After updating to KDE 4 system locks up

[peter_pclos]

I came across this (rather aged) thread when trying to sort out my kde4 installation.  I appear to have the same startup problem as the one in the lead posting, i.e. the first (hard disk) icon on the start-up screen shows properly, then the next three icons show all together as ghost images, then the whole screen display shows a pale pink image which then disappears to leave a black screen.  The startup process appears to continue, judging by the hard disk LED on the system box, but the screen remains black.

The subtle point is that this ONLY occurs when I try to start up with my 'normal' username/password from my kde3.5 days, from which I set up kde4.  However, there was another user account set up under kde3.5, and I found I could still use this to boot up into kde4 without any bugs.  Then, if I switch user, starting a session with my normal username, the new session starts almost normally, except that there is a brief appearance of the pink screen before the 2nd 3rd and 4th icons display in sequence, after which the start-up completes apparently normally.  I have also been able to set up a new user account under the kde4 installation, which also starts up normally.  I know I could shift all my /home files to a brand new username, but I would still like to know why I've got the problem with startup in my own name.

I have tried copying the .kde files from a working user account to my normal username /home directory, and although this enabled me to start up a couple of times, the system soon reverted to its failure mode.

Any advice would be welcome.

[ka9yhd]

Have you tried selecting console log in? Because that is the only way I can get KDE 4 to run on my system.

[peter_pclos]

Yes, among other things, but always with the same result. Since my newly established user ID seems to be rock solid, I've decided to cut the Gordian knot and abandon my old login, transferring all the files on my old user ID to the /home/new-login directory with suitable permissions adjustment.

I see also that the PClos 2010 Beta is now available, so I'll download it and see what it looks like, especially as it is said to get over the problems some of us seem to be having with getopenoffice on the upgraded 2007-2009 platform.

Thanks for your suggestion, anyway.

[Riki]

Hardware problems perhaps? I am running 2009.2 fully updated (2010) and KDE4.3.4 on 2 machines and everything is rock solid. Replacing my setup with the new baby will have to wait for some time until nappies are no longer required.

[peter_pclos]

Since all my other user IDs on the system (whether created before or after the final lock-up) continue to work perfectly well, I don't think it's a hardware problem.  I suspect that there's some corrupt configuration data in the files linked to my old 'normal' user ID.  However, I'm not enough of a systems person to know exactly where to look.  If anybody has any suggestions on this, I would be glad to receive them, since finding and extracting some of the data from what has become a totally inaccessible user account is tedious, to say the least.

[thorper]

One of the answers on this thread mentioned how much memory was installed. Is there a minimum amount of memory that a KDE4 system requires? I was demonstrating KDE4 to  friend who is using 2009 KDE3.5 with 512MB of memory on a laptop and his system froze when running a 2010 liveCD. I think 512MB is insufficient for this and I have suggested adding more memory. Can anyone confirm if 512MB is too little.

[Texstar]

One of the answers on this thread mentioned how much memory was installed. Is there a minimum amount of memory that a KDE4 system requires? I was demonstrating KDE4 to  friend who is using 2009 KDE3.5 with 512MB of memory on a laptop and his system froze when running a 2010 liveCD. I think 512MB is insufficient for this and I have suggested adding more memory. Can anyone confirm if 512MB is too little.

I'm running it on eeepc 701 with 512mb.

[thorper]

One of the answers on this thread mentioned how much memory was installed. Is there a minimum amount of memory that a KDE4 system requires? I was demonstrating KDE4 to  friend who is using 2009 KDE3.5 with 512MB of memory on a laptop and his system froze when running a 2010 liveCD. I think 512MB is insufficient for this and I have suggested adding more memory. Can anyone confirm if 512MB is too little.

I'm running it on eeepc 701 with 512mb.

Thanks Texstar

[peter_pclos]

If the 512 MB memory is borderline sufficient, would the use of wallpaper for one user ID result in the sort of lock-up I have been experiencing?  And if so, can I remove the wallpaper from a root login?

[T6]

when there is no ram available linux doesn't panic, it just uses swap partition, that is the purpose of it, provide ram on hard disk what there is no ram available, slow but usable

the 512 mbs of ram are not used completely, maybe 300 or 400mbs maximum and that is perfectly fine

i have used pclinux kde 4.3.4 with 256 of ram and all was fine but lots of swap used so it is not fast

i will test the livecd later to see results(don't have cd-rw at hand atm)

edit: after 5 minutes with only 256 mbs of ram the system doesn't load completely the desktop, it loads only some parts, no taskbar, no wallpaper but i had system monitor and could turn off system by calling the power off option so the minimum to load livecd should be between 512 and 384 mbs

a normal wallpaper is 200 kbs to 400 kbs or less, if you have a bigger wallpaper you can scale it with a image editor, this depends on the quality of the image and the size of the screen

there are weird situations where a certain file format can give problems, in a image editor convert the image to .jpg(specially if it is a bmp)

do this with a copy of the file, don't work over the original file

[peter_pclos]

I have just done a test to try to see if memory limitation/wallpaper use was actually the problem.  I dug into the config area of kde4 on my pc and (as root) copied the default version of kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc from my 'new' user account over the corresponding directory in my 'old' user account (double checking the permissions setting) so that in theory the old user ID should have lost its photographic wallpapers.  This has made no difference to the locking up when using the old user account, so presumably the use of wallpapers is not the problem.  If anybody can see a flaw in the test, I'd be grateful to hear what it is.

So I'm back to the question, do I have one or more corrupt files in the configuration area for kde4 in my 'old' user account/home folder, and if so, where should I look?  All the other user accounts still seem to work perfectly.

[kjpetrie]

Rename the ~/kde4 directory to .kde4.old and try to start that user again. It will take a little longer than usual to start but will create a new default .kde4 directory.

if that works you have established the problem is in .kde4.

If you want to troubleshoot it further or need to recover your data from the old .kde4, proceed as follows:

Copy .kde4 to .kde4.new. You now have a working .kde4 and two copies - one of your own setup and the other of the default. Now start replacing directories inside the new .kde4 with ones from your .kde4.old until you find the one that causes the problem. Replace it with the one from .kde.new. Then go inside that directory and start copying files and directories from the equivalent in .kde4.old until you find the one that causes the problem. Rinse and repeat until you have found the specific file and hope it isn't one that contains vital data you can't replace.

It's a painstaking process, but only you can decide how much of it you want to do depending on what is at stake. If you don't use any applications (eg Kmail or Kaddress Book) which store data in .kde4 you might be content just to get it going and then tweak it to the way you want it from scratch.

Alternatively, if renaming .kde4 doesn't solve the problem you know it's elsewhere, but probably still in your user's dot files as other users are not affected.

[peter_pclos]

Thanks kjpetrie for your advice.  It's late night local time here, so I'll try to find a slot tomorrow to jump through the suggested hoops and report the results as soon as I can.

[peter_pclos]

Further to my posting from last night, I followed kjpetrie's instructions and got my old user account working.  The important application to restore was Kmail, but on attempting to copy the folder from .kde4.old to the working .kde4, I got a warning that one of the .directory files couldn't be read.  On inspecting it I found that it was reported as empty!  This, then, may well have contributed to the original problem.  Still, it's not as desperate as it might seem.  I had been using Thunderbird until very recently, and only switched to Kmail after I  had installed kde4 (mainly to be able to integrate Clamav protection), so the 'window' for missing Kmail content is very narrow - and because Thunderbird isn't a Kde package, my long-term archive of e-mails is once again accessible.

So, problem solved to all intents and purposes.   

Thanks to all who contributed towards this result

[kjpetrie]

Glad it worked. Could you edit your first post and put SOLVED in the title so people know when they see it.