[kde-linux] How to reset your KDE desktop

[James Richard Tyrer]

Stephen CS Howe wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I looked around on the web but could not find any reference to this
> topic anywhere.
> Ovr the last few years, I have had numerous experiences in which , after
> some system crash, I can login to the login screen of my distribution
> (Febora, various versions), but, then when i try to login as my normal
> user, during KDE initialization , the desktop freezes , the system
> completely locks up, and a manual reset of the computer is necessary to
> unlock the computer.
> 
> The only method I have found to recover from this problem is then to
> proceed as follows:-
> 
> 1. Login as root
> 2. Delete the directory .kde in the /home/"username"/ directory.
> 3. When you login again as "username" the desktop works again.
> 
> What I want to know from you brainy folks is the following:
> 1. Is there some kind of log that would tell me what component of kde
> has broken ?
> 2. Is there a better way of unblocking my desktop ?
> The above method works, but , of course, you loose all your desktop
> settings.

Due to changes in KDE you should no longer delete the $HOME/.kde 
directory.  Note that I think that these changes were a bad idea but 
they don't seem to listen to me.

Probably what happened was that a file in:

	$HOME/.kde/share/config[<version>]

was corrupted.  Unfortunately, if a system crashes, files that are open 
when it goes down can be corrupted.  The EX3 file system helps, but it 
doesn't always prevent it.  So, with KDE not running, rename that 
directory to like.

	$HOME/.kde/share/config.save

and restart KDE.  This will destroy all you your configurations and you 
will go back to the defaults.  But you can restore most of them by 
copying the files from the "config.save" directory to the new one that 
is created when you restart KDE.  Sort them by date and restore the ones 
that were at least an hour old when it crashed first.  Restoring newer 
ones is a risk and you need to decide if you want to risk it.

-- 
JRT