cannot log into KDE with new kernel

[Hu]

Since this seems to be fairly reproducible for you, you should try to bisect the kernel to see when it broke. You say this worked with 3.1.6-gentoo and failed with 3.1.10-gentoo, so that should be a fairly small range to bisect. If you can pinpoint the commit that caused it, you have a much better chance of getting the kernel developers to investigate the problem or revert the change.

[Goverp]

I've found that changing the login type, on the kcm login panel, from "plasma workspace (same as last time)" [or whatever it says, I don't have it in front of me, of course...] to "plasma workspace safe start" [ditto], or vice-versa, lets me log on reliably; well, it has done for the last 3 or four days.

I'm about to update my laptop's KDE, so I'll turn on symbols so if it occurs, I can try digging down. Trouble is, my laptop (32-bit Intel Atom) doesn't show any problem - it's my (64-bit AMD Phenom) that hangs, and I hope to avoid updating KDE on that for a little while...
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Greybeard

[energyman76b]

have a look at .xsession-errors.
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[Goverp]

This may be a coincidence, but I've noticed when my KDE logon hung, after issuing:
/etc/init.d/xdm stop
there was a copy of /usr/libexec/gam_server running, and killing it and any other processes against my logon userid enabled me to login to KDE. So after my last:
emerge --update
I added:
emerge -1 app-admin/gam-server

I've not had the problem in the couple of days since, but there-again there have been periods of a week without it appearing. My gut feel is that the hang is related to the KDE alert engine opening a window telling me something from my diary.
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Greybeard

[xtx]

actually i no longer have this issue. i'm not sure exactly what fixed it, i was booting into my old kernel regularly and one day tried the new kernel and it worked.

a possible solution was deleting my .kde4/* folder