Plasma won't run on recently upgraded F8 to F9

[Claude Jones]

If I try to start plasma from a command line, I get this:

<unknown program name>(4531)/ checkComposite: Plasma has an argb
visual 0x9d39570 62914561
<unknown program name>(4531)/ checkComposite: Plasma is
COMPOSITE-less on 0x9d32b10

This machine had the early beta of KDE4 applied to it while still
on F8, which I subsequently removed FWIW. It was upgraded via yum
upgrade to F9 recently. I did this successfully on my home
machine, which had gone through similar experimentation with KDE4
on F8 - my home machine is running current kde-redhat-unstable
quite nicely.

[Claude Jones]

Post by Claude Jones
<unknown program name>(4531)/ checkComposite: Plasma has an
argb visual 0x9d39570 62914561
<unknown program name>(4531)/ checkComposite: Plasma is
COMPOSITE-less on 0x9d32b10
This machine had the early beta of KDE4 applied to it while
still on F8, which I subsequently removed FWIW. It was
upgraded via yum upgrade to F9 recently. I did this
successfully on my home machine, which had gone through
similar experimentation with KDE4 on F8 - my home machine is
running current kde-redhat-unstable quite nicely.

Just to add some info: I don't really actually know whether
plasma is running or not. I became a bit less certain after
reading a page that Rex had linked to in some previous post,
which discusses the idea behind plasma;

What I don't have is a taskbar/panel. I can right click and add a
panel, which always goes to the top of the screen - the
repositioning handle doesn't seem to work so there it stays; I
can add widgets to it, including a task launcher, BUT, running
programs don't create buttons on this panel, which means I have
to use 'Alt-tab' a lot to navigate between my running programs
right now. So, is this plasma on crutches, thin blood...?

[Claude Jones]

Post by Claude Jones

Post by Claude Jones
<unknown program name>(4531)/ checkComposite: Plasma has an
argb visual 0x9d39570 62914561
<unknown program name>(4531)/ checkComposite: Plasma is
COMPOSITE-less on 0x9d32b10
This machine had the early beta of KDE4 applied to it while
still on F8, which I subsequently removed FWIW. It was
upgraded via yum upgrade to F9 recently. I did this
successfully on my home machine, which had gone through
similar experimentation with KDE4 on F8 - my home machine is
running current kde-redhat-unstable quite nicely.

Just to add some info: I don't really actually know whether
plasma is running or not. I became a bit less certain after
reading a page that Rex had linked to in some previous post,
which discusses the idea behind plasma;
What I don't have is a taskbar/panel. I can right click and
add a panel, which always goes to the top of the screen - the
repositioning handle doesn't seem to work so there it stays; I
can add widgets to it, including a task launcher, BUT, running
programs don't create buttons on this panel, which means I
have to use 'Alt-tab' a lot to navigate between my running
programs right now. So, is this plasma on crutches, thin
blood...?

Well, this was a bit complicated, but I've managed to fix it.
Today's updates were probably instrumental. Previously, even
creating a new user from scratch and logging into KDE as that
user would produce no task bar panel in KDE. Today, I decided to
zap the .kde folder from my root-user folder from a command-line
login, and then, I closed the console and logged in to KDE as
root; finally, a plasma task bar appeared. Then I created a new
user, and logged into that new user and got the same result.

So, finally, I logged into gnome under my original user name, and
I renamed my .kde folder in my original home directory and
created a new one; then I copied the contents of the original
/.kde/share/apps/kmail and of /.kde/share/apps/kontact and two
files, kmailrc and kontactrc, from /.kde/share/config folder from
the original .kde folder into the new .kde folder, creating the
directory structure to make everything identical.

When I then logged in to KDE next, I had a plasma task panel!
There's a bit of customization that's been lost, but, nothing I
can't recreate - the big deal for me was keeping all that email -
about 6.5GB worth of accumulated files and customizations and
special filters and so forth from years and years...


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[Claude Jones]

Post by Claude Jones
So, finally, I logged into gnome under my original user name,
and I renamed my .kde folder in my original home directory and
created a new one;   then I copied the contents of the
original /.kde/share/apps/kmail and of
/.kde/share/apps/kontact and two files, kmailrc and kontactrc,
from /.kde/share/config folder from the original .kde folder
into the new .kde folder, creating the directory structure to
make everything identical.

addendum: I subsequently discovered one more file from
/.kde/share/config that had to be copied to get kmail fully
functional which was called 'emailidentities'
--
Claude Jones
Levit & James, Inc.
Leesburg, VA
703-771-1549

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