kde4 does not start successfully in FreeBSD 8.3

B

Bront_in_Hood

I've just installed fresh FreeBSD 8.3 x64. I have builded the last version of kde4 from ports. And it does not start!

I've added kdm4_enable option to /etc/rc.conf and I get kdm login form after system start. I enter my uername and password and wait while usual kde icons are exposed one by one. The icons of hard disk, tools, globe and big "K". After the last icon appear it should be kde desktop loaded. But, I see a quick flicker and nothing happens then. The splashscreen with kde icons stay at the screen forever.

I have xorg.conf from previous FreeBSD installation on this machine. It worked then. But I also tried to start present system without my xorg.conf too. With the same result. Then I switched off "kdm4_enable" option and ran startx. I got the X desktop with several xterm windows. I ran /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde in the xterm and got the default blue kde screenserver on the empty desktop. There was no panel! I ran "Alt+F2" and launched konsole. I saw shape of window in stripes and then konsole appeared. It's something wrong with Window manager! It is not the default kde4 window manager! It is like 'enlightenment' or 'fluxbox' or some other window manager I saw someday. I don't remember which one but I saw this style of windows when I experimented with other WMs. May be that is why kdm does not launch kde4 successfully? There is a problem with default wm?

May be somebody faced the same problem and knows what's wrong? Or somebody can give me instruction how to get some debug information and find out the error?
I've looked the /var/log/Xorg.0.log. But I did not find anything significant in this file.
 
If you tried running KDE from within TWM (which is what those terminals were after issuing startx) I can imagine it looks a bit weird ;)

If you want to try starting KDE manually from a TTY either;

$ startx /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde
or
$ echo "exec /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde" >> ~/.xinitrc
$ xinit
 
rusty said:
$ startx /usr/local/kde4/bin/startkde
Click to expand...

Thank you! Your answer caused me to experiment with my installation further. And I found that this problem appears only for my Russian user! After FreeBSD installation I changed the charset to UTF-8 in /etc/login.conf for Russian users and then I executed commands:
[cmd=]cap_mkdb /etc/login.conf[/cmd]
[cmd=]pw usermod -n $username -L russian[/cmd]

I added a new user but did not change its usermod to Russian. And logged in to KDE with this new user. The KDE desktop successfully launched!
I ran [cmd=]pw usermod -n $username -L russian[/cmd] for the new user and tried to log in again. KDE desktop launched and locked up!

So. My deduction is that KDE can not work well for users with a UTF-8 charset for some reason. Any ideas why?
 
No I don't know why it's doing that.
What if you were to use the user's .login_conf to set their lang/charset?

Edit:
Thinking about it, the above isn't really going to help. I found a similar issue here perhaps there's more useful advice in there.
 
Actualy I'm still interested in description about this strange behaviour. Is it normal that KDE doesn't launch for users with certain locale environment variables? Maybe it is not unreasonable to ask in http://forum.kde.org?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top