[kde-linux] Splash screen import errors

[Duncan]

Thomas Taylor posted on Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:11:31 -0800 as excerpted:

> When I go to Start > Configure Desktop > Appearance > Splash Screen >
> Get New Themes, it takes me to the kde-look.org page, but I haven't been
> able to install the splash images I want.
> 
> When I click "install", it displays the circling balls but doesn't
> install anything.  In two cases it shows the busy balls then goes back
> to the menu (images: BlueLinuxSplash, Simple Swirled).  When I try to
> install two others (BlueElectric, KStarboard Splash), the busy balls
> appear and then the install box changes to uninstall.  However, after I
> reboot, I find nothing has been installed and no additions have made to
> the splash screen menu (see attachment).
> 
> Is this a bug in the factory version or am I trying to install
> incorrectly?

FWIW, I had get-new-stuff/kdelook installation failures and a few other 
similar issues (toolbar config changes not taking in certain apps, etc) on 
my old installation.  After a bit of an accident wiped out some of my 
homedir, I restored from backup, but changed things around a bit, and 
several of those issues "magically" went away.

I'm not exactly sure what did it, but the config files themselves were 
pretty much identical.  The one thing I KNOW I changed was that before, I 
had various symlinks setup, redirecting the usual hidden variants of the 
$KDEHOME dir to an unhidden real directory path.  With the restore, I 
actually set $KDEHOME to the unhidden real directory path (~/kde), and did 
away with several of the symlinks.  Thus I /think/ it was probably the 
symlinks that were the issue before.  Now that $KDEHOME is actually set to 
the real directory I'm using and it's not trying to go thru symlinks, it 
does seem to work better.

So I can't say for sure it'll work, but I'd check that $KDEHOME is set and 
exported when you run KDE, from your xinit, bashrc or whatever, and that 
it points to your real user config dir, not a symlink, which apparently 
isn't properly dereferenced part of the time.

There may be similar issues with $KDETMP, which I think defaults to ~/tmp, 
$KDEVARTMP, which I believe normally points to /var/tmp/~user or some 
such, etc.  Ensure that these dirs are not actually symlinks, and/or if 
they are, that the vars are set to the real directory path, so no symlink 
dereferencing need occur, as that does seem to screwup certain aspects of 
kde, for some reason.

IOW, regardless of whether you have those vars set or not and are thus 
using the default locations, make sure that the locations that are getting 
used are the real paths, not involving symlinks.  If they do involve 
symlinks, set and export the vars, pointing them to the real paths, NOT 
the symlinked versions.

If you confirm that was your problem and the above solves it, then you've 
just confirmed what I discovered quite by accident.  If you aren't running 
symlinks, then either you have an entirely different issue than I did, or 
I'm attributing my fix to quite the wrong thing.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman