[SOLVED] KDE plasma completely crashes

[Robert24]

Hello everyone,

Before I start explaining my issue, let me state clearly that I'm not sure to be in the right section of this forum. I'm using Kubuntu 16.04 since a couple of years. It looks like the forum dedicated to this version of kubuntu is closed and I don't know where to post my question, so since it seems to be related to KDE, I post it here. I apologize if it's not the right place. If the forum itself isn't fit for the question, please tell me so and I'll try to find a solution somewhere else

So, here is the setting: I'm using Kubuntu 16.04 since more than 2 years now, without much trouble (since the moment I tried to move a partition on my disc which ended up with problems for which people on this forum helped me greatly). Today, I manually backed up my Documents folder to an external hard drive, without problem. After that I copied a pdf from one folder to another, and a window appeared telling me about a problem (I think that the name "KDE plasma" appeared in it). I didn't pay too much attention to it (now I regret my foolishness) and clicked on the highlighted button (I guess it was something like "Close the application"). And then black out. The screen was just black. Not turned off but black. I couldn't do anything so I turned off my computer by pressing on the power button. When I turned it on again, the same screen as usual appeared offering me to choose between the options

Ubuntu
Advanced options for Ubuntu
Windows Boot Manager (on /dev/sda1)
System setup

And I selected Ubuntu (like usual) but after seeing a screen with "Kubuntu" written on it, I got again a black everlasting screen, instead of the usual login screen.

Luckily for me, all my documents are saved and I could reinstall Kubuntu (I guess I would take 18.04) but I would loose some music I didn't back up.
I tried to enter a shell by entering Ctrl + alt + T but it didn't work.

I would be very grateful if someone could help me getting back this music files or at least understand what happened in order to avoid it to happen again.

[claydoh]

As 16.04 reached End of Life status back in April, that section was closed.

Without knowing what the error message said before things crashed, we'll need to see what is going on.

To get to a terminal (TTY), hit ctrl-alt-f2, ctrl-alt-t is for when you have a running desktop.
There, you can try this command:
startx
And record the errors you see.



Now, it is unlikely that your files are lost or anything. At the very worst, you should be able to boot from a live Linux USB/DVD and copy the files to an external drive.

[GreyGeek]

To add to what Claydoh said, a black screen at login can be caused by the "~/.Xauthority" file ownership changing from you to root.
You can boot into the repair menu from the grub screen and as root use the chown command to change the ownership of /home/yourname/.Xauthority from root to yourname. IF it turns out that the .Xauthority file is still owned by you then your problem lies elsewhere.

[Robert24]

Hello to both of you!
First of all, thank you very much for your help!
@claydoh With your indications, I could start a terminal and I was happy to see that my files are still there. I will copy (manually) here the output of the startx command:

[CODE]
X.Org X Server 1.19.6
Release Date: 2017-12-20
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 4.4.0-138-generic #81~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Tue Nov 26 16:34:21 UTC 2019 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-72-generic root=UUID=(long number...) to quiet splash vt.handoff=7
Build date: 25 October 2018 (...)
xorg-server 2:1.19.6-1ubuntu4.1~16.04.2 (...)
Current version of pixman: 0.33.6
(...)
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting, (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) information, (WW) Warning, (EE) error, (NI) Not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file "/var/log/Xorg.1.log" Time: Fri Dec 6 22:14:44 2019
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(==) Using system config directory "/use/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomb) reports:
> Error: cannot close "/tmp/server-1.xkm" properly (not enough space?)
> Output file "/tmp/server-1.xkm" removed
Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server
The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkcomp) reports:
> Error cannot close "/tmp/server-1.xkm" properly (not enough space?)
> Output file "/tmp/server-1.xkm" removed
Errors from xkbcomb are not fatal to the X server
XKB: Failed to compile keymap
Keyboard initialization failed. This could be a missing or incorrect setup of xkeyboard-config.
(EE) fatal server error:
(EE) Failed to activate virtual core keyboard: 2(EE)
(EE) Please consult the The X.Org foundation support at http://wiki.x.org for help.
(EE) Please also check the log file at "/var/log/Xorg.1.log" for additional information.
(EE) server terminated with error (1). Closing log file.
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: connection refused
xinit: server error

[Robert24]

@greygeek Thank you for your suggestion greygeek. I looked at the ownership of .Xauthority (located in my ~ directory) but it seems to be my name and not root.
But thanks for the suggestion! I'm still very ignorant of the way Linux works...

[Snowhog]

"(not enough space?)"

That, to me, is telling. How much space do you have 'left' on your boot device?

[claydoh]

You possibly may have a full disk?
Run this to see
dh -h
And we can see if this is the case, and which part, if you have multiple partitions for your Kubuntu.
If you don't, you can run sudo apt clean and sudo apt autoremove to clear out the package cache and uninstall any leftover packages that are not needed. If your root is full, this might clear out enough space to allow the desktop to load.

You might also look at running an fsck from the recovery menu you can get to from the Grub menu, to make sure there wasn't any disk corruption due to the crash, or causing the crash.

[Robert24]

Hello everyone,

I'm writing to you from my desktop! After erasing a few things (trash, and useless folders) inside my linux session from the terminal, I tried to reboot the system, and now it seems to work fine.

I guess that yes, it seems that some partition of my disc was full but I don't really understand which one. Here is the output of
df -h (after erasing around 4-5Gb):

aritz@aritz-ThinkPad-T460p:~/Desktop$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 7.8G 0 7.8G 0% /dev
tmpfs 1.6G 9.5M 1.6G 1% /run
/dev/sda5 24G 17G 5.9G 75% /
tmpfs 7.8G 350M 7.5G 5% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 7.8G 0 7.8G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/loop0 343M 343M 0 100% /snap/pycharm-community/169
/dev/loop1 324M 324M 0 100% /snap/pycharm-community/167
/dev/loop2 90M 90M 0 100% /snap/core/8213
/dev/loop3 90M 90M 0 100% /snap/core/8039
/dev/sda6 159G 83G 69G 55% /home
tmpfs 1.6G 0 1.6G 0% /run/user/118
tmpfs 1.6G 24K 1.6G 1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sda3 267G 248G 20G 93% /media/aritz/Windows
/dev/sdb1 932G 696G 237G 75% /media/aritz/HD_backup

anything obvious?

I don't really know what to think. But that experience clearly made me realize that I need an automatic backup system...

Best and thank you all for your kindness. It's really appreciated.

[claydoh]

It looks like if a disk was full, you cleared it out.

This is your root, and it has nearly 6gb free:

/dev/sda5 24G 17G 5.9G 75% /

Your home dir also has plenty of space.

/dev/sda6 159G 83G 69G 55% /home

So, whatever it was, it is gone.
(the rest of the entries are safe to ignore, and the last two are your windows and external drives)

[Robert24]

Thank you very much for your help claydoh!

I was close to erase my partition and reinstall Kubuntu. You guys are great.

Have a nice weekend!