KDE 4.5.5: "Folder View" mode of desktop doesn't restore on login

[Duncan]

Manuel Reimer posted on Thu, 14 Jun 2012 15:46:25 +0200 as excerpted:

> on one of my systems, I have the following problem: If I set up "folder
> view" for the desktop, then this seems to work well, but as soon as I
> log out and log in again, the desktop icons are gone.
> 
> I have to switch to desktop mode "workspace" and then back to "folder
> view" to get it restored and I have to repeat this on every login...
> 
> Any chance to find the reason for this problem?

You probably know this already, but 4.5 is a rather old kde.  4.8 is 
current and there's a 4.9 beta out (which I'm running).  But 4.5 was also 
the last version to use hal, so upgrading beyond it in-place on your 
current distro install could be problematic, and 4.5 /was/ the first kde4 
release I actually considered a full release (what should have been 4.0, 
everything previous was alpha/beta/rc), so it's not as bad seeing that as 
it was seeing people still on 4.4 or older, since they really WERE 
seriously bugged and it really hurt to see people still using them when I 
knew 4.5 and above were SO much better.  So at least with 4.5.5 you're 
not on what I'd call pre-release quality kde.


To the problem...

If I'm reading you correctly, after a kde restart (logout/login), the 
desktop stays in folder-view mode as shown in the settings dialog, but it 
simply doesn't show any icons?

It sounds like what could be happening is that it keeps folderview, but 
for some reason, isn't saving the folder it should be pointing at, so 
when you restart kde, it's pointing at the wrong one, which either 
doesn't exist or is empty.

Try this.  After getting it set the way you want, using either krunner or 
a konsole window (I like the latter for things like this as krunner 
sometimes crashes or something), run ...

kquitapp plasma-desktop

... which should close plasma including the desktop and panels.  The idea 
is to get it to close and save state normally, in case it's crashing for 
some reason when you logout/quit-kde.

Or try the traditional...

killall plasma-desktop

... which is what I tend to use instead of kquitapp.


After a few seconds, restart it...

plasma-desktop


Hopefully that fixes it.

If not, the next thing to try is setting the folder location to somewhere 
else, and see if that works.  As I normally use the default desktop (what 
would be "workspace" in 4.5, IIRC), I'm not familiar with the folderview 
desktop settings and how they've changed between 4.5 and the 4.9-beta1 
I'm running, but it's a fairly safe bet they've changed enough that 
trying to tell you where to set that based on 4.9-beta1 won't work too 
well, so I'll let you figure out that part.

If setting it to a different location works over a plasma restart (either 
using the above method or logout/login or quit kde/X and restart it or a 
full reboot, any of these should work), then you can try switching it 
back, or move everything from the location that didn't work to the 
location that does.


If /that/ doesn't work, then it's time to get into the more complex 
stuff.  Try setting up a different (new) user account, and see if the new 
user account has the same issue.  If they don't, then you know the 
problem is in your user settings.  If they have the same problem, then 
it's likely either a kde or distro bug you're hitting.  If it's kde, the 
solution would be to try a newer version.  If it's distro, take it up 
with them.

Meanwhile, if you get to this point and have found it's in your user 
settings (a new user account doesn't have the issue), post back with the 
results so far, and we'll go from there.

(Just a note, however.  I'm having hardware issues ATM, but don't have 
the money to fix them properly so I'm hobbling along.  If they get worse, 
I might disappear from the list for awhile, but hopefully someone else 
can help if that happens.)

-- 
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

___________________________________________________
This message is from the kde mailing list.
Account management:  https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde.
Archives: http://lists.kde.org/.
More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.