F2 and entering ‘konsole’ in the small popup, open KDE programs? If so, please report.

If you can’t:

• Hit Ctrl+Alt+(twice)Backspace to kill ( and restart ) the X-server, you should see the login screen. Now hit Ctrl+Alt+F1, login with your username, use ‘su -’ and you can start YaST in it’s ncurses interface. Create a new user, then use YaST’s /etc/sysconfig editor (search for AUTOLOGIN) to remove the autologin user. Reboot and login as the new user. If everything is working as expected for the new user, the problem resides in your homedir and you might need some more advice to restore your KDE desktop to it’s defaults. If it doesn’t it’s a system issue we’d have to find out.

[MarcChamberlin]

@Knurpht

Hi, let’'s start at the beginning:

• what is the videocard, did you install any driver for it?

    Thanks Knurpht for your reply and questions. My video is built in to my motherboard and is the Intel HD Graphics 530.  I don't recall having to do anything special to install drivers for it, I think YaST pretty much figured out what I needed in the way of drivers and installed them automagically.

@Knurpht

• Can you, using Alt+F2 and entering ‘konsole’ in the small popup, open KDE programs? If so, please report.

No, using Alt+F2 did not do anything, and I got no response.

@Knurpht

If you can’t:

• Hit Ctrl+Alt+(twice)Backspace to kill ( and restart ) the X-server, you should see the login screen. Now hit Ctrl+Alt+F1, login with your username, use ‘su -’ and you can start YaST in it’s ncurses interface. Create a new user, then use YaST’s /etc/sysconfig editor (search for AUTOLOGIN) to remove the autologin user. Reboot and login as the new user. If everything is working as expected for the new user, the problem resides in your homedir and you might need some more advice to restore your KDE desktop to it’s defaults. If it doesn’t it’s a system issue we’d have to find out.

OK, I followed these instructions and indeed was able to kill and restart the X-server and got to the command line asking me to log in. I did so and was able to add a new user with YaST in it’s ncurses interface (BTW I have been able to get to it via SSH as well.) and I removed my name from the AUTOLOGIN. Upon rebooting I did not get the dialog box with the error message about not being able to start kdeinit5, however I did not get the login screen either. This time I just got a blank screen and not even the mouse cursor.

 Marc...

[MarcChamberlin]

I am kind of taking a wild guess here and don’t know if this is relevant or not to the issues I am having with getting my desktop to display itself after a system reboot/restart. But looking through the messages log file I saw the following things which, to my untrained eyes, look awfully suspicious. So I will show what I found below and perhaps some kind guru can decide whether this is important or not… Just trying to be helpful and doing some sleuthing on my own… Marc…

2017-07-05T13:11:35.109504-07:00 bigbang systemd[1]: display-manager.service: PID file /var/run/displaymanager.pid not readable (yet?) after start: No such file or directory

2017-07-05T13:11:41.759175-07:00 bigbang sddm-helper[3051]: Could not open stderr to ".xsession-errors"
2017-07-05T13:11:41.806106-07:00 bigbang sddm[2955]: Greeter session started successfully
2017-07-05T13:11:41.860378-07:00 bigbang kernel:    45.309028] sddm-greeter[3051]: segfault at 8 ip 00007f4a8c378ded sp 00007ffd3211afc0 error 4 in ld-2.22.so[7f4a8c369000+21000]
2017-07-05T13:11:42.069347-07:00 bigbang sddm-helper[3037]: [PAM] Ended.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.087978-07:00 bigbang sddm[2955]: Auth: sddm-helper exited with 11
2017-07-05T13:11:42.088200-07:00 bigbang sddm[2955]: Greeter stopped.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.091110-07:00 bigbang systemd-logind[2665]: Removed session 1.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.092687-07:00 bigbang systemd[1]: Stopping User Manager for UID 483...
2017-07-05T13:11:42.102469-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Stopped target Default.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.102673-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Stopped target Basic System.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.128512-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Stopped target Sockets.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.128637-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Stopped target Paths.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.128732-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Stopped target Timers.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.128824-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Reached target Shutdown.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.128925-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Starting Exit the Session...
2017-07-05T13:11:42.163319-07:00 bigbang systemd[3040]: Received SIGRTMIN+24 from PID 3054 (kill).
2017-07-05T13:11:42.165450-07:00 bigbang systemd: pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session closed for user sddm
2017-07-05T13:11:42.166005-07:00 bigbang systemd[1]: Stopped User Manager for UID 483.
2017-07-05T13:11:42.166275-07:00 bigbang systemd[1]: Removed slice User Slice of sddm.

[MarcChamberlin]

In parallel to this thread I have also started a thread on the opensuse@opensuse.org forum titled “Failing to get login screen or desktops” that will show some additional progress I have made so far trying to resolve this issue. (Sorry, that thread is rather long and will take a bit of time to grok.) It can also be reached directly at -

https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse/2017-07/msg00691.html

In a nutshell, the only window manager I can now get running is ICEWM. All the KDE variants still give me the error message saying “Could not start kdeinit5. check the installation.” and will not allow me to proceed any further. I have managed to get the KDM display manager working so at least I do get to the login screen.

At this point they have run out of new ideas so suggested I come back to this forum where more knowledgable KDE gurus apparently like to hang out. Some helpful information I was told to pass along is shown below -

bigbang:~ # journalctl -b | grep kdeinit 
Jul 21 11:34:01 bigbang kernel: kdeinit5[3307]: segfault at 8 ip  00007fa1720c6ded sp 00007ffea9846c20 error 4 in  ld-2.22.so[7fa1720b7000+21000] 
Jul 21 11:34:01 bigbang systemd-coredump[3311]: Process 3307 (kdeinit5)  of user 1000 dumped core. 

and (from all my many attempts to get KDE back up and running) I was told to also show all these coredumps I have gotten -

bigbang:~ # ls -al /var/lib/systemd/coredump 
total 12256 
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  16384 Jul 21 11:37 . 
drwxr-xr-x  8 root root   4096 Jul  4 09:16 .. 
-rw-r-----  1 root root 389620 Jul 19 19:11  core.dolphin.0.bc49fc18af9042e582bfd8383909cd80.4542.1500516700000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 389440 Jul 20 14:01  core.dolphin.1000.c3f516e2c47c4294a9921c78ebe004ac.4201.1500584504000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 390384 Jul 20 14:02  core.dolphin.1000.c3f516e2c47c4294a9921c78ebe004ac.4308.1500584528000000.xz 
-rw-r-----  1 root root 422272 Jul 19 19:12  core.gwenview.0.bc49fc18af9042e582bfd8383909cd80.4821.1500516735000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122328 Jul 20 21:44  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.4030.1500612245000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122064 Jul 20 21:45  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.4925.1500612338000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122480 Jul 20 21:46  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.5187.1500612360000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122260 Jul 20 21:47  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.5836.1500612442000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 121988 Jul 20 21:47  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.6090.1500612462000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122424 Jul 20 21:48  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.6401.1500612496000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122040 Jul 20 21:48  core.kdeinit5.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.6649.1500612515000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122052 Jul 21 11:34  core.kdeinit5.1000.30b04aa02f5449a6b6010c5f08f8451e.3307.1500662041000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122524 Jul 20 14:53  core.kdeinit5.1000.392f63e4c51c4eed97e4dbb4ac6a81c2.3501.1500587631000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122204 Jul 21 09:40  core.kdeinit5.1000.39ab1ced588c42619c175e3ffe0312e6.3391.1500655257000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122412 Jul 19 13:54  core.kdeinit5.1000.763b219f4db0404ab804b715da33d1cc.3347.1500497691000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122604 Jul 20 13:53  core.kdeinit5.1000.b4819a6980494dc4b1f80536174fad50.3305.1500584010000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122488 Jul 19 19:08  core.kdeinit5.1000.bc49fc18af9042e582bfd8383909cd80.3254.1500516485000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122044 Jul 20 13:59  core.kdeinit5.1000.c3f516e2c47c4294a9921c78ebe004ac.3297.1500584392000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122160 Jul 21 10:02  core.kdeinit5.1000.e8624938aa35409c9cac6aebb7b61fd6.3388.1500656524000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122736 Jul 19 12:31  core.kdeinit5.1000.f90aa36c75fa45f5b6925fe316117ee6.3360.1500492668000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122380 Jul 20 21:45  core.kdeinit5.1004.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.4629.1500612309000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 122076 Jul 20 13:54  core.kdeinit5.1004.b4819a6980494dc4b1f80536174fad50.3604.1500584046000000.xz 
-rw-r-----  1 root root 270136 Jul 20 21:50  core.ksplashqml.0.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.7455.1500612643000000.xz 
-rw-r-----  1 root root 270240 Jul 19 19:03  core.ksplashqml.0.763b219f4db0404ab804b715da33d1cc.16257.1500516208000000.xz 
-rw-r-----  1 root root 270532 Jul 20 13:54  core.ksplashqml.0.b4819a6980494dc4b1f80536174fad50.3802.1500584067000000.xz 
-rw-r-----  1 root root 270616 Jul 19 13:22  core.ksplashqml.0.f90aa36c75fa45f5b6925fe316117ee6.16502.1500495772000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 268400 Jul 20 21:44  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.4010.1500612245000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 269568 Jul 20 21:45  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.4905.1500612338000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 268428 Jul 20 21:46  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.5167.1500612360000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 269184 Jul 20 21:47  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.5816.1500612442000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 269280 Jul 20 21:47  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.6070.1500612462000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 269464 Jul 20 21:48  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.6381.1500612496000000.xz 
-rw-r-----+ 1 root root 271428 Jul 20 21:48  core.ksplashqml.1000.2419ae5a680048799ecb2f60e3bd3665.6629.1500612515000000.xz 
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So… Pretty Please! Can some kind guru here take the time to retrace my path on the opensuse forum (if that will help fill in some necessary background info) and help guide me out of these dark woods? Marc…

[wolfi323]

@MarcChamberlin

bigbang:~ # journalctl -b | grep kdeinit 
Jul 21 11:34:01 bigbang kernel: kdeinit5[3307]: segfault at 8 ip  00007fa1720c6ded sp 00007ffea9846c20 error 4 in  ld-2.22.so[7fa1720b7000+21000] 
Jul 21 11:34:01 bigbang systemd-coredump[3311]: Process 3307 (kdeinit5)  of user 1000 dumped core. 

Well, it’s crashing.
Strange enough the crash apparently is in the dynamic link-loader (ld-2.22.so).

What does “ldd /usr/bin/kdeinit5” say?

and (from all my many attempts to get KDE back up and running) I was told to also show all these coredumps I have gotten -

bigbang:~ # ls -al /var/lib/systemd/coredump
 ...

Wow, that looks bad.
Would seem like anything that uses Qt5 crashes.

Maybe some library got corrupted?
I would try to reinstall the core ones at least (the ones that are used by kdeinit5):

sudo zypper in -f libQt5Core5 libQt5Gui5 libQt5Widgets5 libQt5X11Extras5

One thing I noticed in output posted previously:

@MarcChamberlin

2017-07-05T13:11:41.759175-07:00 bigbang sddm-helper[3051]: Could not open stderr to “.xsession-errors”

It cannot open the log file.
Might point to a corrupted file system (dying hard disk?), or to some permission problem.
In the former case, there should be filesystem errors in dmesg.

Have you ever tried a fresh user account and see if Plasma starts if you login there?

And another thing that comes to my mind:
Did you ever install some modified/patched freetype? (i.e. “infinality”)
This can break Qt (and other things) completely, and especially a few Tumbleweed users asked for help already because their Plasma session did not start anymore because of that.

[MarcChamberlin]

@wolfi323

Well, it’s crashing.
Strange enough the crash apparently is in the dynamic link-loader (ld-2.22.so).

What does “ldd /usr/bin/kdeinit5” say?

Hi Wolf, I am glad you replied, I was told on another opensuse forum that I should come back to this forum because you are one of the best at answering these sort of questions! Thank you for helping…

The “ldd /usr/bin/kdeinit5” command did not return any response. I took a look at the man page for it and found a suggestion to use a different command that is safer and shows the same output -

bigbang:/usr/local # ldd /usr/bin/kdeinit5
bigbang:/usr/local # objdump -p /usr/bin/kdeinit5 | grep NEEDED                  
  NEEDED               libKF5Crash.so.5
  NEEDED               libKF5I18n.so.5
  NEEDED               libX11.so.6
  NEEDED               libxcb.so.1
  NEEDED               libKF5WindowSystem.so.5
  NEEDED               libQt5Gui.so.5
  NEEDED               libQt5Core.so.5
  NEEDED               libc.so.6

@wolfi323

Wow, that looks bad.
Would seem like anything that uses Qt5 crashes.

Maybe some library got corrupted?
I would try to reinstall the core ones at least (the ones that are used by kdeinit5):

sudo zypper in -f libQt5Core5 libQt5Gui5 libQt5Widgets5 libQt5X11Extras5

OH WOW! That worked!!! Wolf you are the man! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am impressed!

@wolfi323

One thing I noticed in output posted previously:

It cannot open the log file.
Might point to a corrupted file system (dying hard disk?), or to some permission problem.
In the former case, there should be filesystem errors in dmesg.

Have you ever tried a fresh user account and see if Plasma starts if you login there?

And another thing that comes to my mind:
Did you ever install some modified/patched freetype? (i.e. “infinality”)
This can break Qt (and other things) completely, and especially a few Tumbleweed users asked for help already because their Plasma session did not start anymore because of that.

Yeah I had tried using a new account, no joy. As far as installation of software, I just do the automatic ones whenever I get a new notification that updates are available. I have no idea what freetype or infinality is so never did anything with them. Anywise it appears my trusty KDE desktop with plasma is back so we can call this thread good! I will post a notification, and what the solution was on the other opensuse forum that was helping me. Thanks again so much! Marc…

[wolfi323]

@MarcChamberlin

Hi Wolf, I am glad you replied, I was told on another opensuse forum that I should come back to this forum because you are one of the best at answering these sort of questions! Thank you for helping…

You’re welcome.

I did see this thread when it was started, but as others were involved already (and I was busy with other things anyway) I didn’t join in.
I haven’t really checked back either, just thought the problem would have been solved already anyway…

The “ldd /usr/bin/kdeinit5” command did not return any response.

That’s strange, but that’s rather irrelevant now I suppose…
Probably related to the actual problem though. If ld itself crashes, ldd might choke too.

I took a look at the man page for it and found a suggestion to use a different command that is safer and shows the same output -

Wouldn’t have helped much though.
The point of using ldd was that it would show if the libraries are actually found and from where they get loaded exactly.
objdump does not show that.

OH WOW! That worked!!! Wolf you are the man! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am impressed!

Great, so the fix was quite easy forunately.
TBH, that was more or less guessing at this point, not a concrete step to fix a determined problem…
Glad it helped.

Feel free to followup if you do still encounter issues of course.

[wolfi323]

PS:

@MarcChamberlin

I have no idea what freetype or infinality is so never did anything with them.

freetype is a library for handling (truetype) fonts, that’s used by many things in Linux, by Qt in particular.

“infinality” is a set of patches intended to improve the font rendering, but they should no longer be necessary and actually break things now apparently (in Tumbleweed at least).
This never was part of any official packages, but some people used patched freetype packages from some OBS home: repo which then suddenly caused problems because they were incompatible to the latest versions.

[wolfi323]

PPS: I should maybe add that you can check for corrupted (or missing) files of an installed package via:

rpm -V *packagename*

This will verify all installed packages:

rpm -Va

Maybe you should run that to make sure there are not other corrupted files that might bite you at one point.
But be prepared for a lot of noise, some files get modified on purpose (e.g. config files), also some file permissions will automatically get changed by chkstat according to the security settings…

Feel free to post the output (maybe via susepaste.org or similar if it’s too big) for us to check.