[Solved] KDE no longer starts

[davinci314]

I have been using 8.10 for a little while now. Recently, kde stopped loading. Whenever i try to boot up in kubuntu, it fails to start kde and instead goes into a terminal-like mode with no gui. How do i get my gui back?

[jk4y]

Re: KDE no longer starts

I had this problem, but I just opted for the reformat. You can try "sudo /etc/init.d/kdm start" but I don't think that will work. You will probably have more luck getting into recovery mode and try to do some sort of recovery or something (no idea what exactly)

[The Liquidator]

Re: KDE no longer starts

From the terminal type startx. What error message do you get?

[ejt]

Re: KDE no longer starts

I just went through this with 8.04 and kde 3.5. Don't know if it will work for you but here goes.
At the login window I recovered the xserver then instead of booting into "default" I booted into KDE.

[Snowhog]

Re: KDE no longer starts

Assuming you didn't do anything that would have borked KDE, you probably have a space problem. From the "terminal like mode" (the CLI [Command Line Interface]) type:

df -hTxtmpfs

This will generate output like this (my output):

Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 ext3 8.0G 3.0G 4.7G 39% /
/dev/sda5 ext3 20G 406M 19G 3% /home
/dev/sda2 ext3 7.9G 3.2G 4.3G 43% /media/sda2
/dev/sda6 ext3 20G 7.4G 12G 40% /media/sda6
/dev/sda3 ext3 7.9G 3.1G 4.4G 42% /media/sda3
/dev/sda7 ext3 20G 2.1G 17G 11% /media/sda7
/dev/sdc1 ext3 28G 461M 26G 2% /media/USB_30G
/dev/sde1 vfat 56G 6.7G 50G 12% /media/USB_60G
/dev/sdb1 vfat 4.7G 4.0K 4.7G 1% /media/PCMCIA_5G

Pay attention to the entry showing your root partition ( / ). If the reported Use% percentage is at/near 100%, then you haven't enough space left to run your system. We can deal with that.

Let us know what is reported on your system.

[davinci314]

Re: KDE no longer starts

Liquidator,
I tried startx and got this error message:
Fatal server error:
no screens found
giving up
xnit: Connection refused (errno 111): unable to connect to X sever
xnit: No such process (errno 3): Sever error

Snowhog,
I tried df -hTxtmpfs and got this output:
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 ext3 25G 11G 13G 45% /
45% seems decent, so I doubt I have a space issue.

[toad]

Re: KDE no longer starts

what about your home directory (if that is in a different partition that is...)

[Snowhog]

Re: KDE no longer starts

His entire installation is on the single /dev/sda3 partition - no separate partition for /home - that's what the output of df -hTxtmpfs is reporting.

Do you even get to the KDM login screen, or are you dumped directly to the CLI?

[davinci314]

Re: KDE no longer starts

Well, I had been being dropped directly to the CLI, but last night I was messing with it and found that when I boot in recovery mode, I get a list of options, one of which was to fix the xserver. I tried it and now it will take me to the KDM login screen, but will then fail to load properly. It will leave me with either a desktop that is pitch black, or one in which everything looks fine, but only the cursor works.

[Snowhog]

Re: KDE no longer starts

What video card are you using? nVidia?

[davinci314]

Re: KDE no longer starts

Mobility Radeon X1400

[Snowhog]

Re: KDE no longer starts

An ATI card. You might want to review the HOWTO: Install and use the Envy script installer for video drivers

[davinci314]

Re: KDE no longer starts

I installed envy ng and everything seems to be working smoothly now. Thank you.

[Snowhog]

Re: [Solved] KDE no longer starts

You're welcome.