KDE boot became very slow after updates

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#1

I’m having an issue w/ starting KDE. The boot process goes fine, and then KDE displays the 5 startup icons… It gets to the globe and pauses for about a minute! Then it gets to the K symbol, and pauses for another 30 seconds. It used to go through all 5 in just a second.
What changed? I noticed I had a lot of packages that are installed were not showing up in yast software management… I had done a dup from 12.2 to 12.3 months ago, whenever 12.3 came out… So, I noticed nothing was selected under “patterns” in software management and I selected KDE desktop. That put a check next to a bunch of packages that were already installed, but YAST apparently didn’t know about… It downloaded and installed everything, rebooted, and it’s slow to start.

I figured out if I disable power management in the KDE Desktop Config services, it boots fast again, but then power saving is disabled and my screen never shuts off.

I have tried logging in with a new account and have the same trouble.

Could anyone help me troubleshoot this? Or, is there a way to re-install KDE, w/out retaining my existing broken install? (I’d like to save my home folder, but completely reinstall the system partition components)

-I should add, things other than booting are slow now, too. Opening programs for the first time lags… Starting krdc, for instance, lags for about 20 seconds the first time I open it after booting. Same thing when I shut down, it takes a while for the little shutdown window to pop up, and all that was instant before I made the change to my software.

thank you,
Scott

#2

To check the boot process you can play the “blame-game” in a terminal window:

systemd-analyze blame

That will show you, which process(es) did take the most time.

If your /home is located at a separate partition, you can reinstall the system and format only the /-partition. Otherwise copy the content of /home elsewhere and restore it after installation.

Hendrik

#3

I could be wrong, but I think that command is showing me the boot process before the gui starts… and this problem appears to be related to KDE. (Everything is fast until the KDE startup icons appear… Slowest process from the blame command is my raid system at 3 seconds.)
Is there a similar command to time KDE’s startup applications?

Or, does anyone know what the 5 KDE startup icons represent? There’s a disk, a gear, a globe, a window, and then the K symbol. I can guess the general idea of what they mean… file system, settings, internet, desktop, and KDE… but what’s it actually doing?