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Holy Crap! What did I do to KDE?!


hugerobot
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I was messing with look and feel options in KDE- changing themes, icons, window decoration, etc...

 

Now, Mozilla, Gnucash, Xmms, and probably many other applications no longer work. I get nothing when I select them from the menu, and when I run them from the command line I get Segmentation error messages.

 

Open Office, Opera, jEdit, Konqueror all work. I can do all of the configuration stuff that I could do before. I have even tried removing and reinstalling Mozilla, and I get Segmentation errors when I run the installer!

 

I switched to Gnome, and Icewm to see if it was specific to KDE, but I got the same errors.

 

I have rebooted and still get the same errors.

 

I have logged in as a different user, and still get the same errors.

 

I have removed .kde, .DCOP_Server* from my home directory and still get the same errors.

 

I wish I could think of something else that I did that might have caused this problem, but all I can think of is installing/changing look and feel stuff.

 

If there is a moderately painless fix for this, I'd love to know. Otherwise, I might do that total re-install that I have been contemplating for a while now.

 

Rob

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Just out of curiousity, do you have your system set to clear the /tmp directory on reboot? I used to have similar problems in Mdk that I'd clear up by shutting down X and purging KDE files from /tmp before restarting KDE

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On a reboot, it's good. Why keep files that are meant only for the current session of a program.

 

It's a little more complicated when you're in the middle of a session. the files in /tmp are there for a reason, and you can seriously confuse running applications if you remove them, so you have to be careful. However, if you've shut down X, then obviously, KDE isn't using the /tmp files anymore (although the next time you start KDE, it will check them, and assume the screwed up settings are appropriate) - so you can remove them.... as long as you're sure what you're doing and KDE will repopulate /tmp.

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I'm sure it's good to do... but in this case it didn't help.

 

Sorry. I think I have found my reason to re-install. I am working with the install I did back when I knew NOTHING about Linux. I have been struggling with improving it ever since. I've done pretty well, but there are still some things that I always wish I'd fixed.

 

Today, I know only slightly more than nothing... so I should be able to do a slightly better job.

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Guest GorGor

Hugerobot

 

1) Try setting some /tmp/FILENAME permissions to root instead of your login name b4 doing a clean install.

 

2) If you have to do a clean install, try waiting for 9.1 due soon.

 

3) If you decide to do a clean install, when you do, you know you haven't made too many downloads so I recommend NOT going to the updates at this stage, and using expert mode, selecting reiserfs which I find faster, for those should be upgrading hardware heh heh. IF I AM wrong (often) you have not lost much time.

 

4) B4 any install, download the www.partimage.org stuff and learn how to use it. It will get you out of jail free heh heh. Its an imaging system. For those who like me have come from windoze, its a bit like Nortons ghost but can only image a partition or mbr.

 

5) I have no cd burner, so I have a partition set up only to store my images. For a gig of data the image file will be about 340 Mb

 

hope that helps

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Guest smoketoomuch

hmmm.... you must have done something more than merely playing with GUI options in KDE Control Center... I presume u used your user account to make the changes. When you tried those apps in IceWM, GNOME, etc., did you use the same user account? Have you tried those applications as root?

 

Anyway, aside from /home/user/.kde, there is .kderc and gtkrc. in your home directory that store desktop settings.

 

If you already made up your mind to do a complete reinstall, that's good - I did that all the time when I began using linux :D - but don't forget that this is an excellent opportunity to play around the system. Save your important data to CD or another partition, and try out a few things. Delete .kde in your home. Delete .kderc (beware: all your personalized settings will be gone). This would force mandrake to recreate its default look and feel. See if those applications are still crashing. Tell us more about the changes you might have made. Learn. :wink: Ciao.

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Delete .kde in your home. Delete .kderc (beware: all your personalized settings will be gone).

 

Thats ok, but I'd just rename them, that way I could transfer any important stuff such as bookmarks.

 

mv .kde .kdeold

mv .kderc .kdercold

 

If you need something in there, you still have the old directroy to search through. If you delete them they are history, your choice. :)

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