# KDM refuses to start kde [Resolved]

## sjorna

Hello.

I used to use Gnome and GDM, but have found that they do not really suit my purposes. So I decided to move to KDE, and was happily using it for a while. Then, for completeness, I emerged KDM and unmerged GDM, and have come across a problem.

When I boot my computer, I am fronted with the KDM login screen. I log in, the computer thinks for a second (checking pass), then the screen disappears for a second or two (as though changing virtual console), and I'm dumped back at the kdm login screen again...

I have checked both /etc/conf.d/xdm and /etc/rc.conf, and both those files have the appropriate settings. Also, I have no .xinitrc file in my home dir.  There are only two error messages I get when booting, and only one of these really apply:

```

udevd[1023]: main: the kernel does not support inotify, udevd can't monitor configuration file changes

...

...

* Starting Hardware Abstraction Layer daemon ...

/usr/sbin/hald: error while loading shared libraries: libdbus-glib-1.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

```

I can't figure out why kdm would refuse to load kde, when gdm seemed to have no problem; and I am kind of reluctant to try re-emerging gdm, as that would render my computer completely unusable for several hours...

Anyone have any suggestions?

Cheers,

sjornaLast edited by sjorna on Tue Jan 30, 2007 1:43 am; edited 2 times in total

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## sonicbhoc

looks like your dbus is screwed. check the version of dbus and dbus-glib you've got installed. Also, run revdep-rebuild.

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## sjorna

I checked installed packages and ran revdep-rebuild, and here is the results:

dbus: 1.0.2

dbus-glib: not installed

http://users.tpg.com.au/sjorna/revdep_output.log

I'm pretty sure most of the errors in there are from unmerging gnome and other packages requiring gtk still installed...

I'm going to try emerging dbus-glib, another revdep-rebuild, and try again...  Will get back soon...

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## sjorna

Well, most whenever I try to run revdep-rebuild, it keeps failing because one of the things it's trying to compile requires GTK+-2, which is not on my system.  AFAIK GTK is gnome-based libraries, yet I cannot find a single ebuild to install it...

I'm getting to the point where I'm actually considering formatting and reinstalling everything (but with KDE), so that I don't have to worry about missing libs, or libs that aren't required (or apps that aren't required, such as gconf which is what revdep is trying to emerge)...

Don't suppose anyone has any ideas about how to save me from hours of pain and patience...? Especially things like "press this button and everything will work"... No, didn't think so... rats...

sjorna

[edit]Can't just format coz I have a heap of emails that I need to keep and can't get them off the system...  :Confused:  [/edit]

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## drescherjm

 *Quote:*   

> AFAIK GTK is gnome-based libraries, yet I cannot find a single ebuild to install it... 

 

```
emerge -av x11-libs/gtk+
```

 *Quote:*   

> Don't suppose anyone has any ideas about how to save me from hours of pain and patience...?

 

The first thing is with gentoo after installing once, NEVER ever reinstall unless absolutely necessary. Its better to learn how to fix the problem than to reinstall only to eventually run into the same problem again...

As for the problem with dbus: 

```
emerge -av dbus
```

If you are running on amd64 you may have to do the following as well: 

```
emerge -av app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-baselibs

```

If this does not fix the dbus problem you may want to check out this thread:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-524259.html

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## drescherjm

 *Quote:*   

> When I boot my computer, I am fronted with the KDM login screen. I log in, the computer thinks for a second (checking pass), then the screen disappears for a second or two (as though changing virtual console), and I'm dumped back at the kdm login screen again... 

 

This sounds like your home directory is not accessible or has bad permissions. I get this at work when a nfs problem causes home not to mount. Is this possible?

If that is not the case is there any errors in /var/log/kdm.log

Also can you post the output of:

```
emerge --info
```

As that can be a big help...

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## sjorna

Firstly, don't worry - I'm going to stick this one out: like I said before, I have a heap of emails I need on there I can't get off easily. The only reason I mentioned it was because where I last worked, a broad-brush solution was essentially the only solution to keep down-time to a minimum...

DBus is already installed and up to date, so I'll only recompile that if it does prove a problem later. I did install GTK+ though - I must of missed it whenever I searched the portage tree...  Once it emerged, I got the message "remerge packages using it with the code "emerge -va1 $(qfile -qC /usr/lib/gtk-2.0/2.[^1]*)", so I'll run that, try another revdep-rebuild, and see what happens after that...

The output for emerge --info can be found at http://users.tpg.com.au/sjorna/emerge_info.txt

May take a while for me to get back, because from memory, there's a whole lot of big packages revdep's going to recompile for me (about 25 or more packages, including OpenOffice.org and other really big ones...).

Wish me luck!

-sjorna

[edit]

Forgot to say: I really doubt it would be permissions - I run a simple three partition system: boot, root and swap - besides which, gdm had no problem loading kde. This all started because I got rid of gdm before I tested kdm... The trouble of perfection...

[/edit]

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## drescherjm

Thanks for posting your emerge --info. It looks good and saved me from having to ask a few other config questions...

Did you see anything in the /var/log/kdm.log ?

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## sjorna

 *drescherjm wrote:*   

> Did you see anything in the /var/log/kdm.log ?

 

I couldn't see anything obvious, nor any warning messages...  But here it is:

http://users.tpg.com.au/sjorna/kdm.log

When I ran revdep-rebuild, it looked like it was basically going to install Gnome, so I cancelled that, and manually emerged the packages that seemed to be important: sys-apps/hal-0.5.7.1-r3 and dev-libs/dbus-qt3-old-0.70.

However, one of the packages was kde-base/kdebase-3.5.5-r1, and it failed to emerge...

For reference, the full output of revdep-rebuild --package-names --pretend is here:

http://users.tpg.com.au/sjorna/revdep_rebuild_full.txt

As an aside, can anyone hint how to fully get rid of all the gnome-related apps? Anyway, I'm going to try to get kdebase to emerge properly...

Cheers for the help so far!

sjorna

[edit]

To make it clearer, I moved the old kdm.log and ran it once, so the log file is only one instance/try for starting it... If you want the full log, let me know.

[/edit]

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## sjorna

 *drescherjm wrote:*   

> This sounds like your home directory is not accessible or has bad permissions. I get this at work when a nfs problem causes home not to mount. Is this possible?

 

As it turns out, it looks like this was the problem, but not with the same causes you had.  I'm still migrating from Windows, so my primary HDD, 200GB, is loaded with Windows, and my secondary, 40GB, is Gentoo.  However, for ease of access, I copied all my music from the 200G to the 40G - copied all 25GB of it!

Basically, I ran out of space, so startkde couldn't write to my home folder.

Don't you hate it when you spend days puzzling out a problem, and the solution is as easy as pie?

Cheers for the help!

sjorna

P.S. Still happy for someone to point me in the right direction to get rid of all this Gnome stuff on my system...   :Confused: 

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## drescherjm

Thats great to hear that it was simple and fixable. I did not think that too (ran out of space on /home) could be a reason but its very logical.

As for the gnome problem. I believe this may help:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-524259-highlight-dbus.html

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## sjorna

drescherjm,

I'll try this, and see what happens, but from what I can see from the --pretend output of revdep, there are a lot of 'new' ebuilds (marked 'N' as in initially installing to the system, as opposed to 'R' or 'U') relating to gnome:

```

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

[ebuild  N    ] dev-cpp/gnome-vfsmm-2.12.0  USE="-debug"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libbonobo-2.16.0  USE="-debug -doc"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libgnome-2.16.0  USE="esd -debug -doc -static"

[ebuild  N    ] dev-cpp/libgnomemm-2.12.2  USE="-debug"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libgnomecanvas-2.14.0  USE="X -debug -doc -static"

[ebuild  N    ] dev-cpp/libgnomecanvasmm-2.12.0  USE="-debug -doc"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/gnome-keyring-0.6.0  USE="-debug"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libbonoboui-2.16.0  USE="X -debug -doc"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libgnomeui-2.16.1  USE="jpeg -debug -doc"

[ebuild  N    ] dev-cpp/libgnomeuimm-2.12.0  USE="-debug"

[ebuild   R   ] app-cdr/cdrdao-1.2.1-r1

[ebuild  N    ] x11-themes/gnome-icon-theme-2.16.1  USE="-debug"

[ebuild   R   ] www-client/mozilla-firefox-2.0.0.1

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-extra/evolution-data-server-1.8.2  USE="ipv6 ldap ssl -debug -doc -kerberos -keyring -krb4 -nntp"

[ebuild  N    ] dev-libs/icu-3.6

[ebuild  N    ] dev-libs/boost-1.33.1-r1  USE="-bcp -bjam -debug -doc -icu -pyste -threads -threadsonly"

[ebuild     U ] app-office/openoffice-2.0.4 [2.0.3] USE="cups%* dbus%* gstreamer%* -branding% -sound% -webdav%" LINGUAS="-lv%"

[ebuild   R   ] mail-client/mozilla-thunderbird-1.5.0.9

[ebuild  N    ] net-print/libgnomecups-0.2.2  USE="-debug"

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libgnomeprint-2.12.1  USE="cups -debug -doc"

[ebuild     U ] x11-libs/gtksourceview-1.8.1 [1.6.1]

[ebuild  N    ] gnome-base/libgtop-2.14.6  USE="X gdbm -debug -static"

[ebuild   R   ] x11-libs/libgksu-2.0.0

Now you can remove -p (or --pretend) from arguments and re-run revdep-rebuild.

```

I'll try it and see what happens though - at least it will be done...

Cheers!    :Very Happy: 

sjorna

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