[Solved] Several problems with KDE 4.2.1

Message

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 8:45 am

Hi all,

Since the first day that I decided to upgrade to KDE 4.* I am experiencing several problems with KDE.
Firstly, Sollid does not recognize the devices that are plugged in. I have an external hdd and a usb stick, but Solid is only capable of mounting a CD or a DVD. I have emerged solid, solid-hardware, and soliduiserver. The dbus and hald deamons are running.

Secondly, in the "System Settings" under the Network settings->Network Settings I can not read the net interfaces. The entire widget is disabled. I do know about the patch, and I have emerged the latest version of the knetworkconf ebuild. I have also emerged knemo, and I had to manually give the network interfaces.

Finally, kopete does not connect to the internet. I believe that this is because there are no interfaces in the Network Settings.

Thank you

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:33 pm

Am I the only one who cannot configure KDE properly?
If this is the case, could someone show to me how to configure KDE?

pingufunkybeat · Post by **pingufunkybeat** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 11:53 pm

I don't know, hal autodetection worked automatically for me, and though I don't use kopete, I haven't had any network problems with any apps either.

All of the KDE problems I've encountered since upgrading to 4.2.1 + X 1.5 + Qt 4.5 were related to the experimental "raster" setting of 4.5. Other than that, it's rock-solid and everything works.

(other than suspend-to-ram, but I believe it has to do with my nvidia driver, and I've never used that feature so I'm too lazy to fix it)

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Tue Mar 31, 2009 7:49 am

In my case hal autodetects only the CD or DVD. Maybe, I am missing something about hal configuration (if there is such a thing). On the other hand, I recall that once solid detected a usb stick.

About network interfaces, I do know that everybody had a problem about a xml file not being properly parsed. There is a patch which fixes this problem, but still KDE does not detect the interfaces (net.etho and net.eth1).

If I remember correctly, in KDE bugzilla I read that a gentoo user had a similar problem with the network interfaces, and the suggested solution was to change the CFLAGS. Although I am not using aggressive CFLAGS, does anybody know if this would work?

Here is another annoying problem. I am using the System monitor plasma. This plasma detects the network interfaces!! The problem with plasma, however, is that it does not save my settings. For example, in the temperature monitor I disable the plotter, and in the networks I check only the eth1 interfaces. Every time I log into KDE these settings are lost!!!

Definitely something is wrong with the way KDE is configured. The question is how do I track it down

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:33 am

It seems to me that the problem is that I run the "System settings" as a user. If I run it as root, the Network setting widget is still empty, but it is at least enabled, and I can switch between the different tabs.

jvik · Post by **jvik** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 2:28 pm

I remember that when I built 4.2.1 I got a message to be sure permissions for /usr/share/config were set to 755. (chmod -R 755 /usr/share/config).

Something you might check.

jw

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 8:15 pm

jvik wrote:I remember that when I built 4.2.1 I got a message to be sure permissions for /usr/share/config were set to 755. (chmod -R 755 /usr/share/config).

Something you might check.

jw

jvik thank you for your reply!
Earlier today I read in this forum about the same thing. Unfortunately, I do not see any difference (I did restart the X server). Still, the settings from the plasma applet are not saved.
What bothers me is that even when I start the system settings as root, the Network Setting widget is empty. I have also emerged, from the overlay, the Network Manager module, and again this widget is disabled.
Am I the only person who has this problem?

Kollin · Post by **Kollin** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 8:39 pm

MasterX wrote:
jvik wrote:I remember that when I built 4.2.1 I got a message to be sure permissions for /usr/share/config were set to 755. (chmod -R 755 /usr/share/config).

Something you might check.

jw
jvik thank you for your reply!
Earlier today I read in this forum about the same thing. Unfortunately, I do not see any difference (I did restart the X server). Still, the settings from the plasma applet are not saved.
What bothers me is that even when I start the system settings as root, the Network Setting widget is empty. I have also emerged, from the overlay, the Network Manager module, and again this widget is disabled.
Am I the only person who has this problem?

I don`t have network interfaces in systemsettings also and pops up a message of some xml parsing error, but that does not bother me.I never configure my network within kde`s systemsettings

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:09 pm

Kollin wrote:
I don`t have network interfaces in systemsettings also and pops up a message of some xml parsing error, but that does not bother me.I never configure my network within kde`s systemsettings

The truth is that I too do not need to configure the network interfaces with the systemsetting module. But, I am trying to understand why Kopete does not connect and why the settings for the plasma applet are not saved. I should not forget the fact that solid does not detect any device. It only mounts CD and DVD

pingufunkybeat · Post by **pingufunkybeat** » Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:52 pm

Do you have a recent kernel?

Have you tried revdep-rebuild, if you've updated some of the core packages like hal?

For me, updating the kernel solved some hal issues, the more recent the kernel, the better.

I'm guessing in the dark here, my setup is working fine.

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 7:14 am

pingufunkybeat wrote:Do you have a recent kernel?

Have you tried revdep-rebuild, if you've updated some of the core packages like hal?

For me, updating the kernel solved some hal issues, the more recent the kernel, the better.

I'm guessing in the dark here, my setup is working fine.

Yes I do have a recent kernel. It is 2.6.28
I have also run revdep-rebuild, but I will try it again.

I remembered another weird behavior: The screen resolution is set to 1280x800. When I use the open source drivers everything is working fine (well, I do have a small problem with the desktop effects, but this is another issue). If, however, I use the ati-drivers the screen resolution is set to 1024x768 (or something like that, although in the xorg.conf file it is set to 1280x800). The weird thing is that when I run the systemsettings the screen resolution changes to 1280x800. This change happens immediately after the systemsettings is loaded.

Let me ask you a simple question: In KDE 3.5.* the .kde folder was a symlink to .kde3.5. After I upgrade to KDE 4.2, there is only the .kde4.2 folder and the .kde folder is still a symlink to .kde3.5. Could this be a problem?

Kollin · Post by **Kollin** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:26 am

For me using kde3 and kde4 without kdeprefix gave me all sorts of weirdness.If you are doing same mistake get rid of kde3 and all ~/.kde* dirs and rebuild kde4 from scratch

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:50 am

Kollin wrote:For me using kde3 and kde4 without kdeprefix gave me all sorts of weirdness.If you are doing same mistake get rid of kde3 and all ~/.kde* dirs and rebuild kde4 from scratch

Yes, I am not using the kdeprefix flag!
Unfortunately I cannot completely unemerge KDE 3.5.10. I need Kdevelop and Quanta!! The only programs that I have kept from KDE 3.5.10 are Kdelibs-3.5.10, Kdevelop and Quanta.

It is a little difficult for me to delete .kde3.5 because it contains my emails, email-accounts, and many other things. But I could transfer them to another folder, and test your idea.

I think in a couple of hours KDE 4.2.2 will be released.

Kollin · Post by **Kollin** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 8:50 pm

MasterX wrote:
Kollin wrote:For me using kde3 and kde4 without kdeprefix gave me all sorts of weirdness.If you are doing same mistake get rid of kde3 and all ~/.kde* dirs and rebuild kde4 from scratch
Yes, I am not using the kdeprefix flag!
Unfortunately I cannot completely unemerge KDE 3.5.10. I need Kdevelop and Quanta!! The only programs that I have kept from KDE 3.5.10 are Kdelibs-3.5.10, Kdevelop and Quanta.

It is a little difficult for me to delete .kde3.5 because it contains my emails, email-accounts, and many other things. But I could transfer them to another folder, and test your idea.

I think in a couple of hours KDE 4.2.2 will be released.

i removed all kde3,4(+ all configs ), --depclean, revdep-rebuild, emerge kde4.
Wish you luck

hvengel · Post by **hvengel** » Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:44 pm

MasterX wrote:
Kollin wrote:For me using kde3 and kde4 without kdeprefix gave me all sorts of weirdness.If you are doing same mistake get rid of kde3 and all ~/.kde* dirs and rebuild kde4 from scratch
Yes, I am not using the kdeprefix flag!
Unfortunately I cannot completely unemerge KDE 3.5.10. I need Kdevelop and Quanta!! The only programs that I have kept from KDE 3.5.10 are Kdelibs-3.5.10, Kdevelop and Quanta.

It is a little difficult for me to delete .kde3.5 because it contains my emails, email-accounts, and many other things. But I could transfer them to another folder, and test your idea.

I think in a couple of hours KDE 4.2.2 will be released.

Until recently kde3 was logically always USE=kdeprefix even though this is a new use flag. So it is not a problem to USE=kdeprefix and have both kde3 and kde4 installed. All you have to do is to convert from USE=-kdeprefix to USE-kdeprefix is to unmerge everything that is KDE4 then change the flags to kdeprefix and re-emerge the KDE4 stuff. The Gentoo KDE4 installation page has info on how to unmerge a specific version of KDE. Issues related to kdeprefix not being set are not affected by having KDE3 installed. So there is not reason to remove KDE3 from your system.

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:00 am

hvengel wrote:
Until recently kde3 was logically always USE=kdeprefix even though this is a new use flag. So it is not a problem to USE=kdeprefix and have both kde3 and kde4 installed. All you have to do is to convert from USE=-kdeprefix to USE-kdeprefix is to unmerge everything that is KDE4 then change the flags to kdeprefix and re-emerge the KDE4 stuff. The Gentoo KDE4 installation page has info on how to unmerge a specific version of KDE. Issues related to kdeprefix not being set are not affected by having KDE3 installed. So there is not reason to remove KDE3 from your system.

The problem is that I have already unemerged KDE 3.5.10 (I have only kept the Kdelibs, Kdevelop and Quanta). Furthermore, I do not see any use in the kdeprefix flag. As it states in the KDE4 howto, this flag is necessary only if you want to have two versions of KDE4.
Today I will upgrade to KDE 4.2.2, and I will follow Kollin's idea: Delete all the .kde* folders and emerge KDE

wfahren · Post by **wfahren** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:16 pm

I'm having the same issues with systemsettings with the "Samba" and "Login Manager" having admin (su) access.

Looks like it is a feature not included in 4.2. Here is a KDE bug link . There is a patch to fix. Haven't tried it, if someone has would be interesting to see if it fixes it.

My work around for this is:

Code: Select all

kdesu -i preferences-system-login -c "/usr/bin/kcmshell4 kdm"

Works till they add the feature for me anyway.

avieth · Post by **avieth** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 11:49 pm

Forgive me for not reading all of the replies, but if you're still having trouple, check that your user is in the plugdev group.

BitJam · Post by **BitJam** » Mon Apr 06, 2009 5:35 am

MasterX wrote:The problem is that I have already unemerged KDE 3.5.10 (I have only kept the Kdelibs, Kdevelop and Quanta). Furthermore, I do not see any use in the kdeprefix flag. As it states in the KDE4 howto, this flag is necessary only if you want to have two versions of KDE4.
Today I will upgrade to KDE 4.2.2, and I will follow Kollin's idea: Delete all the .kde* folders and emerge KDE

It may state that in the KDE-4 Guide but that is not correct. IIRC, the kdeprefix flag does TWO things. One of the things is to keep different versions of KDE-4.x separated under /usr (as explained in the guide). But the other thing it does is let KDE-3.x keep the ~/.kde symlink so that a single user can use both KDE-3.x and KDE-4.x without config conflicts. If you don't use the kdeprefix flag then you shouldn't allow any user to use both KDE-3.x and KDE-4.x.

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Mon Apr 06, 2009 8:31 am

BitJam wrote: It may state that in the KDE-4 Guide but that is not correct. IIRC, the kdeprefix flag does TWO things. One of the things is to keep different versions of KDE-4.x separated under /usr (as explained in the guide). But the other thing it does is let KDE-3.x keep the ~/.kde symlink so that a single user can use both KDE-3.x and KDE-4.x without config conflicts. If you don't use the kdeprefix flag then you shouldn't allow any user to use both KDE-3.x and KDE-4.x.

I found this out in the hard way

Maybe someone could modify the KDE-4 Guide. I followed the instruction that I read on this guide, and pretty soon I realized that I could not use the KDE 3.5.10. So, I unemerged KDE-3.5.10, but I kept the three packages that I mentioned above.

Now, does this mean that it is OK that I have kept all these .kde* folders? Or, should I delete all these folders and reinstall kde 4.2.* (BTW, does anybody know when the KDE 4.2.2 ebuilds will appear in the portage?)

avieth wrote:Forgive me for not reading all of the replies, but if you're still having trouple, check that your user is in the plugdev group.

That is an interesting point, I will certainly check it out. I am hoping that this will fix the problem with the solid. What about the network interfaces?

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Mon Apr 06, 2009 4:46 pm

avieth wrote:Forgive me for not reading all of the replies, but if you're still having trouple, check that your user is in the plugdev group.

I am in the plugdev group! Something else is wrong with the solid

Cyberwizzard · Post by **Cyberwizzard** » Sun Apr 12, 2009 4:27 pm

Solid is fine - I have the same issue but I think I have figured out what is wrong. On kde.org there is a bug that says that baselayout-2 is using a different notation for the network interface listing than it did in version 1.

The result is that I even see the XML generated for the GUI on the console but the GUI won't show anything (probably because it fails to parse each entry).

See http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=166774 for more details.

Please see if you have baselayout-2 installed and if so, create an account and start complaining on the bug tracker

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Tue Apr 14, 2009 7:32 am

Cyberwizzard wrote:Solid is fine - I have the same issue but I think I have figured out what is wrong. On kde.org there is a bug that says that baselayout-2 is using a different notation for the network interface listing than it did in version 1.

The result is that I even see the XML generated for the GUI on the console but the GUI won't show anything (probably because it fails to parse each entry).

See http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=166774 for more details.

Please see if you have baselayout-2 installed and if so, create an account and start complaining on the bug tracker

Firstly let me say that all the above problems exist on KDE-4.2.2. I upgraded to KDE-4.2.2 yesterday (before I started the update I had removed all the .kde* folders), but still solid does not detect any device, and kdenetwork does not show any network interfaces. I have also emerged the kde version of the network manager (from the overlay), and it does not work.

Cyberwizzard: I am running baselyout-1 (I do not remember the exact version)

MasterX · Post by **MasterX** » Wed Apr 22, 2009 7:31 am

I managed to solve the problem with Solid by deleting the folder /usr/share/hal and then re-emerging hal.
The credits should go to this thread http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-56 ... s+fdi.html

The only thing that is left is to fix the problem with the network manager and with Kopete