250719 Michael wrote:

On Saturday, 19 July 2025 01:20:48 British Summer Time Philip Webb wrote:

A few weeks ago, a weekly update resulted in KDE failing to start ;
as it needed to be updated anyway, I have been using Fluxbox instead.
During the past few days, I removed all the old KDE pkgs,
did an update of all the Qt pkgs which were installed
& re-installed all the previous KDE pkgs in their new versions,
so that I now have Qt 5.15.17 + 6.9.1 , KDE Frameworks 6.13.0 ,
Plasma 6.3.5 + Apps 25.04.2 .

A simple update would not normally break a DE.
Did you run --depclean and were any packages removed ?

No & No, but I might not have remerged some non-KDE file which was relevant. However in that case, Portage should have listed it as a requirement.

I use OpenRC with 'startx' + '.xinitrc' :
for Fluxbox, the latter is simply 'startfluxbox' ,
for KDE, it's 'exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11',
which worked with the old version of KDE & is recommended in Gentoo Wiki.
Now when I enter 'startx', I get a black screen + a movable mouse-pointer, >> but nothing else, & have to restart the machine & return to Fluxbox.

You should be able to exit the X session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

That doesn't work.

you could try Ctrl+Alt+F2 to go to a VT
from which you can interrogate the logs, stop the hanging X session, etc.

That does work & avoids physically restarting the machine.
I tried to stop the X session via 'htop', but couldn't find the basic process.

There is an error msg : "$DISPLAY is not set or can't connect to server".

Where did you find the above error message ?
Can you check /var/log/Xorg.0.log
to see what it reports before you restart the PC ?

The system hasn't generated 'Xorg.0.log' since July 2023,
when I was still testing the machine.

However, I did check all the logs bearing today's date
& found something useful : at the very end of 'syslog' it says :
"dbus-daemon ... Activated service 'org.kde.Ksplash' failed :
Process org.kde.Ksplash exited with status 1".

The output ( 92 K lines ) from 'strace', about half-way down, reports :

13324 newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.KSplash.service", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=86, ...}, 0) = 0
13324 newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Tumbler.Manager1.service", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=124, ...}, 0) = 0
13324 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Tumbler.Manager1.service", O_RDONLY) = 8
13324 fstat(8, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=124, ...}) = 0
13324 read(8, "[D-BUS Service]\nName=org.freedes"..., 124) = 124
13324 close(8)

Further down it reports :

13322 access("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", F_OK) = 0
13322 readlink("/home", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
13322 access("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", F_OK) = 0
13322 access("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", W_OK) = 0

The content of 'ksplashrc' is '[KSplash] \ Theme=org.kde.oxygen'

After a few lines re 'kdeglobals', it goes on :

13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) =\
0
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/etc/xdg/ksplashrc", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147f50) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
13322 readlink("/home", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
13322 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 5
13322 statx(5, "", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) = 0
13322 statx(5, "", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) = 0
13322 statx(5, "", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) = 0
13322 read(5, "[KSplash]\nTheme=org.kde.oxygen\n", 16384) = 31
13322 read(5, "", 16353) = 0
13322 close(5) = 0
13322 pipe2([5, 6], O_CLOEXEC) = 0
13322 pipe2([7, 8], O_CLOEXEC) = 0
13322 write(3, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8
13322 getcwd("/home/purslow", 4096) = 14
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/sbin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/sbin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/local/sbin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/bin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/bin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0755, stx_size=55728, ...}) = 0
13322 access("/usr/bin/ksplashqml", X_OK) = 0

The final mention of KSplash is some way further down the long file :

13326 sendmsg(8, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="l\4\1\1\24\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\215\0\0\0\1\1o\0\25\0\0\0/org/fre"..., iov_len=160}, {iov_base="\17\0\0\0org.kde.KSplash\0", iov_len=20}], ms\
g_iovlen=2, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_NOSIGNAL <unfinished ...>

Is that enough information to point towards a solution ?

Gentoo Wiki seems to recommend using 'sddm' instead of 'startx',
which it describes at "the old method". I have 'elogind' 2.55.17 installed.

The sddm is a Display Manager, offering a login screen GUI for entering
a user's login credentials and it will launch the desktop of choice.
However, you should still be able to start an xserver from a console :
sddm is only a graphical alternative to starting a xsession from console.

Thanks : as always, I try to keep my system simple.

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb
ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT `-O----------O---' purslowatcadotinterdotnet

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Saturday, 19 July 2025 23:32:02 British Summer Time Philip Webb wrote:

250719 Michael wrote:

On Saturday, 19 July 2025 01:20:48 British Summer Time Philip Webb wrote:

A few weeks ago, a weekly update resulted in KDE failing to start ;
as it needed to be updated anyway, I have been using Fluxbox instead.
During the past few days, I removed all the old KDE pkgs,
did an update of all the Qt pkgs which were installed
& re-installed all the previous KDE pkgs in their new versions,
so that I now have Qt 5.15.17 + 6.9.1 , KDE Frameworks 6.13.0 ,
Plasma 6.3.5 + Apps 25.04.2 .

A simple update would not normally break a DE.
Did you run --depclean and were any packages removed ?

No & No, but I might not have remerged some non-KDE file which was relevant. However in that case, Portage should have listed it as a requirement.

I use OpenRC with 'startx' + '.xinitrc' :
for Fluxbox, the latter is simply 'startfluxbox' ,
for KDE, it's 'exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11',
which worked with the old version of KDE & is recommended in Gentoo Wiki. >> Now when I enter 'startx', I get a black screen + a movable
mouse-pointer,
but nothing else, & have to restart the machine & return to Fluxbox.

You should be able to exit the X session by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Backspace.

That doesn't work.

you could try Ctrl+Alt+F2 to go to a VT
from which you can interrogate the logs, stop the hanging X session, etc.

That does work & avoids physically restarting the machine.
I tried to stop the X session via 'htop', but couldn't find the basic process.

There is an error msg : "$DISPLAY is not set or can't connect to server".

Where did you find the above error message ?
Can you check /var/log/Xorg.0.log
to see what it reports before you restart the PC ?

The system hasn't generated 'Xorg.0.log' since July 2023,
when I was still testing the machine.

However, I did check all the logs bearing today's date
& found something useful : at the very end of 'syslog' it says :
"dbus-daemon ... Activated service 'org.kde.Ksplash' failed :
Process org.kde.Ksplash exited with status 1".

The output ( 92 K lines ) from 'strace', about half-way down, reports :

13324 newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.KSplash.service",
{st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=86, ...}, 0) = 0 13324 newfstatat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Tumbler.Manager1.service", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=124, ...}, 0) = 0 13324 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.xfce.Tumbler.Manager1.service", O_RDONLY) =
8 13324 fstat(8, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=124, ...}) = 0
13324 read(8, "[D-BUS Service]\nName=org.freedes"..., 124) = 124
13324 close(8)

The above refers to xfce a different desktop environment.

Further down it reports :

13322 access("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", F_OK) = 0
13322 readlink("/home", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) =
-1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", 0x7ffc1c146b30, 1023) = -1
EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 access("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", F_OK) = 0
13322 access("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", W_OK) = 0

The content of 'ksplashrc' is '[KSplash] \ Theme=org.kde.oxygen'

After a few lines re 'kdeglobals', it goes on :

13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) =\ 0
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/etc/xdg/ksplashrc", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147f50) = -1
ENOENT (No such file or directory) 13322 readlink("/home", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL
(Invalid argument) 13322 readlink("/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", 0x7ffc1c146b50, 1023) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument) 13322 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/home/purslow/.config/ksplashrc", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 5 13322 statx(5,
"", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) = 0 13322 statx(5, "", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) = 0 13322 statx(5, "", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0600, stx_size=31, ...}) = 0 13322 read(5, "[KSplash]\nTheme=org.kde.oxygen\n", 16384) = 31
13322 read(5, "", 16353) = 0
13322 close(5) = 0
13322 pipe2([5, 6], O_CLOEXEC) = 0
13322 pipe2([7, 8], O_CLOEXEC) = 0
13322 write(3, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8
13322 getcwd("/home/purslow", 4096) = 14
13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/sbin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1
ENOENT (No such file or directory) 13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/sbin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) 13322
statx(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/local/sbin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1
ENOENT (No such file or directory) 13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/bin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, 0x7ffc1c147dc0) = -1
ENOENT (No such file or directory) 13322 statx(AT_FDCWD, "/usr/bin/ksplashqml", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_NO_AUTOMOUNT, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_ALL|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0755, stx_size=55728, ...}) = 0 13322 access("/usr/bin/ksplashqml", X_OK) = 0

The final mention of KSplash is some way further down the long file :

13326 sendmsg(8, {msg_name=NULL, msg_namelen=0, msg_iov=[{iov_base="l\4\1\1\24\0\0\0\3\0\0\0\215\0\0\0\1\1o\0\25\0\0\0/org/ fre"..., iov_len=160}, {iov_base="\17\0\0\0org.kde.KSplash\0", iov_len=20}], ms\ g_iovlen=2, msg_controllen=0, msg_flags=0}, MSG_NOSIGNAL <unfinished

Is that enough information to point towards a solution ?

Your ksplash error indicates the KDE splash screen when a plasma desktop session is launched fails to start. You could try:

emerge -1av kde-plasma/plasma-workspace

in case this package is missing or for some reason was corrupted.
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

250720 Javier Martinez wrote:

From your strace log :

execve("/start_kdeinit_wrapper", ["/start_kdeinit_wrapper"],
0x7ffcbaa9e828 /* 62 vars */) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory) exit_group(-1) = ?
1955 +++ exited with 255 +++

Look for which package has this start_kdeinit_wrapper executable
that is missing, install the required package
or compile with the required USE flag and retry

I've installed 'pfl', which seems to be the only way to do this,
but its replies are wholly negative :

root:590 env> pfl -a start_kdeinit_wrapper
Invalid package atom provided. Use something like =category/package-1.23

root:596 env> e-file start_kdeinit_wrapper
SEARCH_FAILED
Invalid search criteria or nothing found.
Either use a filename or complete path. Use * as a wildcard.
Also check the path of the file.
Something went wrong with the request result.

I've tried adding a path, eg '/usr/bin/', but the result is the same.

'kdeinit' + 'startkde' are obsolete & not found via 'which' ;
I try to start KDE via .xinitrc , which is simply :
'exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session startplasma-x11'

Thanks again for the suggestion, but it hasn't helped.
Your further thoughts are very welcome or any else's (smile).

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT ___________//___, Philip Webb
ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT `-O----------O---' purslowatcadotinterdotnet

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)