config lost

My PC has FreeBSD 12.0 installed.

It booted straight into KDE and I logged in from there.
Recently I was installing a new WiFi dongle which went OK
I think I was doing something with the DHCP config (adding SYNCDHCP or suchlike) when suddenly the PC shut down.

When it rebooted I had lost the Wifi config, defaulted back to a US keyboard and it no longer booted into KDE.

I ignored the keyboard for now
The WiFi will no longer connect despite reentering the config but I will leave that for now

When I enter X it just loads a black screen and the only way out is to remove the power and reboot.
startx brings up a blank desktop.

2 questions:

How can a config be obliterated like that?

Help! How do I get my KDE desktop back? I don't even know where to start looking.
 
I think I was doing something with the DHCP config (adding SYNCDHCP or suchlike) when suddenly the PC shut down.
Sounds like a hardware problem. Are your disks (or disk) OK?

My PC has FreeBSD 11.1 installed.

Freebsd 11.1 was EOLed on 9/30/18.
 
Upgrade to 12.2, 12.1 will be EoL at the end of January 2021. There's no need to upgrade to 12.1 first, you can go directly to 12.2.
 
This looks like your /etc/rc.conf is broken. You were probably changing your network configuration there and it's the same file where the system keyboard layout, as well as a list of automatically started services (with some needed for KDE to run), are stored.
 
This looks like your /etc/rc.conf is broken. You were probably changing your network configuration there and it's the same file where the system keyboard layout, as well as a list of automatically started services (with some needed for KDE to run), are stored.
Yes it did disappeared.
 
Yes it did disappeared.
At present my rc.conf only contains;
Code:
wlans0_rtwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
I cannot connect to the internet so cannot download anything, although before I lost rc.conf I could connect.

I found an rc.conf file at


I'm guessing I cannot do any damage if I copy across what seems to apply, let it run, watch for error messages or strange behavior and build a new file from that

Thanks

Steve
 
I found an rc.conf file at
Ignore that. It's a copy of /etc/defaults/rc.conf, it's on your system too. Do NOT edit that file. There's usually not a lot in an /etc/rc.conf, this is about as basic as needed:
Code:
hostname="myhost.mydomain"

wlans0_rtwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"

sshd_enable="YES"

For KDE and a few others you might need to add these too:
Code:
dbus_enable="YES"
hald_enable="YES"
sddm_enable="YES"

I suggest leaving sddm out for now. Make sure your system boots properly and you can start X using startx first.
 
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