How do I save a KDE configuration

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Deleted member 9563

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I just had a complete system crash on a desktop running KDE 4.10.5 on FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE. The Firefox 25 history disappeared as well. I believe this has something to do with an Xorg and KDE monitor and power management conflict, but I will look into that as time goes by. Right now I would like to be able to bring the KDE configuration back if this happens again (on this, or another system) because the system booted up with default desktop settings. What can I back up, and where do I find it?
 
I'm not entirely sure it's enough but pretty much all your KDE settings are in ~/.kde. You may need to back up ~/.local/ too. For Firefox you should be able to back up bookmarks.html in ~/.mozilla/firefox/<randomstring>.default/. I'd test it by creating a new, clean, user and just copying those directories to the new user's home directory. Then see if that's all the settings by logging in as that new user.
 
Thanks for the advice @SirDice, that sounds good. I have to go sleep now, but I'll try your suggestion tomorrow and report back.
 
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I just set up another account and did some minimal configuration. Then I backed up the ~/.kde and ~/.local directories and replaced them with copies of the corresponding directories from another account. The result was like a fresh install. No configuration information was carried over. Upon renaming the backed up directories and logging back in, it was still like a fresh install. It would appear that all I did was trigger some kind of rewrite/restore of the files that I'm really looking for, but can't find.

PS: I know there aren't a lot of KDE users here, so I would appreciate any suggestions for another place to post this question. I signed up for the kde.org forum but their e-mail server is down so that will have to wait. Would it be appropriate to sign up to the kde-freebsd list even though I'm not a developer?
 
I have it working now. I did several stupid things, one of which I won't admit. :)

So that someone finding this thread can do it too, here is what I did:
  • Make a directory like /home/user/.kde4-bak.
  • Go to /home/user/.kde4 and type cp -R * /home/user/.kde4-bak
.
To restore:
  • Go to /home/user/.kde4-bak and type cp -R /home/user/.kde4. It is important to be logged out of KDE, but logged in as a regular user - not root.

Although the backup and restore work correctly, I do get a few error messages in the terminal upon backup. I don't know if they're important, or make any difference. Perhaps someone here can shed some light on that.
Code: 
guest@SCO:~/.kde4-green % cp -R * /home/guest/.kde4
cp: cannot overwrite directory /home/guest/.kde4/tmp-SCO.lan.cgs with non-direct
ory tmp-SCO.lan.cgs
cp: cannot overwrite directory /home/guest/.kde4/socket-SCO.lan.cgs with non-dir
ectory socket-SCO.lan.cgs
cp: cannot overwrite directory /home/guest/.kde4/cache-SCO.lan.cgs with non-dire
ctory cache-SCO.lan.cgs
guest@SCO:~/.kde4-green %
 
Too much KDE-related problem for me lately................... :x

I experienced similar loss of KDE configuration a few days back. Lucky me, I've saved a backup copy of the kde config folder a.k.a. ~/.kde4. Firing up KDE 4.10 with that backup config folder restored all my kde-related setting , desktop widgets, wallpaper etc.

Everything worked fine until I experienced 2 hard crash leading to a reboot of the computer. After examining the /var/log/messages and some googling, I thought the culprit is probably the power devil(KDE power management daemon, what a name §e ). I disabled the power management daemon in the KDE system settings. Logging out and then logging in again, all my wallpaper, widgets and kde-related settings were lost again.

Once again after replacing the ~/.kde4 folder with my previous backup, all the settings, walllpaper, widgets returned. But whenever I tried to disable the power devil daemon in the system setting and then log out, all the configurations were lost.

I've tried to manually disable the daemon by altering the ~/.kde4/share/config/kdedrc file to look like this

Code: 
....
[Module-powerdevil]
autoload=false
.....

After I saved the file and restart kde 4, all the configurations were lost again. :(
So..I was left with no choice but allowing the Power Devil to keep haunting me/my com.
If there were another hard crash , I think I must say goodbye to KDE x(
 
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