[kde-linux] kdeinit: shutting down after setting HOME

[Duncan]

Kevin Krammer posted on Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:21:05 +0200 as excerpted:

> On Thursday, 2010-06-10, Schwarz, Arthur I. wrote:
>> In Red Hat Linux 5:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> I want to be able to dynamically reset HOME, as in HOME=newHOME; export
>> HOME. After I do this, when I execute Kate I get
> 
> Would it be possible to explain which effect you want to achieve, i.e.
> why you want to change $HOME?
> 
> Because the way you discribe it here sounds like you run different
> programs of the same session with different $HOME values.

Indeed.  KDE isn't designed to have its $HOME changing out from underneath 
it, and as you (the OP) found out, it doesn't work so well.  There's ways 
around it, but the general case gets pretty complex pretty fast, so if it 
can be avoided with a fixup for a specific case, it'll make things much 
simpler for both you and us.

A very short explanation of what's going on, however, is that (among other 
things) kde uses sockets for its inter-process communication (dcop in 
kde3, dbus in kde4), and these are normally placed in $HOME.  So when you 
try to switch home out from under it, it can't find its sockets anymore, 
and the various kde components can't communicate with each other 
properly.  What you're seeing is the breakage resulting from that.  But 
that's just one aspect of a rather more complex picture, so if we can 
simplify the general case to something more specific, it'll be better all 
around.

-- 
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