FreeBSD 10.1: KDE shows black screen w/ cursor

D

Drew Gallatin

I just did a fresh install of FreeBSD/amd64 10.1 on a Thinkpad T520 (using Intel graphics, after disabling optimus & choosing integrated graphics in the BIOS). I installed Xorg & KDE using binary pkgs. I added kern.vty=vt to /etc/loader.conf. I also added this to /etc/rc.conf:
Code: 
hald_enable="YES"
dbus_enable="YES"

My problem is that KDE won't start properly for me. I've verified that X works, as when I run startx, the Xserver starts and I wind up in a ~1990s TWM environment. So all seems to be fine on that front.

If I create a ~/.xinitrc that execs /usr/local/bin/startkde, I see the normal KDE splash screen. After the splash screen goes away, the screen goes black, and I see a fat white KDE cursor which I can move around. If I redirect stdout/stderr to a file, I see tons of messages about this and that crashing and not being able to communicate. I can post these errors later. There's probably a real nugget in there for people who are familiar with KDE.

I'm assuming that there is just some communication problem with one of the newfangled services that modern desktops need. E.g., maybe hald/dbus has crashed, or is misconfigured. Is there any easy way to diagnose this?

Thanks for any help & I apologize if this is a FAQ. I read the handbook, as well as a few of these threads, and I just can't seem to see what I'm missing.

Drew
 
Don't forget to add proc /proc procfs rw 0 0 to your /etc/fstab. One more thing, if you have GNOME2 installed (at least this happens with 10.1 DVD), you won't be able to do a full KDE install, some packages from GNOME2 conflicts with KDE, and you may not notice that your installation failed in the middle, in such case you will be able to log in, but nothing will work and you will see a black screen.
 
Yes, I have procfs(5) mounted (and Linux procfs on /compat/linux/proc for good measure). I do not have Gnome2 installed, and my KDE install completed with success.

I have attached a log from starting KDE. ( startx >& startx.txt). What concerns me is all the complaints from QDBusConnection. Perhaps this is normal..

Thanks for any help,
Drew
 

Attachments

  • startx.txt
    44.4 KB · Views: 357
fernandel said:
It is "execs" in you .xinitrc correct? It should be exec /usr/local/bin/startkde
Click to expand...

Yes. I am at work, so I can't cut & paste it, but that is what I have. I've also tried passing startkde --failsafe, as well as setting KWIN_COMPOSE=N, as I read about a similar problem in an Arch Linux forum where it was solved by disabling compositing.

Another interesting datapoint is that konqueror will not start from an Xterm in a TWM session. That always used to work the last time I ran a FreeBSD desktop (~2006).
 
Thanks. I certainly don't remember installing it, so unless it was installed as a dependency I don't have it. I will install it and try launching KDE in this way.

Thanks again!
Drew
 
There was no change when launching KDE that way. I've uploaded the output from pkg info. Am I missing some pkg or something? Do you know if the error messages in the startx log I posted above are normal?

It was easier to actually port KDE to FreeBSD/alpha 15 years ago :(

Thanks for any help..

Drew
 

Attachments

  • pkginfo.txt
    57.1 KB · Views: 345
Indeed, KDE is a quite large DE now days with a huge amount of dependencies. Are you using pkg(8) to install everything? Try running pkg check -d -a. That will check and attempt to fix any dependency issues. If it completes with no entries, install sysutils/bsdadminscripts and run pkg_libchk to check for any missing libraries. If there are any entries, please post the output of that command here. If there are a ton of entries please post the output to a website such as http://pastebin.com and add a link to your post instead.
 
OK, I finally figured it out. The problem was that kedinit4 was crashing when it was trying to read the fontcache, which I determined from looking at the kdeinit4 core dump & some googling. The determining factor was that fc-list would crash immediately. The fix was to run: sudo fc-cache -rv; fc-cache -rv. Once I did that, the desktop started.

Now on to the fun & joy I expected (eg, trying to make suspend/resume, thinkpad brightness/audio buttons work, etc).

Thanks again for all the help!

Drew
 
tryingagain said:
I by no means mean to troll, but how did you install the binary for KDE? pkginstall kde4 does nothing, it says that's not in the repository(?)

My brother Google isn't helping me either :oops:

Thank you for any reply :beer:
Click to expand...

It was quite a while ago, and my memory is fuzzy, but I think it was something like
pkg update && pkg upgrade && pkg install kde

Eg, I don't recall if it was "kde4", "kde-4", or just "kde" but it was probably one of those.

You might want to just start a new thread & ask for the pkg recipe to install kde, as your question is probably not really on topic for this thread, & may be missed by people who can actually help you.

Drew
 
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