kde programs stop working (on gnome)

amyekut · August 24, 2011, 3:25pm

Hi,

I have the following setup: SUSE 11.4 with Gnome desktop, on a Dell e4200 laptop.

I installed the KILE program, which is a KDE program (for processing LaTex), and it comes packaged with OKULAR, KONQUEROR and more.

A few weeks after this installation, suddenly and at once all these KDE programs stop working.

This happened to me before (about three times during the past year), and the only remedy I found was to **reinstall SUSE **(!!!). Just uninstalling and reinstalling the separate programs had no effect.

The previous times this problem happened I had the following symptom: the Gnome system monitor showed the program I was trying to run (say okular) as being in “futex-do-wait”. This time around even this doesn’t happen: there is no sign in the system monitor.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

vodoo · August 24, 2011, 3:31pm

Is there any error message given when you try to start - let’s say - okular from a terminal window?

You could also check if there’s something in the log files.

This problem needs to be debugged, not overwritten by a fresh install. So stay tuned.

amyekut · August 24, 2011, 3:36pm

Here is the output from the terminal:


amyekut@linux-g4aj:~/Desktop> okular
okular: error while loading shared libraries: libQtCore.so.4: cannot open shared object file: Input/output error
amyekut@linux-g4aj:~/Desktop>

I don’t know which log files are relevant.

amyekut · August 25, 2011, 2:50pm

Pursuing the error message quoted above, I tried to reinstall libqt4. It failed, with this message:


Installation of package libqt4 failed.

Subprocess failed. Error: RPM failed: error: unpacking of archive failed on file /usr/lib64/libQtCore.so.4.7.3: cpio: rename failed - Input/output error

knurpht · August 25, 2011, 10:32pm

Can we see your repos?


zypper lr -d

Did you try to get it working by logging in as root on the desktop?

amyekut · August 25, 2011, 10:48pm

Here’s the output:



amyekut@linux-g4aj:~/Desktop> zypper lr -d
#  | Alias                            | Name                             | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type   | URI                                                                            | Service
---+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+---------+---------+----------+--------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+--------
 1 | 11.4 - VideoLan                  | 11.4 - VideoLan                  | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/SuSE/11.4/                       |        
 2 | KDE:KDE3                         | KDE:KDE3                         | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/KDE3/openSUSE_11.4/             |        
 3 | KDE:Release:46                   | KDE:Release:46                   | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/KDE:/Release:/46/openSUSE_11.4/      |        
 4 | Updates-for-openSUSE-11.4-11.4-0 | Updates for openSUSE 11.4 11.4-0 | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.4/                                      |        
 5 | openSUSE-11.4-11.4-0             | openSUSE-11.4-11.4-0             | Yes     | No      |   99     | yast2  | cd:///?devices=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-PLDS_DVD+_-RW_DU-8A2S_809130270436,/dev/sr0 |        
 6 | openSUSE:11.4:Contrib            | openSUSE:11.4:Contrib            | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | rpm-md | http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/openSUSE:/11.4:/Contrib/standard/    |        
 7 | repo-debug                       | openSUSE-11.4-Debug              | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/                 |        
 8 | repo-debug-update                | openSUSE-11.4-Update-Debug       | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/11.4/                                |        
 9 | repo-non-oss                     | openSUSE-11.4-Non-Oss            | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/repo/non-oss/                   |        
10 | repo-oss                         | openSUSE-11.4-Oss                | Yes     | Yes     |   99     | yast2  | http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/                       |        
11 | repo-source                      | openSUSE-11.4-Source             | No      | Yes     |   99     | NONE   | http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/                |        
amyekut@linux-g4aj:~/Desktop>

When you ask

Did you try to get it working by logging in as root on the desktop?

do you mean installation of libqt4? I did this from the YAST GUI.

knurpht · August 25, 2011, 11:07pm

Start Yast - Software Manager, select the repo view, select the KDE:Release 46 repo. On the right half of the screen you will see a link at the top saying: “Switch system packages …”. Click that and accept. Let the Software Manager do it’s thing, logout, login and let us know if there’s any improvement.

With logging in as root I meant using the GNOME or KDE desktop environment as user root, i.e. from the login screen.

amyekut · August 25, 2011, 11:38pm

I did as proposed:

Start Yast - Software Manager, select the repo view, select the KDE:Release 46 repo. On the right half of the screen you will see a link at the top saying: “Switch system packages …”. Click that and accept. Let the Software Manager do it’s thing,

Many packages were installed. However installation of the package libqt4 failed! Will try to logout & login and report again.

amyekut · August 25, 2011, 11:45pm

rebooted, and tried again to install libqt4 from KDE:Release 46. Doesn’t work – I get

Installation of package libqt4 failed

amyekut · August 26, 2011, 11:55pm

Today I rebooted, and suddenly the KDE programs (okular, kile) started working again.

gogalthorp · August 27, 2011, 2:58am

qt is one of the base graphics libs so you need to restart it. generally logging out and re logging is enough

amyekut · August 27, 2011, 2:44pm

This is my situation now:

I have okular, kile etc working.
libQtCore.so.4 is not up-to-date, and latest version can’t be installed: there is the same error message as before.
Maybe related: something is bad in the booting process, after I select “suse” and before I get to the login screen. There are many error messages.

knurpht · August 27, 2011, 9:55pm

You wouldn’t be the first one considering the system logging as error messages… “Many error messages” doesn’t mean anything to me, I need to see them.

One other thing: I see you have a KDE3 repo enabled? Disable that, and repeat the procedure told before. But I’m afraid you already created a mix of packages. Installing/Reinstalling libqt4 should never be an issue, unless something already on the system is avoiding proper installation.

amyekut · August 27, 2011, 10:55pm

One other thing: I see you have a KDE3 repo enabled? Disable that, and repeat the procedure told before.

I did that. Again libqt4 from KDE:Release 46 would not install, with same error message.

After that I lost the okular & kile programs (do not run). Tried to reboot and relogin several times, but no improvement.

You wouldn’t be the first one considering the system logging as error messages… “Many error messages” doesn’t mean anything to me, I need to see them.

Where can I locate the boot error messages? There are definitely errors.

amyekut · August 27, 2011, 11:43pm

After the latest operations (trying to install libqt4 from KDE:Release 46) I also lost functionality of VLC. So I tried to reinstall vlc (from the yast gui). That did something remarkeable: not only was vlc restored, but I got okular and kile working again. Very odd.

gogalthorp · August 28, 2011, 5:59am

I suspect that some support lib was to blame and with KDE3 in the mix it is really hard to figure whats what.