KDE Plasma Desktop Won't Launch Over VNC

English Network/Internet
#1

This is driving me crazy.

I can get ICE or TWM to work just fine over a vnc connection. So I’m reasonably certain that the basics are all working more or less as they should.

However, when I try to tell the session to login and start a KDE Plasma session, I see the window that normally gets 4 or 5 icons in it during KDE startup appear, and the disk icon solidifies, and then the session gets blasted.

In /var/log/messages, I see something like this:

2014-03-23T17:06:53.208196-06:00 brahe xinetd[674]: START: vnc1 from=192.168.1.662014-03-23T17:06:53.339299-06:00 brahe kdm_config[4683]: Multiple occurrences of
section [General] in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc. Consider merging them.2014-03-23T17:06:53.339682-06:00 brahe kdm_config[4683]: Multiple occurrences of
section [Xdmcp] in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc. Consider merging them.2014-03-23T17:06:53.339904-06:00 brahe kdm_config[4683]: Multiple occurrences of section [X--Core] in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc. Consider merging them.
2014-03-23T17:06:53.340186-06:00 brahe kdm_config[4683]: Multiple occurrences of section [X--Greeter] in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc. Consider merging them.
2014-03-23T17:06:53.340343-06:00 brahe kdm_config[4683]: Multiple occurrences of section [X-:*-Core] in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc. Consider merging them.
2014-03-23T17:06:53.340459-06:00 brahe kdm_config[4683]: Multiple occurrences of section [X-:0-Core] in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc. Consider merging them.
2014-03-23T17:06:53.813961-06:00 brahe kdm_greet[4690]: Cannot load /usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory
2014-03-23T17:06:58.902195-06:00 brahe kdm: 192.168.1.76:1[4689]: pam_unix(xdm:session): session opened for user mgshaw by (uid=0)
2014-03-23T17:06:58.905386-06:00 brahe systemd[1]: Starting Session 12 of user mgshaw.
2014-03-23T17:06:58.905969-06:00 brahe systemd-logind[681]: New session 12 of user mgshaw.
2014-03-23T17:06:58.906609-06:00 brahe systemd[1]: Started Session 12 of user mgshaw.
2014-03-23T17:07:01.813188-06:00 brahe kdm: 192.168.1.76:1[4689]: pam_unix(xdm:session): session closed for user mgshaw
2014-03-23T17:07:01.821640-06:00 brahe systemd-logind[681]: Removed session 12.

[FONT=arial]I haven’t figured out why [/FONT]kdm_config is complaining so loudly, when I check the file, there is no multiple occurrences of any of those sections.

The session started/session closed messages are what don’t make any sense. Nothing should have clobbered the session like that.

Even more screamingly annoying, is that the configuration works just fine for a direct console login - everything starts up and looks like it’s supposed to.

System:

OpenSuse 13.1

Linux brahe 3.11.10-7-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 3 09:41:24 UTC 2014 (750023e) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[FONT=arial]Processor: AMD A10 7850
Memory 8Gb

Any suggestions?

[/FONT]

#2

This sounds related to https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=807781 for me.

Try setting QT_GRAPHICSSYSTEM=“native” or “QT_X11_NO_MITSHM=1” (in /etc/environment maybe, or your ~/.profile).

#3

Hmmm…this is interesting …

I applied both settings to my ~/.profile. The next time I connected using VNC, KDE Plasma initialized correctly.

Subsequently, I disconnected my VNC session and rebooted the machine.

Presto, same old problem is back.

#4

One of those variables should be enough.

And try to set it in /etc/environment. It is system-global then. (I hope it’s clear that you should do that on the machine you want to login to, i.e. where the VNC server is running)

#5

Yes, I understand that.

Just did 3 variations, all to no avail:

Set both variables in /etc/environment

Set one variable only in /etc/environment

I rebooted the machine before attempting to connect via VNC

Client side: Mac OSX using Chicken 2.2b2

Every so often (not every time) when the connection fails, Chicken complains about receiving “unknown message id 4”.

#6

So sometimes it works, sometimes it fails?
No idea then, sorry.
Could be a chicken bug as well.
Have you tried a different client?

Btw, I forgot to answer that before, those message about the KDM config are “normal”. They are caused by the way how the configuration from /etc/sysconfig/ gets merged with kdm’s own config I think.
But that doesn’t cause a problem.

#7

Not yet … now I need to hunting for a new VNC client for the Mac …

Thanks for the heads up on the config messages - I couldn’t see how they were actually problematic, but there’s enough messages to at least warrant a quick look.

It works only rarely. (which puzzles me to no end)