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Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login screen

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athmoss
Posts: 9
Joined: 2018-06-08 15:41

Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login screen

#1 Post by athmoss »

Hello dear Debian Community!

I am trying to install a minimal KDE desktop on a clean, terminal-only netinstall Debian Sid installation. Here are the steps I'm performing:
  • install a basic system with no graphical interface, only "standard system utilities" selected
  • after installation I do a "sudo apt update" followed by a "sudo apt upgrade" then a reboot to make sure anything new gets loaded
  • I edit the sources file, replacing "buster" with "sid" and commenting the security repositories out
  • update/upgrade/reboot as above
  • I install the following: "sudo apt install kde-plasma-desktop sddm xorg plasma-nm upower"
  • check, if graphical target is default with "sudo systemctl get-default", the output is "graphical.target"
  • reboot the system
Here's where I'd expect the system to boot with a graphical desktop login screen, however I get a console login instead as if no GUI was installed. After logging in and typing startx, I get the KDE desktop. If I do a "sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target" the result is the same - boot to text, can start KDE manually. My question is, what am I doing wrong/incorrectly? Is there any package I missed to install? Thank you!

Regards,
athmoss

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Hallvor
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Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#2 Post by Hallvor »

Try

Code: Select all

# dpkg-reconfigure sddm
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

athmoss
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Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#3 Post by athmoss »

Thanks for the reply. There's no output from that command, so I'm not sure if it did anything. However I'm still booting into CLI login.

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Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#4 Post by Hallvor »

athmoss wrote:Thanks for the reply. There's no output from that command, so I'm not sure if it did anything. However I'm still booting into CLI login.
What is the output of:

Code: Select all

$ systemctl status sddm.service
[HowTo] Install and configure Debian bookworm
Debian 12 | KDE Plasma | ThinkPad T440s | 4 × Intel® Core™ i7-4600U CPU @ 2.10GHz | 12 GiB RAM | Mesa Intel® HD Graphics 4400 | 1 TB SSD

Wheelerof4te
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Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#5 Post by Wheelerof4te »

Code: Select all

sudo apt install -f
sudo apt full-upgrade
apt show sddm
This will try to solve possible dependency problems and the last command will show if you have sddm installed.
Be aware that there was a xorg dependency hell a while ago in Sid.

athmoss
Posts: 9
Joined: 2018-06-08 15:41

Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#6 Post by athmoss »

All the below is right after I log in on the text console, without startx. Not sure what "a while ago" is :) This is a new install from yesterday (I thought it is better to reinstall the system and start clean before asking questions).

Code: Select all

systemctl status sddm.service
● sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; indirect; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2018-06-09 09:27:59 CEST; 4min 44s ago
     Docs: man:sddm(1)
           man:sddm.conf(5)
  Process: 417 ExecStartPre=/bin/sh -c [ "$(cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager 2>/dev/null)" = "/usr/bin/sddm" ] (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
 Main PID: 426 (sddm)
    Tasks: 2 (limit: 2365)
   Memory: 11.1M
   CGroup: /system.slice/sddm.service
           └─426 /usr/bin/sddm

Code: Select all

sudo apt install -f
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Code: Select all

sudo apt full-upgrade
Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
Calculating upgrade...
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Code: Select all

apt show sddm
Package: sddm
Version: 0.17.0-1
Priority: optional
Section: kde
Maintainer: Debian/Kubuntu Qt/KDE Maintainers <debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org>
Installed-Size: 1,867 kB
Provides: x-display-manager
Depends: adduser, qml-module-qtquick2, x11-common, xserver-xorg | xserver, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, libc6 (>= 2.14), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libqt5core5a (>= 5.9.0~beta), libqt5dbus5 (>= 5.6.0~), libqt5gui5 (>= 5.6.0~beta), libqt5network5 (>= 5.6.0~), libqt5qml5 (>= 5.0.2), libqt5quick5 (>= 5.0.2), libstdc++6 (>= 5.2), libsystemd0, libxcb-xkb1, libxcb1
Recommends: libpam-systemd, sddm-theme-debian-maui | sddm-theme
Suggests: libpam-kwallet5, qtvirtualkeyboard-plugin
Homepage: https://github.com/sddm/sddm
Tag: implemented-in::c++, interface::graphical, interface::x11,
 role::program, scope::application, uitoolkit::qt, use::login,
 x11::application, x11::display-manager
Download-Size: 627 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: yes
APT-Sources: http://ftp.cz.debian.org/debian sid/main amd64 Packages
Description: modern display manager for X11
 SDDM is a modern display manager for X11 aiming to be fast, simple
 and beautiful. It uses modern technologies like QtQuick to create
 smooth, animated user interfaces.

Wheelerof4te
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Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#7 Post by Wheelerof4te »

There can be two reasons.
1. You haven't configured your hardware correctly, meaning your graphics card. Give the details of your system.
2. There is a bug in the SDDM, or xorg, or some other package that prevents the display manager from showing up.

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Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#8 Post by arochester »

I have found SDDM a bit buggy, although I have one instance of it running on a laptop.

Does it have to be SDDM? In a comparison of Display Managers, it came 5th. https://www.slant.co/topics/2053/~linux-display-manager .Slim is lightweight

Another alternative is to do without a Desktop Manager at all. If you don't want to type startx every time Head_on_a_Stick proposed an solution that works:

Add this line to the end of ~/.profile to automatically start your desktop after a TTY1 login:

Code: Select all

[ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ] && exec startx
- http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... in#p667645


athmoss
Posts: 9
Joined: 2018-06-08 15:41

Re: Installing minimal KDE desktop - no graphical login scre

#10 Post by athmoss »

Well, there's my answer then. Thank you!
Give the details of your system.
First I was trying to install this on a ThinkPad x260 (i7-6600u with an integrated Intel HD graphics) but since I wasn't successful and I needed a working system, I ended up installing a minimal MATE with LightDM (and pulling in half of KDE anyway after installing some of the KDE apps I like). After that, or since then, I was trying to install KDE in a Virtualbox VM.
Does it have to be SDDM?
No, not really, I just liked the looks of it :) and to my knowledge it's the default DM for KDE in Debian. After replacing SDDM with Slim, I get a graphical login screen now. Thanks for the tip!

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