[Discuss] Re: Plasma has started crashing, suggestions? [SOLVED]

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2009-10-22 15:59-0700 Michael wrote:

> On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 16:48 -0700, Michael wrote:
>
>> Really don't know what I might have done to bork my install, but
>> Plasma has refused to work all afternoon. I have tried re-installing
>> various components of plasma and KDE4.2.4, with no luck. The debug info
>> is as follows, but I do not know what I am looking at well enough for it
>> to do me any good. I am running Mandriva 2009.1, 32bit, on a Lenovo T61p
>> dual core Centrino. The system itself seems fine, as I can use the
>> computer by calling the apps from Krunner.
>>
>>     Thanks in advance, Michael.
>>
>
>
>    Finally figured it out.
>
>    I deleted 'plasmarc' and 'plasma-appletsrc'
> from .kde4/share/config/ ... restarted Plasma and voila, running
> perfectly. Thanks Google!

That's a special case of a brute-force method that historically worked well
for KDE3 (and probably for KDE4 as well although I haven't tried it).  The
brute force method is to move .kde (.kde4 in your case) out of the way
before you fire up X.  The result is that KDE cannot find the old
configuration tree that you moved out of the way, and as a result you must
completely reconfigure KDE.  If you choose near-default configuration the
whole reconfiguration process should just work and only take a couple of
minutes. By comparing the .kde(4) old and new directory trees you can often
discover the configuration issue in the old tree that you moved out of the
way and quickly narrow down what you have to fix if you really want to go
back to your old configuration.  In my case I am normally happy with near
default configuration so I just go on my merry way with the new
configuration.

Note, its been years since I have tried this method with KDE3 because it is
so stable now.  But it was a lifesaver in the old days when KDE3 was so
shiny and new that it had bugs which would lead to misconfiguration of the
.kde tree.  Sound familiar for the KDE4 case?

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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