KDE Help Center Corruption

English Applications
1

Hello:

It seems that my KDE Help Center is corrupted somehow. OpenSUSE 12.3 and KDE 4.

To start with there are 4 blank empty pages directly below the KDE fundamentals page (which is on top).
Then many many pages cannot be found because they have a corrupt pathname to their location.
For instance:
I can bring up K3b and go to Help->K3b Handbook and KDE Help Center pops up and says:
“The requested help file could not be parsed:<br/>/usr/share/doc/kde/HTML/en//k3b/index.docbook”

Notice that the directory after “en” is “//”. The file exists at this location with only a single “/”.

This is not the only path that is corrupted, many many are like this. I am not sure if this was like this from the epic install or if it happened some other time.
I have downloaded the entire documentation section in Yast because I like to have it all handy. But perhaps something screwed up the help system.

Any pointers that may help me fix this?

Bill_Melater

2

A little more about the system this is running on:

Linux 3.7.10-1.1-desktop
openSuse 12.3 (Dartmouth) x86_64
KDE 4.10.00 “release 1”

AMD Phenom X3 8450 Triple-Core @ 2.1Ghz
Medion Akoya mainboard
ATI HD 4350 1GB AGP
3GB DDR2
320GB Seagate 2.5" HDD SATA II
3.5 Floppy & multi-card read/writer
5.25 Floppy
Diamond Fireport PCI SCSI card (nothing on it)
Samsung DVD burner

3

On 03/22/2013 10:26 AM, Bill Melater wrote:
> A little more about the system this is running on:

-=WELCOME=- new poster…you have presented a strange symptom…

caution: this may be completely unhelpful…

i know it is clear to you, but it is not clear to me what you mean
when you wrote in your initial post

I have downloaded the
entire documentation section in Yast
and, i wonder if maybe
how you did that might have impacted your system, somehow…

that is, did you “download” with (say) get, or a Firefox add-on, or a
“download manager” or or or what?

or, did you “install” the entire documentation section in YaST
Software Management, by using YaST?

and, when you say “entire documentation section” did you ‘install’
the documentation for all languages? and for all applications you
both have and don’t have, or or what ??

hmmmm…did you open YaST Software Management and type
“documentation” in the blank and press “Search” and then click to
install everything that came up?
or
did you spin the “View” tab to “RPM Groups” and go down the tree and
click on the “Documentation” section, and then click to install
everything listed in the HTML, Howto, Man, Other, SUSE and SuSE
directories?

welllll…i do not know exactly how to help you, but i have found
evidence that the double // is probably not the cause of your “four
blank empty pages” symptom because i find a corrupt path that also in
this old thread without a blank page complaint
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/431656-install-documentation.html

however, like yours the other user was unable to access documents
wrongly addressed with [something]/en//[something]…i have looked
and find no bugzilla entry for this apparent symptom…

so, i think you might have TWO unassociated help problems:

  • blank pages
  • corrupt paths

and sorry, but i have no idea how to solve either…but, you might
also tell us more about your system:

like did you install openSUSE on empty hardware, or did you ‘upgrade’
from a previous version of openSUSE? if so, which of the recommended
upgrade methods did you use?

or did you install it along side of to dual boot with a previous
Linux or other operating system? did you keep the /home from that
previous Linux system?

or did you replace a previous Linux, and keep the old /home

if you installed on an existing Windows’s machine, what file system
did you select for your Linux /home

some of these variables might be involved in the corrupt path…

the display problem might be a graphics display problem–try
turning off all desktop effects.

sorry i can’t be more helpful–maybe with some more info a real guru
will pop up!

–
dd
http://tinyurl.com/DD-Caveat

4

This was a clean install from official DVD that I downloaded and burned.
I installed the documentation via Yast RPM view. Selected install all.
I am not having a graphics display problem.

I had 12.2 installed on a seagate 500G 2.5" hybrid drive on the same machine.
I didn’t really like how I partitioned 12.2, so I just installed 12.3 on the 320 and have repartitioned the 500.
I am going to move 12.3 to the 500’s new partitions soon. I built this machine from a bunch of
older laptops and desktops that I had lying around. I basically want to use it to go through all of my old
old drives and stuff and maybe play some of those old games - via virtual guests.
This little system has SCSI, IDE, SATA, floppies, and CD/DVD media capabilities. I have loads of
old stuff on all of those.

I have a monster gaming system (i7-3930, XFX-7970 black, all water cooled) that I play current games on.
I might one day put Linux on it, but not yet.

Anyway, I guess what I am going to do is uninstall all of that doc stuff and see if it fixes itself.

5

On 03/22/2013 03:46 PM, Bill Melater wrote:
> I guess what I am going to do is uninstall all of that doc
> stuff and see if it fixes itself.

i join you in a hope that it does “fix itself” because i wouldn’t
know where to begin (other than those hints already given)…

–
dd
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobile” of operating systems!

6

Progress update.

  1. Uninstalled all docs via Yast. This also uninstalled help center. So I reinstalled help center.
    This met with partial success. The 4 blank pages following the first fundamental page were gone.
    However, the bad paths with “en//” persisted.

  2. Since I had a perfectly good blank hard drive available, I decided to fresh install 12.3 on it and
    pay attention to what the help center looked like. Interestingly, there is one blank page after the first
    fundamental page. No bad paths were observed. I didn’t check every page, but I checked about 100
    here and there. All the paths were resolved that I looked at.

So it looks like I have to delve deeper into help center and learn how it handles the pathing to its documents.
Then perhaps I can repair it or figure out what is causing the corruption.
Meanwhile if someone can educate me a little, I would appreciate it.