Problem probably getting X11 - KDE to run -> and with VNC + RDT

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello Forum,

after spending three full days trying to solve my problem, the forum is my last hope.

I am trying to give any information that I assume to be relevant and I have highlighted some. Therefore, it’s a somewhat longer text.

Situation

On one of my servers at Hetzner (German hoster) running on OpenSuse 13.2 with KDE and various VirtualBox VMs the IP number had to be changed. The VMs are (were) accessed via RDT.

I set the new IP Number for the Ethernet Controller “eth0” in YaST Network Settings and rebooted. The new IP was then assigned as the major one by the Hetzner support and the old one removed.

Nothing else was changed.

After rebooting I could access my server via SSH using BitVise.

I could also establish a new OpnVPN connection to the server from my Win7 client after changing the local IP on the client accordignly. The VPN connection log information finishes with:
Preserving previous TUN/TAP instance: OpenVPN_S03 (S03 = server name)
Initialization Sequence Completed
MANAGEMENT: STATE:1539955698,CONNECTED,SUCCESS,10.13.1.10,148.xxx.xxx.xxx,1194,
(full IP only here obfuscated by xxx)

So it seems that the VPN is connected. That is also what the little VPN icon says.

**Problems
**

  • There is no way to access the server with UltraVNC client as previously.
  • Any attempt to open an RDT (remote desktop) connection to the VMs failed and this was previously working perfectly well.
  • My impression (= not 100% sure) is that KDE and the connection to VNC are not working (or not properly).

Rescue attempt

I had the graphical rescue vKVM console connected. The OpenSuse graphical log-in screen appeared. I could log in as root and also as user. But thereafter a blank empty form was all I could achieve. No way to use KDE.

My current analysis I

I made a grep for the old and the new IP number as I did before the IP change. It seems that all occurences had been changed, no more old IP was found.

ps a
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
756 tty1 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/agetty --noclear tty1 linux
880 tty7 Ssl+ 0:04 /usr/bin/Xorg -br :0 vt7 -nolisten tcp -seat seat0 -auth /var/lib/kdm/Aut
4038 pts/2 Ss 0:00 -bash
4708 pts/2 R+ 0:00 ps a

startx

I tried to start KDE via startx but it seems that this failed. Here are the last lines of the protocol (I removed a few obviously irrelevant lines to shorten the text):

Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-3.16.7-29-default root=UUID=3bc0fddd-ee51-4eac-a2ad-8b646d1c4215 nomodeset net.ifnames=0 quiet systemd.show_status=1
Current version of pixman: 0.32.6
Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
to make sure that you have the latest version.
The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
> Warning: Type “ONE_LEVEL” has 1 levels, but <RALT> has 2 symbols
> Ignoring extra symbols
Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server
klauncher(2053) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server.
kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!
kdmgreet(2047)/kdecore (KTimeZone): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed: "Not connected to D-Bus server"
kdmgreet(2047)/kdecore (KTimeZone): No time zone information obtained from ktimezoned

My current analysis II

I noticed one difference related to the OpenVPN:

Previously with the old IP I was using in the VNC the IP 10.13.1.1, which was and still is also used in YaST Nwtwork Settings as the “Statically Assigned IP Address” in the “Address” tab.

But when starting a new VPN connection I am told by the VPN on my client that IP 10.13.1.10 was assigned and that is also shown in the VPN log file (see above and below at ifconfig br0). All my attempts to use either 10.13.1.1 or 10.13.1.10 failed.

systemctl status network

wicked.service - wicked managed network interfaces
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/wicked.service; enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Fri 2018-10-19 13:48:22 CEST; 2h 1min ago
Process: 857 ExecStart=/usr/sbin/wicked --systemd ifup all (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 857 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CGroup: /system.slice/wicked.service
Oct 19 13:48:22 S03 wicked[857]: lo up
Oct 19 13:48:22 S03 wicked[857]: eth0 up
Oct 19 13:48:22 S03 wicked[857]: br0 up
Oct 19 13:48:22 S03 wicked[857]: dummy0 enslaved
Oct 19 13:48:22 S03 wicked[857]: tap0 enslaved

ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx
inet addr:148.xxx.xxx.179 Bcast:148.xxx.xxx.191 Mask:255.255.255.224
inet6 addr: fe80::468a:5bff:fe5e:1728/64 Scope:Link
inet6 addr: 2a01:4f8:210:41b0::2/64 Scope:Global
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:22379 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18658 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2852282 (2.7 Mb) TX bytes:3989592 (3.8 Mb)

ifconfig br0
br0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr xx.xx.xx.xx.xx.xx
inet addr:10.13.1.1 Bcast:10.13.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::3078:c3ff:fedf:f4be/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:460 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:31 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:57277 (55.9 Kb) TX bytes:7695 (7.5 Kb)

systemctl status - the only two obviously failed sections

Oct 19 12:39:40 S03 kdm[864]: plymouth should quit after server startup
Oct 19 12:39:40 S03 kdm[864]: Quitting Plymouth with transition
Oct 19 12:39:40 S03 kdm[864]: Is Plymouth still running? no
Oct 19 12:39:40 S03 kdm_greet[1929]:** Cannot load /usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory**
Oct 19 12:40:02 S03 kdm[1928]: :0[1928]: pam_unix(xdm:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
Oct 19 12:40:33 S03 kdm[864]: plymouth should quit after server startup
Oct 19 12:40:34 S03 kdm[864]: Quitting Plymouth with transition
Oct 19 12:40:34 S03 kdm[864]: Is Plymouth still running? no
Oct 19 12:40:34 S03 kdm_greet[2047]:** Cannot load /usr/share/kde4/apps/kdm/faces/.default.face: No such file or directory**
Oct 19 12:40:48 S03 kdm[2046]: :0[2046]: pam_unix(xdm:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
…
…
Oct 19 12:40:48 S03 systemd[2073]: pam_unix(systemd-user:session): session opened for user root by (uid=0)
vboxadd.service - LSB: VirtualBox Linux Additions kernel modules
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/vboxadd)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2018-10-19 12:34:28 CEST; 52min ago
Process: 770 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/vboxadd start (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Oct 19 12:34:28 S03 systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: VirtualBox Linux Additions kernel modules.
Oct 19 12:34:28 S03 vboxadd[770]: Starting the VirtualBox Guest Additions …failed
Oct 19 12:34:28 S03 vboxadd[770]: (Not running on a virtualbox guest)

My question

What is the cause of these problems and what can I do to fix this?

Many thanks in advance for any contribution.

Best regards
Frank

2

A few issues:

First, though you used the LEAP 15 version tag in the thread title, you then say you are running openSUSE 13.2, so which is it? Ambiguity does not often help solve issues.

Second, if you are indeed running openSUSE 13.2, it is long since past End Of Life and is now becoming fossilized, and it would be running a version of KDE that is also long past the end of its life.

It should be no surpise if the system will no longer work properly.

Best advice: Upgrade to a supported operating system.

3

Hello,

you are certainly right about my mistake to mark my OP as connected with Leap 15. It is running 13.2.

I was at the same time and still am concerned to get Leap 15 running on servers with massive problems in the installer as I wrote in Deutsch in this posting, because it seems to be due to the peculiarity of the openSuse installer used at a major German hoster.

Second, if you are indeed running openSUSE 13.2, it is long since past End Of Life and is now becoming fossilized, and it would be running a version of KDE that is also long past the end of its life. It should be no surpise if the system will no longer work properly.

I do disagree here as software neither becomes disfunctional just because of age, nor are newer versions always better as I often encountered in my 35+ years in the software industry and the same is what I am currently encountering with openSuse Leap 15, which in many respects seems to me a somewhat premature and instable release compared to 13.2. This is confirmed by many posts that I have been reading over the past three weeks of intensive studies of software forums, because the product docs are mostly lousy.

I believe that this has less technical reasons but is presumably caused in most cases by the frequent arrogancy of “managers” who are overruling the technical experts. Managers tend to often behave a bit like dogs who must leave their marks at every second tree.

Besides my own comprehensive experiance I also refer to what I was told by two close family members, one was long working as a very specialized developer for SuSe at Nürnberg, now for Red Hat.

But as far as this machine is concerned I am anyway close to setting it up from scratch to avoid a zoo of different versions.

Best regards

4

I haven’t had a chance to look at this thread in any depth, but from what I understand you have a working VPN connection to your remote server. You’re not sure if KDE is running now? Can you create another user, and login remotely as that new user?

5

Thread prefix changed to reflect the OP’s openSUSE version in question.

6

The problem is most often not that old versions do not function anymore once they are frozen (they will be very stable), but they should be kept frozen. Any change can develop in malfunction because the environment changed in the meantime:

  • no software available anymore to install in the old version;
  • no knowledge available anymore when one asks in a forum like this here.
  • security vulnerabilities found, but not patched;
  • when the old hardware (which apparently is supported by the old software) breaks, newer hardware requires then installation of the old software in due time, matching new hardware may not be available;
  • maybe more.
7

Hello,

Well, in intensives searches I found no command that tells me definitely, whether or not KDE is running. I though it might be in the “ps a” output listed above.

I doubt that this would change anything, because with SSH log-in everything seems ok to me, just the VNC via VPN connection fails. Therefore, a successful normal log-in to another account would neither help nor prove anything. Beyond that I am used to YaST and command line only in rare cases (I had beein doing this 30 years ago, but that is no more acceptable today in my view).

Additionally, I will probably give up 13.2 on this server when my massive problems with the installation of Leap 15 are solved, which are due to a very faulty SuSe installer. Details only in German post in the other tread that I linked above.

So thank you, but I am trying a few more things with the new server and if that succeeds I will re-install SuSe 15 on this machine, too.

Best regards

8

That was a rather short process list, so I assume not. Although, the kdm displaymanager is active. There is no evidence that a VNC server is active, but in any case you can check if there a process listening on port 5900 for example (default port for VNC servers)…

netstat -tulpn

If not, you’ll need to figure out how to reinstate it again.

Here’s an old guide (from one of our long-serving moderators) that might help you get a working VNC server again…
https://forums.opensuse.org/content.php/180-How-To-Activate-VNC-Server-in-openSUSE-12-3

Beyond that I am used to YaST and command line only in rare cases (I had beein doing this 30 years ago, but that is no more acceptable today in my view).

Well, depending on what is wrong with your remote installation (eg no graphical environment available currently), you may have no choice in the matter.