How to Fix KDE 4.1 Plasma Workspace
Upgrading to KDE 4.1 in Fedora 9 I received this error message.
Plasma Workspace - The KDE Crash Handler
A Fatal Error Occurred
The application Plasma Workspace (plasma) crashed and caused the signal 11 (SIGSEGV). Please help us improve the software you use by filing a report at http://bugs.kde.org. Useful detail include hot to reproduce the error, documents that were loaded, etc.
The error is also occurring in other distros like Kubuntu and Mandriva.
How to fix KDE 4.1
Get to your login screen and choose “console login” from the menu. From the console you will delete two files in the plasma configuration and this will fix the problem.
Here are the command line commands you will need.
cd ~/.kde/share/config
rm plasma-appletsrc
rm plasmarc
reboot
In Kubuntu the first command will be cd ~/.kde4/share/config because there is the .kde folder for KDE3 and the .kde4 folder for KDE4 (Which will be phased out in Intrepid Ibex).
Instead of rebooting you could try startx to login to the graphical desktop, but it’s probably best to reboot anyway. Removing these two files will reset plasma to the default configuration. I believe that something about haveing moved and/or resized the panel is not allowable with KDE4.1 and that is what is causing the crash. If you haven’t made any modifications to the panel, you might not get the error. If you do get the plasma error in KDE 4.1, that’s all there is to it. Happy computing.
how to get in the console?
Hi Lezah. What I mean is when you start up you get to the login screen. That’s where it has the little box that has your username, and you enter your password. Instead of logging in that way, when you get to that screen find the menu button, and it will list options such as “default” “kde” and “console login”. I ‘m not sure if those are the exact options or not, but it will look something like that.
So don’t log in on the login screen. Select the menu, then console login. Then you will have a black screen with your prompt to enter commands into it. You will have to then log in with your user name and password from what is a command line only session. The desktop will not load. It will only be a command line prompt.
Type the commands exactly as they are one line at a time. I think you will have to start with typing:
su -
followed by the root password. Then one line at a time follow the above commands. What it does is delete the old plasma configuration file. This file is based on a version of plasma that was phased out, so it causes a conflict. When you restart, the file is regenerated based on the new version of plasma, and the conflict no longer exists.
Great solution! it solved the same problem with kubuntu 8.10
Thanks
I tried that but it did not work for me. I use openSUSE 11 and yes after I tried to make the panel smaller….”blam”.
Problem is that those files are not there.
plasma-appletsrc
plasmarc
I checked with DIR. All files begin with kde…. or something like that.
Any ideas? I really don’t want to reinstall again :).
Bear, if you use the command in the first line as:
cd ~/.kde4/share/config
Then will it work? I don’t know much about Suse, but I think they might do like Kubuntu was doing and have the .kde folder for the KDE3 files, and a .kde4 folder for the KDE 4 files. Also, make sure the “dot” is there in trying to find the file. The folder is in your home folder as either (dot)kde or (dot)kde4.
I thought I was going to have to reinstall as well until I found the solution. I hope you can work this out. It is a really quick fix if you can find the right files.
I was talking about the ~/.kde4/share/config folder. Forgot to mention earlier, sorry.
I get to the folder like root. I typed exactly what it was suggested above and I get “file not found”.
Strange thing is that none of the files in that folder does not include “plasma” in their filenames. I can’t find which one is the config file.
EDIT:
Just to let you know:
At the error message I tried pressing CTRL+TAB wich activates my DESKTOP CUBE, and it was working (and the background for the cube was there). But no Desktops were visible (invisible cube :)).
I’m really not sure what to do. Can you get to the command, just your basic command line in the default view from your home folder and run
vdir ~/.kde/share/config
or
vdir ~/.kde4/share/config
depending on how Suse is configured to use KDE4.
and copy and paste the output here. There are a lot of filenames that start with “k” in the directory, because that’s how the programs are named, but I can’t seem to NOT find the two plasma configuration files, as long as it’s in the right directory.
Unfortunately, I have just never used Suse at all.
I did find the two files in ~/.kde4/share/config
(last time I was poking in ~/.kde/share/config). Ok, so I removed them then reboot.
Same error. I nearly freaked out. But I remembered I read somewhere that loging with another user works. So why not log-in with “root”?
Here is what I did to fix it:
At the error message I clicked close > CTRL+ALT+DEL > Log-out
I get the graphic log-in menu. I log-in as root and I get my plasma workspace running again with default settings. Then, from there I go to “Users” I deleted my old user (I kept the files in his home directory), and created a new one.
And now it works.
Only one thing that bugs me that it’s not automated log-in.
I have to type the password every time. Other than that everything is OK.
I now know not to mess with the panel (too much) :D!
It takes less time to re-customize my workspace than reinstalling the whole OS.
Thanks for the help :).
See you around.