Linux Tech Talk 5
February 9th, 2010 by ComputerBob
Two days ago, I installed Debian Squeeze onto my new 64-bit PC, using ext4 partitions, KDE4 and grub2.
Two nights ago, I was up until 3:00 AM, thanks to Debian Squeeze’s version of KDE4.
My experience may surprise you. It certainly surprised me.
For more details, please see My Debian Adventure 3: Squeeze & KDE4.
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Debian, DIY, Linux, Personal, Tech Support
February 10th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
you could have just alt+f2 then kdesu dolphin.
February 10th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
That may work just fine in whatever distro you’re running, with whatever version of KDE4 that you’re running, but I know that your suggestion was one of the many, many workarounds that didn’t work for me in Debian Squeeze with KDE 4.3.4.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:16 pm
In openSUSE 11.2 (KDE 4.3.1), I use this to start Konqueror in Super User mode:
dbus-launch /usr/bin/kfmclient openProfile filemanagement
This is from a Menu item. Interestingly, kdesu doesn’t work any more.
The Dolphin equivalent is:
dbus-launch dolphin %i -caption “%c” “%u”
February 10th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
I’ve found that Midnight Commander is better for a root file manager than graphical applications. In Ubuntu the package is mc and can probably be installed on Debian the same way, “apt-get install mc” or “aptitude install mc”.
The advantage of MC is that it works through ssh and serial console connections. It uses function keys to access the menu but they can be substituted with an Esc # sequence where 1 through 0 is the equivalent of F1-F10 (useful on serial consoles which only support F1-F4 and systems with broken function keys).
It has a good built-in editor but Ubuntu defaults to something else (the internal editor is easily selected in the Options > Configuration menu). It can also open and browse compressed archives (including deb) if the various archive tools are installed.
If your Debian install has root disabled and uses sudo instead (like Ubuntu) then to switch to root in a terminal use “sudo su”.
If your install is completely broken due to failed package installation, try logging in to a text terminal or switch to a VT with Ctrl-Alt-F1 then using Aptitude to finish the job. Basically “aptitude” then “u” to update from the repository lists, “U” to select upgradable packages, “g” to go and apply the changes, and “q” to quit. To search use “/”. It uses regex-style searching so “^” means to look at the beginning of a name and “$” means at the end. To search for “mc” exactly you would enter “^mc$”. “n” finds the next match forwards and “N” finds the next one backwards.
If you start up in a terminal mode and your network is not functioning , see if your network device has an IP address with “ifconfig -a”. If you are relying DHCP to set the address automatically, you may need to run “dhclient” to get the network going.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:33 pm
@geoff_f - Thanks, but unfortunately, that’s another one of the many, many workarounds that reportedly work in some versions of some distros and some versions of KDE4 (especially for openSUSE and Ubuntu users), but didn’t work for me in Debian Squeeze with KDE 4.3.4.
IIRC, I tried several different variations of your suggestion, but they always resulted in a string of error messages related to dbus-launch.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
@jhansonxi - Thank you! I really appreciate you taking the time to document all of that here, and I remember from my Windows days — as well as from trying it a couple of times in Linux — that MC is a very useful tool.
I hope that your documentation effort here will help other people who run into similar problems in the future. But, after all of the things that had already gone wrong for me, when my attempt to install kde-full made Synaptic crash and then repeatedly hard-lock my system, it was no longer worth it to me to keep trying to fix all of the problems that I found in Debian Squeeze’s KDE 4.3.4.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:12 am
from my 2 days experience with debian squeeze n kde4 that i downloaded from debian.org, i use kdesu konqueror, so when i click on any config file, kwrite will automatically launch with root permission same like kde3…
February 11th, 2010 at 12:27 am
While I’ve recently worked on a Ubuntu system that had damaged package database that would cause Synaptic to crash, it’s the only one I’ve ever seen. I was able to fix it by using apt-get and dpkg. Usually when I encounter a large number of problems on an install it’s due to failing hardware, often bad RAM. Try running memtest on it.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:50 am
@gerabah - I’m happy that that worked for you, and I sure wish it had worked for me too, but it didn’t in Debian Squeeze with KDE 4.3.4.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:00 am
@jhansonxi - Bad RAM is a good suggestion, but before I installed Linux on it, I watched this PC run several apps at the same time in Windows XP Home Edition — which uses much more memory — without any problems at all. And since then, this PC has been running something else all day, every day, without any problems at all. I hope to have enough time to write more about that in the near future.
February 11th, 2010 at 4:23 am
oh yeah…. i found this too when i tried to upgrade using synaptic, go to origin tab (lower left of synaptic), there are 2 packages that are installed in “Local” section, i get rid of those n installed python-gtk2 and python-glade2.
doing a full upgrade and installed kde-full without any errors…..
February 11th, 2010 at 4:55 am
I use mc for all root file management and text editing. If you like GUI more, than Krusader with its root mode could be an option.
February 11th, 2010 at 5:01 am
http://sidux.com/module-mirrors.html
February 11th, 2010 at 6:49 am
I admire your patience. I would have dumped the OS much sooner. I run Linux (Ubuntu) exclusively at home for more than a year now after windows had become so slow again after a few installs/uninstalls of programmes, but I just want to use a computer, not google around for even the most trivial things like changing an IP address. Ubuntu does most of that for me, although I have had problems as well there. I’m even thinking if Debian stable or testing would not even be better for me, as for most programs I don’t need to have the latest cutting edge.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:54 am
This is the most insightful post into KDE4s configuration problems that I have seen in the last two years (it got bookmarked) - but:
* Synaptic crashing is a unlikely to be a KDE bug - although you could be weirdly unlucky
* sudo dolphin && sudo konqueror in Konsole do work for me (I don’t think this from konsole would fit into your workflow, but in case someone who just needs GUI file management reads this article). Plain su does not. sudo dolphin and opening /etc/fstab opened a GUI editor that could edit.
I’m running a similar setup, full unstable not squeeze, Synaptic is the best frontend to aptitude, KDE 4.3. The current trend in KDE4 development is adding new configuration interfaces at every release and although they have left many embarrassing holes (systemsettings as root being the most glaring) they look like they will be eventually ironed out. New Coke is here to stay - although I couldn’t bring myself to use 4.0 to 4.2, the potential for GUI cleverness in the framework they have built has promise once they have had a few years to get the config options and documentation put in place.
Good luck. I have known some of your pain.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:28 am
I just finished reading your article about Debian Squeeze and the new Coke, Ahem!, I mean KDE. It seems to me that you’re a glutton for punishment, Bob. You wanted to tryout KDE 4, a constantly evolving, bloated piece of developer dogma on a currently beta (testing means, golly, that it’s TESTING - not ready!) GNU/Linux distribution. I have an 8 year old son that I have to remind to keep his hands to himself and quit goofing off. What you wrote about is the same thing, dontcha think? You demanded KDE and a beta distribution to work as you wanted instead of realizing what these things currently are. Couldn’t keep your hands to yourself….;)
Please Bob, stop feeding the idiot trolls.
If the KDE devs purposefully introduced speed-bumps into the admin of a KDE desktop, then I applaud them. Whereas it’s nice to have pretty GUIs for setting system settings, some peripheral functionality, etc., it’s paramount that the masses understand what’s going on. By enabling any ignorant “OOoh, Linux is shiny” user to mess about on the box they welcome the same kind of BS that Windows did by doing the same. If a stripped-down KDE forces a root terminal - that’s wonderful. GNU/Linux is already, and has been for ages, terribly simple. It’s just not simple to folks otherwise corrupted by Windows.
Some final thoughts. I gave up on Gnome and KDE a long time ago and found righteousness in OpenBox. Sure, any “idiot” can use it but it makes them earn it. Like school and society used to do. Remember? I switched to GNU/Linux a long time ago because it didn’t insult my intelligence or get in my way. Sounds like KDE is doing just that. And it may be a blessing in disguise. I understand you want to use KDE - but it is what it is and sometimes we have to move on.
February 11th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Have you tried to do it in a new session as root?
February 11th, 2010 at 9:54 am
@gerabah - Thanks for your upgrade tip, but apparently, you misunderstood something in my article. I did a full install, not an upgrade. Synaptic crashed after I added one metapackage (kde-full) to that full install.
February 11th, 2010 at 10:55 am
I heard a lot of times that KDE4 version 4.0 to 4.1 were not usable, as opposed to 4.2. I also heard that versions 4.0 to 4.2 were not usable as opposed to 4.3…
it seems that at least some KDE people wanted version 4.1 into Debian Stable (Lenny).
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-kde-talk/2008-June/000919.html
It didn’t happen (thanks God!).
I’m *mostly* a gnome/xfce user, but when I first saw KDE4, I wanted to try it out. Now I feel like I burned my hands (it was KDE 4.0). I tried a few times again “just to see”, with versions 4.1 and 4.2, but to no avail.
Funny thing is, I saw my dad using KDE3, and I tried it myself. Nice DE. I now have it as an option on my system (I often switch DE, just because I like to change — though I see that I spend more and more time with XFCE, because it starts quicker).
Maybe one day KDE4 will be usable. I’d even go as far as to say ‘Probably’.
I guess I’ll try again with 4.4. Then 4.5…
February 11th, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Thanks for the post Bob, I’m planning to install Lenny as soon as I have the time and was wondering about going through the necessary upgrades for KDE 4.x, but this has convinced me it’s not worth it. Actually it reminded me a lot of my first adventures with Mandrake 8.x - and with the same fix, namely a good, light WM.
I’m a Fluxbox man through and through, but use KDE from time to time because my wife uses it, so I like to keep up to date. Speaking of which - among that mountain of extra functionality, has KDE gained anything like the auto-hiding Slit? :o)
Finally, I’d like to add another vote for Midnight Commander as the best thing since sliced bread - no, scratch that, I slice my own bread, but it’s the best sysadmin tool since XTree Gold, and certainly the most useful of De Icaza’s fruits that I’ve come across.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Yea i’m sorry, but that is what you get for using a testing release (squeeze) and expecting it to be stable. I’v been using KDE4 via Kubuntu since 4.0 came out. i’ll admit that 4.0 and 4.1 were not the greatest, but 4.3 and now 4.4 are amazing, and assuming you know your way around, just as good as gnome or any other DE. The computer lab in my school uses kde 3.5, I hadn’t used it in years, and it felt like I was back in the 90’s. I’m sorry but what is the point of having a shiny new 64 bit computer and not actually use all that ram and processing power? My laptop has 1gig of ram, and an old AMD 1.8ghz. single core and it runs KDE 4.3 with 3d effects just fine.
As for dolphin as root? Open a terminal and type “sudo Dolphin”. Or in the manue editor add an entry “kdesu Dolphin”. If neither of those work then it’s debians fault, not KDE. Both those methods have always worked for me.
February 11th, 2010 at 1:09 pm
Yes, KDE4 is simply a disaster. It was not broke, people liked it and knew how to use it. Fork it!
February 11th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
DOS wasn’t broke, windows 3.1 wasn’t broke….it’s called moving forward. What else could they have done with KDE3 without adding in hacks or workarounds (like gnome)? You can still use KDE3 if you want, but the KDE project had to go somewhere, they arn’t one day gonna decide that all goals have been met and it’s time to shut down development.
And quite honestly I don’t remember KDE 3 being that perfect, I had lots of bugs and crashes, to the point where I switched to Gnome for a while.
I honestly hate when people form an opinion by using something they are not familiar with for a couple of days, it’s even worse when they are using a testing release and expect everything to work. It has taken me years to learn KDE as well as I have, whenever I try other DE’s i’m lost, I get frustrated cause stuff is different, but I don’t blame the DE.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Hi Bob,
Thanks for sharing your experiences with others!
We have even had similar experiences with stable versions so we just let the alphas and betas do their own thing.
Don’t remember which distro or kde version we had bad experiences with, but as a result we’ve tried to stay away from kde altogether.
Keep up the great work!
February 11th, 2010 at 11:21 pm
First off, I have been a devoted kde user since 2001. This is coming to you from kde 4.3 (squeeze)
Do I think kde4 is a good replacement for kde3.x - no. The best way I can describe kde4 is to say it appears the kde development team was inflitrated by MS vista programers. kde4 has some good points but what they have done to the menu is not one of them. I looked at lancelot but haven’t installed it yet. The programs that made kde special (konqueror in particular) no longer perform as expected. In my experience, dolphin works well if you disable the search engines (nepomuk and strigi). Stiil, it’s not konqueror.
I have experienced your black screen twice in recent upgrades using squeeze. Both instances required packages from sid to fix the problem. Not difficult but . . . (in the first instance it was a dependency issue with debian not related to kde ie: the required package was not available in squeeze)
I will use kde4 as long as I can (I’ve already had to upgrade my video card to use kde4 - having to upgrade hardware sounds a lot like another software maker we all know and love) but just in case I have downloaded the full set of lenny dvd’s so I can rebuild my system with software that does what I want.
Good luck
Rod
February 12th, 2010 at 2:45 am
I am a veteran KDE-3.5 lover who is currently trying out KDE-4.3.2 via a backport to Debian Lenny you get from this line
deb http://www.debian-desktop.org/pub/linux/debian/kde43 lenny-backports main contrib non-free
in /etc/apt/sources.list
I had a lot of troubles with this backport until I installed (using apt-get) the kde4-full metapackage. After that, kde4 was still fairly buggy (crash messages from various apps once a day or so), but I am sticking with it because that crash rate is (barely) acceptable, and I want to gain experience with the future of KDE.
I believe I know the reason for that rather high crash rate. The important point is Debian squeeze (and therefore also the backport I am using) are currently stuck at the KDE-4.3.2 point release. That is three (!) point releases and therefore zillions of bug fixes behind the KDE-4.3.5 version that was just released.
Debian unstable does have 4.3.4, but according to http://bjorn.haxx.se/debian/testing.pl?package=konqueror, for example, the promotion of 4.3.4 from unstable to testing is being held up by some build issue on the mips platform. It’s just a fact of life that promotions to testing are often held up this way, and I am not complaining about that, but it does mean Debian testing users (and also backport users) are stuck with a really crummy version of KDE-4.3, and basically we just have to wait until the promotion logjam is broken or explore the perils of using Debian unstable instead, or go back to KDE-3.5 with Debian stable for a while longer.
February 12th, 2010 at 5:48 am
Bob, while it is true most root actions service menu’s are distro specific and do not work out of the box in debian, this one does
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Simple+Root+Actions+Menu?content=72762
February 12th, 2010 at 10:57 am
@Alan W. Irwin - I don’t follow the Backports repositories, but because I had been looking for “the right time” to try installing Squeeze with KDE4, I’ve been watching the Testing/Squeeze repositories for the past several months. The KDE4 that I installed the other day had packages that were nearly all 4.3.4, and kdebase has been 5:55 in the Testing repositories for at least the past several weeks. I understand your explanation of how things get “stuck” waiting to be approved in Debian — let’s see how long it takes before we see the newly released KDE SC 4.4 — but it looks to me like what I installed was actually KDE 4.3.4 as I stated, not 4.3.2.
@Danum - Thank you for that suggestion, but if that service menu works for you, then I suspect that you are using a different distro and/or version of KDE4. A service menu is basically just a few lines of code that add a command-line command to one of your context menus. So a service menu can’t work unless the command-line commands that it issues are also capable of working if you were to issue them on a command line. As I described in my article, my installation had a few tasks that I was not allowed to do, no matter which of the many, many command-line commands I tried.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Bob,Distro’s having provided Mepis with KDE 4xx for the last 18 months Canteras-c being the last DVD, and built KDE4 on squeeze and sid, I am fully aware of what a service menu should and should not do, I am also aware of debian being tied down, as suse is with regards to doing things as root, eg: running kwrite (or whatever) as root from the command line in KDE 4, out of the box it will not, where as with KDE3 it will, KDE 4 is a different animal as people are finding out.
The quick way is when you open Konsole as user “DISPLAY=:0.0 xhost +” then log in as root and you can edit to your hearts content as you would in KDE 3xx
You made a post today on Mepis , look at the following post by richb, also look at Brooko’s signature while you are there
you can contact me at Mepis, always happy to help.
Danum
February 12th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
@Danum - “The quick way is when you open Konsole as user “DISPLAY=:0.0 xhost +” then log in as root and you can edit to your hearts content as you would in KDE 3xx”
Of course — why didn’t I think of that? LOL!
(But thanks for that tip. It apparently works for you in Mepis Linux — I just hope it will work for me the next time I try Debian KDE4).
February 12th, 2010 at 3:40 pm
@Bob it works for all Debian,I run squeeze and sid with KDE 4 as does the service menu, the crunch is do not try to use KDE4xx as you would KDE3xx if you do you will end up wanting to through it out of the window, as you have found out.
The next time you try a Debian KDE 4, well a new release of 4.4 should be available shortly and being as Warren has released a KDE 4 version, it will be pure Debian so there is no conflict, hope you will try it.
Danum
February 17th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
ComputerBob, I haven’t tried KDE 4.3 or higher. I did use kde 4.2 and it was OK, if a bit slow. I did like the Lancelot menu as a replacement for the KDE default menu.
The problems you had using sudo were because it was never set it up. Debian does not create a sudo account like *buntu and many others. You must configure it yourself. The configuration is trivial, utilizing visudo. You do this via a command prompt, for good reason.
Open up a konsole
Type su
Type your root password
type visudo
Here is what I have in mine (my username is alex):
%alex ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/halt, /sbin/ifconfig
%kvm ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/ifconfig, /usr/sbin/brctl, /usr/sbin/tunctl, /sbin/ifenslave
What you are looking for is probably (assuming your username is computerbob ):
%computerbob ALL=(ALL) ALL
Running a file manager as root is not what I recommend, but it is your computer and to each his own.
As you become more comfortable in *nix, you will come to appreciate the console. You’ll also learn to limit what is done as root, a file manager can easily become a file mangler if you are root.
The crash can be fixed at the command line. Fire up the PC in failsafe, and as root type:
aptitude update && aptitude safe-upgrade
This should tell you what to do (probably dpkg –configure -a)
This should help you diagnose what package went wrong (dependency issue most likely).
Cheers,
Alex C.
February 25th, 2010 at 11:04 pm
Bob I feel your pain. I’ve been running Squeeze KDE 4 for a couple of months now. After going thru all of the nonsense that you described I got it running smoothly. I kept notes on what I did and how I did it. At first everything was going well. The weekly build that I downloaded included the .30 kernel installed the ext3 file system. I installed it first on an AMD 32 bit machine ran great no problems. I then installed it on an AMD 64 bit machine ran great no problems UNTIL I upgraded to the .32 trunk kernel. Went very smooth and ran great on then 32 bit machine, but upgrading the 64 bit kernel gave me a message that I needed to enable the non free repository so it could find the non free firmware, well it was enabled, and the non free firmware was already installed. Then at boot I got the “pci 0000:02:05.0: BAR 6: address space collision on of device [0xfeaa0000-0xfeabffff]” error believe it got something to do with ECC ram. I’ve got non ECC ram (same with the 32 bit machine but no error on that box) on this machine so I’ll ignore that.
After messing with the .32trunk kernel for a while I went back to the .30 kernel. Things went back to running smooth until yes until! There was an Open Office update yep I updated it and it left me with some corrupt files on my system. So hey it’s testing right so I downloaded and installed the new weekly build on Feb. 8th. Now this build came with the .32 trunk kernel and I decided to try ext4 with this install.
Ok install went smooth no complaints about needing non free firmware, boot yep there’s the space collusion error very first line, I’ll continue ignoring that. Seemed to run well until an update of synaptic, I like to browse thru the packages using it, I use aptitude for the work. Well this updated synaptic runs until I try to run a search with it. As soon as I click on the search box it crashes the KDE 4.3.4 desktop.
So after this long drawn out post here’s my problems with KDE 4: Synaptic crashes it when I try to search packages with it, and just for good measure I can’t create any new files in a desktop folder widget, if I try to create any new file or directory in a desktop folder widget my entire system freezes requiring a reboot!
All in all I like KDE 4 so I hope these little quirks get straightened out. I don’t have these problems with the 32 bit machine only with the 64 bit box.
March 4th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
I’m using KDE 4.3.4 on a Debian Testing amd64 install and had similar problems with gaining root access to graphical applications, this was cured by installing kdesudo. I now run everything ‘kdesudo kate’ etc. I haven’t experienced your other problems although I don’t use synaptic or ext4. I run Testing as a ‘rolling release’ and ‘aptitiude full-upgrade’ regularly with no problems.