KDE 3.1.1: Title Bars Vanished
 

Hello, everyone.

I am running SuSE Linux Professional 8.2 with KDE 3.1.1. Yesterday, when I was looking at the style options under Preferences -> Appearances and Themes -> Window Decorations, 'kcontrol' crashed with a type 11 error and suddently I had no title bars. I have rebooted and even tried to start KDE in safe mode.

This problem affects my user account only. The root account does not have this problem.

This problem happened about two weeks ago, and I ended up doing a clean reinstallation, which I would like to avoid.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you very much, in advance!

Cordially,

David
--
http://ddickerson.igc.org/

corrupt KDE
 

My hardware runs hot and I sometimes get disk errors which corrupt my KDE in a similar way to what you are experiencing. You can probably fix the problem with less than a complete reinstall. Here are some possibilities.

1. KDE creates some /tmp files which it leaves permenently to make login faster. If these files are corrupt you can fix them by logging in as root and deleting ever file and directory in /tmp which have user in their name. The next time you log in as user this may have fixed the proble, or may not. The only bad consequence is that the next time you login as user the KDE login will take 5 to 10 seconds longer.

2. You may be able to fix the problem by logging in as root and issueing the following commands:
rm /home/user/.kde/* -R
rmdir /home/user/.kde
The next time you log in as user KDE will initialize itself like it is the first time running after an install. This will fix the problem IF what was corrupted was part of the /home/user/.kde tree (reasonably likely). The bad consequence is that you will have lost all of your user KDE settings and will have to recreate the settings. Still this is better than a complete reinstall.

Yes, I am buying an additional fan.

Re: Corrupt KDE
 

Hello, Steve.

Thank you for your detailed suggestion and time.

I just did a clean install this morning. I had been trying since yesterday evening. (The solution was to disconnect the external USB Zip 250 drive, although it's never been a problem before.)

I will, however, keep your suggestions in mind, Steve. At this point, I am just leaving the KDE styles and colors at SuSE's default. (SuSE made some changes to these customization options and I cannot set up my system like I did in SuSE 8.1. I have tried with 8.2, but the options are just not there.)

Incidentally, I had three fans on the front of my case, over the main hard drive, but the bearings started to wear out and the fans became very loud -- so I got an Antec hard drive cooler with two fans and an LED temperature display. The gauge has two probes, one to attach to the hard drive and one to place inside the case. The display alternates between the temperature at each of these two locations. In addition, the fan is very quiet; it's well worth the $30 that I paid for it. :)

Thanks, Steve!

Cordially,

David
--
http://ddickerson.igc.org/