Update from mga5 to mga6 via urpmi: no KDE anymore

[lynx13]

I recently upgraded via urpmi from Mageia 5 to Mageia 6. All in all the process went smoothly, over 3600 packages were updated. The system is an old AthlonXP with an Nvidia 7950GT graphics card.

Unfortunately I lost KDE completely after reboot.

The system is currently only useable via the XDM display manager.

From there, first thing I needed to install to even get SDDM as an entry for "Set up display manager" in MCC was the

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install-minimal

stuff. Shouldn't that already be installed!?

It's disappointing that the upgrade doesn't recognize the need to migrate from KDE 4 to KDE 5 somehow. Is there no migration routine or something?

My screen after reboot stays black. There is no login visible, no Nvidia splash, nothing. All I can do is CTRL-ALT-F3 to get to a console.

Here's what I tried afterwards:

1. adding

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Option "DRI"  "false"

to xorg.conf like described here: https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16544. No difference
2. tried the ideas described here https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=11841#p69101, didn't solve my problem
3. trying to do

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startx

from a command line only gives me an error there would already be a session. Typing

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startx startkde -- :2

does "something", but it shows a red screen (probably because I'm root) and it brings my old mouse pointer back, but the window manager crashes and shows me a "kwin has stopped" loop image. I only can close this window, leaving me with a red screen and my mouse pointer

Right now I'm regretting the update. Moreover, there is nothing mentioned in https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_6_Release_Notes what we should do exactly after upgrading Mageia 5 to Mageia 6 via Internet and switching from KDE4 to KDE5. To me to install the minimal system was essential to even get SDDM into MCC.

Please provide me the instructions in migrating my system now to have a working KDE display manager. Choosing Mageia because of KDE was my intention in using this distribution in the first place.

See it from a tester perspective: right now I won't update other machines to Mageia 6 because of these problems. The typical user will be panicked and confused. For me this isn't essential because it's an old machine. But keep in mind the production machines running Mageia KDE before.

[doktor5000]

It's disappointing that the upgrade doesn't recognize the need to migrate from KDE 4 to KDE 5 somehow. Is there no migration routine or something?

Yes there is. But your problem is not about a migration routine inside KDE but your have a problem with starting a display manager at all. Perhaps in the past maybe you ran urpme --auto-orphans sometimes and task-kde has been removed? Then that could be a partial cause of your issues. Not sure what you mean by install-minimal as there's no such package, neither in mga5 nor mga6.

Right now I'm regretting the update. Moreover, there is nothing mentioned in https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_6_Release_Notes what we should do exactly after upgrading Mageia 5 to Mageia 6 via Internet and switching from KDE4 to KDE5. To me to install the minimal system was essential to even get SDDM into MCC.

If you really regret the update then you can roll back to your previous mga5 state - you have taken a backup before you upgraded as recommended?

And here's a link in the release notes about known issues which points to the errata, as usual. And there's warning about this in the errata, see the last point of https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_6_Err ... ade_issues

Also there's nothing special to do to switch from KDE4 to KDE5, just complete the upgrade and that's it. Worked fine for me with over 8000 packages to upgrade and 10 desktop environments.

Please provide me the instructions in migrating my system now to have a working KDE display manager. Choosing Mageia because of KDE was my intention in using this distribution in the first place.

First you need to get any display manager working, then you need to install possible missing packages if you want to use KDE, you should probably install task-plasma5.
As your descriptions are pretty unclear regarding sddm, you need to add some clarity
- sddm is installed and selected as default? The please show the output of

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systemctl status prefdm -al -n50
systemctl status sddm -al -n50
journalctl -ab|grep -i sddm

once you rebooted regularly and if sddm does not start

See it from a tester perspective: right now I won't update other machines to Mageia 6 because of these problems. The typical user will be panicked and confused. For me this isn't essential because it's an old machine. But keep in mind the production machines running Mageia KDE before.

So far you're the only one with this issue. Also our QA team performed loads of upgrade tests. Furthermore, an upgrade cannot repair any arbitrary problems automatically.

[lynx13]

But your problem is not about a migration routine inside KDE but your have a problem with starting a display manager at all

Yes, I had. The only one which was available and usable after the upgrade was XDM. It's still working. But I was using KDE before so I can't understand why this is now my default display manager at all.

maybe you ran urpme --auto-orphans sometimes

I never did.

Not sure what you mean by install-minimal as there's no such package

Okay, this is the only thing which I didn't clarify in my original post: the package's exact name is task-plasma5-minimal. That's what I meant with the "minimal system install". This is probably the package which provides a choosable SDDM in the display manager panel in MCC. I did also install task-plasma5 with this package.

you can roll back to your previous mga5 state - you have taken a backup before you upgraded as recommended?

Due to the fact that's it's an old machine for me of course there aren't any backups. It's mainly for dry running and testing like I did this time.

Plus: I didn't run into these problems when updating from Mga3 to Mga4 or from Mga4 to Mga5. That's what I meant: these problems are unknown to me as a Mageia user since 2012.

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Also there's nothing special to do to switch from KDE4 to KDE5, just complete the upgrade and that's it

Yeah, that's what I thought too. But reading a couple of internet articles the culprit seems to be always SDDM. And there is also something about Nvidia cards and SDDM. Both problems I'm facing right now but so far found no solution.

As requested, here come the outputs of your commands, as shown in the console using XDM and being root:

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systemctl status prefdm -al -n50
prefdm.service - Display Manager
 Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/prefdm.service; static; vendor preset: enabled
 Active: inactive (dead)

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systemctl status sddm -al -n50
sddm.service - Simple Desktop Display Manager
 Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled
 Active: inactive (dead)
  Docs: man:sddm(1)
           man:sddm.conf(5)

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(Date) (Time) (Username) drakrpm[5200]: running: rpm -ql sddm-kcm-5.8.7-1.mga6.i586
(Date) (Time) (Username) drakrpm[5200]: running: rpm -q --qf '%{description}' sddm-kcm-5.8.7-1.mga6.i586
(Date) (Time) (Username) drakrpm[5200]: running: rpm -q --changelog sddm-kcm-5.8.7-1.mga6.i586

Finally: I also tried Nouveau instead Nvidia driver in the meantime, but problem persists. I see the Nvidia splash and after that my display stays black. For XDM, no such things happen.

[lynx13]

OK, I'm at a loss here. Here is what I tried:

- choosing Nouveau with drakx11 shows (EE), not choosable, should change options. Behind (EE) there is nothing to see what the error is exactly. Changing options dooesn't get rid of the (EE) message. Nouveau not choosable, have to stick with Nvidia (which is no problem for me)
- startkde from inside XDM console prints out so much errors, I can hardly read fast enough. I really don't know what the KDE system is missing. There are also several

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GL

... messages which the text says I should ignore. The only thing which is completely OK seems the Akonadi stuff, no fails here. But shortly after that the loading just stops
- startkde from TTY2 (TTY1 is not usable for me) says, display is already in use. I'm able to get it a bit running by doing startx startkde and sending it to any other display than 0. Then the strange things happen:

• as I said I can see my old mouse pointer. But I can also start the task manager via CTRL-ESC. Anything else is just black

• my task manager is missing the bar where you usually see the app icon, resize icons, etc. So I'm not able to drag it, resize it, etc.

• terminal or console isn't startable via keyboard it seems

• sometimes I get a crash window which says "kwin is crashed. But unfortunately we can not send this error message"

So, from my tries and my personal experience, the following is broken: a) display manager b) something went terribly wrong from KDE4 to KDE5. Or both.

So far I wasn't successful in gaining my desktop back. I could go the hard way and try repairing the system via the official DVD or just reinstall. Due to the fact that this problem kept me going for 4 days already, I'm not sure if it's worth the time anymore.

[gerzal]

I'm facing almost the same problem
viewtopic.php?f=26&t=11834&p=69092#p69391
I think you are not only user who has this problem

[lynx13]

@gerzal: Thanks for the hint!

I even can't say if I got sound problems because I don't get this far. :/

But at least from what I read about your KDE problem, seems similar to mine.

Thing is, something is absolutely missing. Nvidia drivers don't work (tested today, new kernel and Nvidia drivers are installed) but the problem remains the same: I completely lost KDE, only a black screen with my mouse cursor left. System not usable anymore.

I even tried booting the last mga5 kernel left on my system: same problem as described above.

What's more, on every boot system messages are printed twice. I don't know what is going on.

I'm disappointed: I updated the identical (!) system from mga3 to mga4 to mga5 always via Internet, all went flawless. This time, the only thing I see is a black screen. But even my Xorg.0.log prints no errors. Weird. -.-

[gerzal]

try also to take a look here :
https://blog.mageia.org/en/2017/07/16/a ... mment-8367
-------------------
another issue with vlc player
I excuted vlc with terminal and it gave me this message :

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[gerzal@dhcppc1 ~]$ vlc
VLC media player 3.0.0-git Vetinari (revision 2.2.0-git-12711-gc99321fbb3)
[00000000010ea0d8] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "wayland"
in "".

Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, xcb.

Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Aborted (core dumped)



[doktor5000]

another issue with vlc player

As a general hint and golden rule: Please only one problem per thread.

[lynx13]

I found another one with the exact same problem in these forums by the way:

https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11860

This user even installed Mageia 6 via other methods after he couldn't solve the black screen problem, with no success.

Any more suggestions? System is again up to date, but problems persists until this day.

[doktor5000]

Well, that user has an issue about starting X, that may have several reasons. why do you assume it's the exact same problem as yours ?

As requested, here come the outputs of your commands, as shown in the console using XDM and being root:

You would need to do that when sddm is enabled and when it doesn't start, otherwise it's pointless if you want to know why sddm doesn't start.

Only thing I can suggest is to move away your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, run drakx11 from runlevel 3 and select the proprietary nvidia driver, then run drakdm and select sddm,
then reboot and show the output of the above mentioned commands again, also attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log and run

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journalctl -ab > /tmp/journal.log

and attach /tmp/journal.log here.
Otherwise nobody may be able to properly help you as there's just not enough information on your actual issue.

[lynx13]

Did all you mentioned:

Only thing I can suggest is to move away your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, run drakx11 from runlevel 3 and select the proprietary nvidia driver, then run drakdm and select sddm,
then reboot

After reboot at first I was in init 3, of course. Switched to init 5 via

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su

, but only black screen.

Find attached the log you wanted, hope this helps!

[doktor5000]

After reboot at first I was in init 3, of course. Switched to init 5 via

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su

, but only black screen.

Why where you in init 3 "of course"? And how do you switch to init 5 with su ? su just switches to another user.

Sorry but if you only provide part of the esssential information I'm afraid nobody can help in an adequate way.

Just went through the log and found this:

Aug 26 11:38:59 lnx sddm[3682]: Greeter session started successfully
Aug 26 11:38:59 lnx sddm-greeter[3786]: High-DPI autoscaling Enabled
Aug 26 11:39:00 lnx sddm-greeter[3786]: Reading from "/usr/share/xsessions/01plasma.desktop"
Aug 26 11:39:00 lnx sddm-greeter[3786]: Reading from "/usr/share/xsessions/icewm-session.desktop"
Aug 26 11:39:00 lnx sddm-greeter[3786]: Reading from "/usr/share/xsessions/icewm.desktop"
Aug 26 11:39:00 lnx sddm-greeter[3786]: Connected to the daemon.
Aug 26 11:39:00 lnx sddm[3682]: Message received from greeter: Connect
[...]
Aug 26 11:39:01 lnx sddm-helper[3780]: [PAM] Closing session
Aug 26 11:39:01 lnx sddm-helper[3780]: pam_unix(sddm-greeter:session): session closed for user sddm
[...]
Aug 26 11:39:01 lnx sddm-helper[3780]: [PAM] Ended.
Aug 26 11:39:01 lnx sddm[3682]: Auth: sddm-helper exited with 4
Aug 26 11:39:01 lnx sddm[3682]: Greeter stopped.

which tells us that sddm itself and also the greater starts fine, but exits with return code 4.
This leads to e.g. https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/53374 and also for an account where the password is expired: https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/716
Does not look like an sddm issue at all.

Still repeating what I mentioned before:

As requested, here come the outputs of your commands, as shown in the console using XDM and being root:

You would need to do that when sddm is enabled and when it doesn't start, otherwise it's pointless if you want to know why sddm doesn't start.

Only thing I can suggest is to move away your /etc/X11/xorg.conf, run drakx11 from runlevel 3 and select the proprietary nvidia driver, then run drakdm and select sddm,
then reboot and show the output of the above mentioned commands again, also attach your /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[lynx13]

Why where you in init 3 "of course"? And how do you switch to init 5 with su ? su just switches to another user.

IDK, actually my assumption was that it's this state because I installed Nvidia and chose SDDM before my reboot? I don't know if it's default behaviour. Switching runlevels is possible by doing

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init 3

&

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init 5

, isn't it? Did it this way.

Also, seeing that SDDM exited is something I checked before, too. But: as trying to do as the poster said,

This post mentions a workaround: http://www.abclinuxu.cz/poradna/linux/show/424664#1 A quick summary:

(1) Add /usr/lib/nvidia to LD_LIBRARY_PATH, as already suggested in FS#53360 .
(2) In all files in /etc/ld.so.conf.d/, remove all lines that contain /usr/lib/ only. Such lines were in ffmpeg2.8.conf and ffmpeg0.10.conf on my system.

This^^^ workaround works for me. \o/

this doesn't work either because for (1) the file doesn't exist in Mageia and (2) this file is named

ld.so.conf

in Mageia and inside is only one line, no change needed.

What bothers me also is that can we please try to discuss this in a normal tone as in the past, please?

If you see what I posted I already said that it's stupid SDDM which doesn't work and it's just giving me a

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Auth: sddm-helper exited with 4

is the most of the information I get right here. You see my problem!? And I did google this already and no fix was found.

Posting something from an Arch Linux site doesn't help me either, because Mageia doesn't work like Arch and what should I do with this stuff there? Read about the problem some lines above.

In the end to make you happy I post the code you requested *again*:

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systemctl status prefdm -al -n50
(?) prefdm.service - Display Manager
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/prefdm.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)

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systemctl status sddm -al -n50
(?) sddm.service - Simple Desktop...
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/sddm.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
Docs: man:sddm(1)
man:sddm.conf(5)

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journalctl -ab|grep -i sddm
(it shows nothing)

Can't I just use KDM again? Is it not possible to use Mageia 6 with KDE4? What's this with SDDM and why do you need this and we need this now!?

[doktor5000]

Posting something from an Arch Linux site doesn't help me either, because Mageia doesn't work like Arch and what should I do with this stuff there?

After all those are all linux-based operating systems using the same components ...

In the end to make you happy I post the code you requested *again*:

You shouldn't post this to make me happy but to enable others help you. If others cannot reproduce the issue or provide hints based on the available information you will probably have to try to debug and solve this yourself.

Can't I just use KDM again? Is it not possible to use Mageia 6 with KDE4? What's this with SDDM and why do you need this and we need this now!?

KDM is dead, see e.g. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/SDDMinsteadOfKDM and sddm is basically the successor.
You could simply use another display manager like gdm, lxdm, lightdm or xdm if you don't want sddm.

[lynx13]

I don't understand why we have to get rid of KDM because the Fedora community says so.

In my case my machine doesn't work anymore using SDDM. I'm looking into a solution for weeks now and there is none for Mageia 6.

Is it possible to use KDE5 with another DM than SDDM? I would rather try that as wasting more time in trying to figure out what's wrong with SDDM. The messages the system gives me are not very helpful. I tried googling the

Auth: sddm-helper "exited with 4"

error and read through page 1 and page 2 suggestions, I can't get my system back.

This will prevent me to update other machines from Mageia 5 to Mageia 6 and I'm eager to skip this release. I lost a system here.

[doktor5000]

The fedora project says so because KDM is dead upstream which means unmaintained which means unpatched bugs and security issues. If you don't understand that or if you don't want to accept that, can't really help you with that.

Is it possible to use KDE5 with another DM than SDDM?

Seems you didn't really read my last reply.