# cannot log into KDE with new kernel

## xtx

upgraded from linux-3.1.6-gentoo to  linux-3.1.10-gentoo-r1 earlier this morning. eselected the new kernel, configured, and built it. 

when i try to log in to kde it stalls during the splash screen. it looks like it's going to load and then just stalls. 

my /var/log/kdm.log shows the following:

```
klauncher(2520) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server. 

kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!

kdmgreet(2514)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Not connected to D-Bus server" 

kdmgreet(2514)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): No time zone information obtained from ktimezoned 

Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.

klauncher(2194) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server. 

kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!

kdmgreet(2188)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Not connected to D-Bus server" 

```

i can boot into my old kernel and kde loads no problem. 

***************************

on a side note, since it is hardware related- my logitech dinovo edge keyboard stopped working today even before i upgraded kernels. it syncs just fine and works in bios but as soon as i get to kdm it is no longer synced and it will not sync. it's odd because if i reboot the computer a bunch of times it might work 1/10 times but that is obviously not acceptable. directly plugged in usb keyboard works fine. once again, this problem exists regardless of the kernel i use, i'm assuming something was broken in an update i may have done yesterday but i didn't reboot my computer until today

----------

## West201

I have the same issue right now, and I believe it could be something with the initramfs, the bootsplash may not be appended to it. I still haven't solved the problem, but have an idea what is wrong.

----------

## xtx

kernel 3.2.1 was released and it works fine now

----------

## xtx

wireless keyboard still does not work, anybody have any ideas?

----------

## xtx

ok i lied. for some reason i was able to boot into kde once, but after a reboot i am no longer able to. i successfully get to kdm, put in my information, press enter, see the splash screen loading... and then nothing.

as before my old kernel works fine (3.1.6) but the new kernel does not. 

why would it work once and fail other times? this just does not make sense to me. i really do not feel like reinstalling gentoo yet again.

----------

## xtx

looks like a reinstall is necessary (for the third time in the last month). 

even on my old kernel really weird things are happening.

when i login half the time desktop effects don't start and i have to enable them manually. 

amarok is all of a sudden freezing constantly.

desktop itself freezes occasionally forcing a reboot

keyboard doesn't work...

----------

## West201

Does it work when you boot in your old kernel ?

----------

## xtx

i'm able to get into kde on my old kernel but i'm still getting those other problems all of a sudden. weird things. half the time my desktop effects aren't automatically on. the other half of the time they are on but the panel at the bottom doesn't have transparency until i turn off the desktop effects and then turn them back on. amarok will randomly freeze and will not close even if i 'killall amarok'. i have to log out and log back in. the occasional desktop freeze occurs and on top of all of that my keyboard does not work.

but at least i'm able to get into kde on that kernel. the new kernel won't even let me do that. 

i'm backing up all of my stuff now to a hard drive in preparation for a reinstall- hopefully somebody can point me in the right direction before i have to do that though.

----------

## The Doctor

Don't re-install. That just means that you get to make the same mistakes again.

my ideas:

A)

Is Dbus added to the default run level? That seems to be the problem.

```
rc-update add dbus default
```

B) you missed something on the keyboard. I have no ideas about that, sorry. (well, except that it is probably the kernel or firmware that is not installed) Google Linux and the model name/number.

EDIT: when I first started using Gentoo, I did about 4 or 5 installs, none of which fixed the problem of me not emerging the firmware for my wireless card. The only time that I have ever needed to re-install is when my root partition became too corrupt to fix.

----------

## The Doctor

Since this problem presented itself when you upgraded, that also suggests that you might have some broken binaries. If you haven't already try:

```
revdep-rebuild
```

 if portage is saying something about config files that need updating, run dispatch-conf or etc-update and take care of that.

Since you just build a new kernel, you need to rebuild any kernal modules. You can use the module-rebuild tool in the sys-kernel/module-rebuild package like so.

```
module-rebuild populate

module-rebuild rebuild
```

If you can't think of anything else to do, run emerge -e system and emerge -e world to rebuild everything (And I mean EVERYTHING). Its far easier than re-installing and it has the general same effect. (new binaries and the option of new config files)

----------

## xtx

dbus was not previously added but now that it is there still is no change- the new kernel will not get past the kdm splash screen but the old kernel does.

I have done revdep-rebuild already- it produces the code 

```
 * Collecting system binaries and libraries

 * Generated new 1_files.rr

 * Collecting complete LD_LIBRARY_PATH

 * Generated new 2_ldpath.rr

 * Checking dynamic linking consistency

```

which is different, i don't remember it generating new files (it does this every time i run revdep-rebuild)

as for emerge -e world, i did that earlier and it failed around package 890 of 923. i'm not sure why either. i wasn't in a gui and i couldn't scroll up to see what happened. don't feel like waiting 4 more hours to figure it out either

----------

## The Doctor

emerge --resume --skipfirst is your friend.

just as something you might want to consider, I have fluxbox installed and it is set so that that is the wm I get with startx. Whenever kdm starts doing something funny, I have a GUI that is relatively break-resistant ready to go.

May I inquire as to the type of video drivers and type of hardware you are using? Also, what errors are you getting from kdm?

----------

## xtx

nvidia-drivers (sorry i'm in class now and don't know the version on my desktop)

intel i7 2600k

z68x-ud3h-b3 mobo

nvidia 240gt (unfortunately)

the only other thing possibly worth mentioning is that i'm using gcc 4.6 with the -march=i7-avx

kde 4.7.4 i'm pretty sure

and the last time i checked the log i was getting 

```
klauncher(2520) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server.

kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!

kdmgreet(2514)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Not connected to D-Bus server"

kdmgreet(2514)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): No time zone information obtained from ktimezoned

Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file.

klauncher(2194) kdemain: No DBUS session-bus found. Check if you have started the DBUS server.

kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!

kdmgreet(2188)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Not connected to D-Bus server"

```

 although i haven't checked the log since i added dbus to start at default

i can keep a convo going but i won't actually be back at my place for about 3 hours 

thanks for helping out

----------

## xtx

 *penguin swordmaster wrote:*   

> 
> 
> B) you missed something on the keyboard. I have no ideas about that, sorry. (well, except that it is probably the kernel or firmware that is not installed) Google Linux and the model name/number.
> 
> EDIT: when I first started using Gentoo, I did about 4 or 5 installs, none of which fixed the problem of me not emerging the firmware for my wireless card. The only time that I have ever needed to re-install is when my root partition became too corrupt to fix.

 

as for the keyboard, i doubt it's a kernel or firmware problem- it worked up until two days ago. i think it has something to do with an etc-update. 

a year or two ago when i was using arch linux i had this exact problem. it ended up being something pretty random in a file- an update had commented out a line or something.

----------

## xtx

the error messages are the same in /var/log/kdm.log despite dbus running at default run level.

nvidia-drivers 290.10

----------

## The Doctor

I like using dispatch-conf so I can see changes that would be merged in config files.

Past what I noted in previous posts and encouragement to keep trying, I don't other ideas. Best of luck, sorry I don't have a solution.

----------

## xtx

well i made slight progress in one area... i connected my keyboard to a separate bluetooth dongle i have. don't know why i didn't think of that sooner. still no clue why it won't connect to the dongle it is made for.

----------

## Goverp

xxt, I think there's an ongoing issue in the KDE startup, since about 4.6.  I keep getting the same symptoms as described above - after entering userid/password, the flash screen progresses until the last icon, then it just locks up.  It clears after one or two "/etc/init.d/xdm restart"s.  My suspicion is that it's caused by any application trying to open a pop-up window, such as korganizer showing an alert for an upcoming event.  As far as I can tell, it's got nothing to do with kernels.

Out of interest, why "reinstall Gentoo" if you think you need a new kernel? This isn't Windows!   Just "make clean && make && make modules_install && make install".  Not that I can see how that would help - recompiling the same software doesn't change anything.

As for revdep-rebuild, it always creates new files the first time it's run after significant changes to your system.  I've no idea what counts as significant, maybe it's emerge --sync, but whatever it is, the files created are a cache of it's analysis of library use, so if something changes that, it recreates the files, taking quite some time to do so.

----------

## xtx

is there any solution to this? i booted up into the new 3.2 kernel and tried what you said. i was able to get in on my 3rd attempt. for kicks i kept restarting xdm to see how often i could get in. i restarted it 15 more times and could not get back in at all anymore.

yet the 3.1.6 kernel boots in everytime. and the weird thing is i get the same error messages about dbus and kdmgreet in my /var/log/kdm.log no matter what kernel i boot into- so those error messages apparently have nothing to do with the problem of me not getting past the splash screen.

----------

## Goverp

I've not found a solution yet.  It probably will need someone to use gdb to properly diagnose the hang, which requires recompiling the relevant bits of KDE with symbols, and then rather more knowledge of using gdb than I have.  (Drat! I've just installed KDE 4.7.4 without symbols.  I'll wait for the next upgrade...)

----------

## xtx

in case anybody else cares about this problem, the problem is not fixed with kde 4.8. installed and tested today... still have to restart xdm multiple times before i'm able to see the kde plasma workspace.

----------

## Chiitoo

Hmmm, I think this wasn't mentioned yet, sorry if I missed it, but have you tried with a 'clean' KDE user directory?

Or rather a new, 'fresh' user, altogether and see what happens?

Looking at the errors, this may very well have no relation whatsoever, I can't really tell, but it's probably the first thing that came to my mind.

Personally I have not yet tried 4.8.0, newest I have been running is 4.7.4 and haven't had the start-screen lock up but maybe a couple of times, ever.  That was also likely due to something else I was experimenting with.  ^^;

----------

## xtx

is this issue being addressed at all? or are goverp and me in such a small minority that nobody knows of this issue?

it gets pretty annoying having to restart xdm 7 - 8 times (waiting about 30 seconds after login to see if it will work) every time i turn my computer on.

----------

## yngwin

Have you searched bugs.gentoo.org to see if this issue has been filed?

----------

## xtx

i really cannot let this thread die. this is one of the more frustrating bugs i've ever come across. i did not find a bug report filed but i'm not sure exactly how to search for it either.

if ANYBODY can throw some tips around i'd love it. 

if this keeps up i'm going to have to switch desktop environments which i would hate to have to do, i've always been a fan of kde

----------

## 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...

----------

## energyman76b

have a look at .xsession-errors.

----------

## 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.

----------

## 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

----------

## cavaaden

you have started the DBUS server.

kdeinit4: Communication error with launcher. Exiting!

kdmgreet(16364)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones: ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed: “Not connected to D-Bus server”

$eselect qtgraphicssystem list

Available Qt Graphics Systems:

 [1] native

 [2] opengl

 [3] raster *

$eselect qtgraphicssystem set 1

$/etc/init.d/xdm restart 

Enjoy  :Wink: 

----------

## dante.paz

Thanks cavaaden! setting qtgraphicssystem to native not only has solved the kdm login issue for me, now the login process seems to be much more faster than before   :Very Happy: 

----------

