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Could not start kdeinit

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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Lavene
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Could not start kdeinit

#1 Post by Lavene »

When starting KDE3.5 I get an error message saying "Could not start kdeinit. Check your installation." After clicking 'OK' it seem to start normally, and I can't see any problems when it has started. It's annoying though since it wait for me hitting the OK button.

Anyone know what this mean and how to fix it?

Thanks
Tina :)

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#2 Post by bluesdog »

Can you login in text mode, use the command kdeinit to try and start it manually?

Make note of any error messages and post back.

I think this may be a problem with an incompatible qt library, and you should be able to up or downgrade some package accordingly.

Edit: I now recall having a similar problem on my genieOS/debian pure installation following a fairly massive upgrade >>
I got the annoying kdeinit error when trying to edit text documents, and somehow discovered this was related to one of KDE's internal services.
The solution was to open up kcontrol -> KDE Components -> Service Manager. I unchecked and stopped some of the services.
I believe it is the KDE Write Daemon which is supposed to watch for messages from local users sent with write(1) or wall(1).

Lavene
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#3 Post by Lavene »

bluesdog wrote:Can you login in text mode, use the command kdeinit to try and start it manually?
I got the error "kdeinit: Aborting. $DISPLAY is not set"

I was wrong about that it didn't cause any problems by the way. It screws up my keyboard so I have to set it in kcontrol after every startup.

Update:
This is from my .xsession-errors
startkde: Starting up...
kdeinit: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libXft.so.2: undefined symbol: FT_GlyphSlot_Embolden
startkde: Could not start kdeinit. Check your installation.
Warning: connect() failed: : No such file or directory
kbuildsycoca running...
I'm at a complete loss here... help! :?

Tina

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#4 Post by bluesdog »

Check what version of libXft2 is installed.
I see two versions, one from stable and one from unstable.

Just a guess, but if you installed kde from backports repos, you probably should use the libXft2 from stable.

In any case, try the 'other' version

Lavene
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#5 Post by Lavene »

bluesdog wrote:Check what version of libXft2 is installed.
I see two versions, one from stable and one from unstable.

Just a guess, but if you installed kde from backports repos, you probably should use the libXft2 from stable.

In any case, try the 'other' version
I did actually try that with out any results. Then I reinstalled Xorg, then KDE... and then I mangled everything beyond recognition. So, in sheer frustration, I wiped my HD and reinstalled a clean Etch. Gnome worked nicely so I installed KDE (Just apt-get kde) and lo and behold! The error was back!!

So something is broken in testing! So I guess it will be fixed in due time. And although I don't like Gnome I'll stick with it untill the fix is in place. But just to be safe I have saved some space for Sarge, so that will be my project for tomorrow.

Tina

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#6 Post by polemicz »

After doing an upgrade of Etch I also got the kdeinit error.

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#7 Post by bluesdog »

Some relevant, (perhaps), discussion here --
http://lists.debian.org/debian-x/2006/02/msg00001.html
here --
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=325526
and here --
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=316031

Edit: but wait, there's more! :wink:
The message means either a library file is missing, or the wrong 'flavor', or kde can't find it.

try

Code: Select all

$ whereis libXft.so.2
to see if it exists at /usr/lib/libXft.so.2

also there could be a library path problem, so try

Code: Select all

# ldconfig
I found a couple of posts on this mentioning installing Gnome somehow fixed the kdeinit/library error. Speculation is that the some missing library is pulled in with the gnome install -- weird!

Another suggestion regarding removal of possibly corrupt temporary files:
KDE uses several temporary files during it's operation. These are usually to be found in the following locations:

~/.DCOPserver-* (there are usually two of these, one is a symlink to the other)

~/.kde/socket-hostname

~/.kde/tmp-hostname which is normally a symlink to the next file:

/tmp/tmp-kde-USER

~/.kde/socket-hostname which is also normally a symlink to:

/tmp/ksocket-USER

If the symlinks get broken, usually because a cron or shutdown script is emptying out the /tmp directory, then strange things will happen. These files, and the symlinks, will all be created automatically at the start of KDE so you can safely remove them while KDE is not running.

If you are getting only a grey screen when you start KDE, or if you get an error message telling you to Check your installation, then shut down X and delete all the files listed above, then try to restart X.

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#8 Post by dnusinow »

That's a bug in freetype. You can resolve the problem for now by installing the xft from stable. The new freetype has been pushed in to testing too, so it should also resolve the issue, once it reaches your machine.
David Nusinow

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#9 Post by Lavene »

Dist-upgrade fixed it!!

Tina :)

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