[SOLVED] After update to Mageia 9, window manager fails

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[SOLVED] After update to Mageia 9, window manager fails

Postby martin_ward » Dec 31st, '25, 15:54

This is my main machine (pingu8), which is very similar to the other machine (pingu7) discussed in this thread:

https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=15800

pingu8 has these specs:

PRIME TRX40-PRO AMD Threadripper PCIe 4.0 ATX Motherboard
Ryzen Threadripper 3970X 3.7GHz 32C/64T 128MB Cache, 280W CPU
Vengeance LPX 128GB (4x32GB) DDR4 3200MHz Memory
GeForce RTX 3070 TUF Gaming OC 8GB Semi-Fanless Graphics Card
TBS 6205 Quad Terrestrial HD Low Profile PCIe TV Tuner Card DVB-T2

After the ultimately successful upgrade of pingu7 to Mageia 9, I decided to upgrade pingu8 as well.
The upgrade seemed to go OK and booted up into the desktop, but then the window manager seemed to crash (taskbar disappeared, desktop icons disappeared and desktop background went black). It came back again a few seconds later, then crashed again. After a third attempt, it stayed down.

So I have no taskbar, no desktop icons and a black background.

The second root partition still has a working Mageia 8 installation, which I am using to post this.

Attached is the user and system journal output (I copied /root1/var/log/journal/.../system.journal etc.
to pingu8 to run the Mageia 9 journalctl on it).

On pingu7 running Mageia 9, ps axuww shows:

Code: Select all
root        6599  0.0  0.0  81212 17896 ?        S    12:36   0:00 /usr/libexec/sddm-helper --socket /tmp/sddm-auth-5986baf3-78a4-4b9d-acc5-172f5aed376e --id 1 --start /usr/bin/startplasma-x11 --user martin --autologin
martin      6646  0.2  0.0 1114080 57356 ?       Sl   12:36   0:00 /usr/bin/startplasma-x11
martin      6883  2.0  0.3 1667476 243112 ?      SLsl 12:36   0:02 /usr/bin/plasmashell --no-respawn
martin      7219  0.0  0.0 241520 24696 ?        Sl   12:36   0:00 /usr/libexec/kf5/kioslave5 /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/kf5/kio/desktop.so desktop  local:/run/user/1772/plasmashellsnJsIG.1.kioworker.socket
martin     18852  0.0  0.0  14788  2108 pts/3    S+   12:38   0:00 grep plasma


On pingu8 with the window manager not running I get:

Code: Select all
root        8115  0.0  0.0  80436 17956 ?        S    12:43   0:00 /usr/libexec/sddm-helper --socket /tmp/sddm-auth-b509a05b-a5bc-442c-8a42-def0592dd455 --id 1 --start /usr/bin/startplasma-x11 --user martin --autologin
martin      8145  1.1  0.0 420816 51088 ?        Sl   12:43   0:00 /usr/bin/startplasma-x11
martin      8247  0.0  0.0 139416 11452 ?        Sl   12:43   0:00 /usr/bin/plasma_waitforname org.kde.KSplash
martin     12870  0.0  0.0  14012  2116 pts/3    S+   12:44   0:00 grep plasma


I see that plasmashell is not running so I tried running "/usr/bin/plasmashell --no-respawn":

Code: Select all
kf.plasma.quick: Applet preload policy set to 1
file:///usr/lib64/qt5/qml/org/kde/kirigami.2/templates/InlineMessage.qml:265:13: QML SelectableLabel: Binding loop detected for property "implicitWidth"
org.kde.plasma.containmentlayoutmanager: Error: cannot change the containment to AppletsLayout
QObject::connect: No such slot DesktopProtocol::_k_slotRedirection(KIO::Job *, QUrl)
/usr/bin/plasmashell: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/imageformats/kimg_heif.so: undefined symbol: heif_init


journalctl output is attached (system.journal-root1.txt and user-1772.journal-root1.txt)


---------------------- second attempt to update by copying from a similar machine --------------------

[NB: Not sure if this section should be a separate thread, or just removed as "unworkable". Please advise!]

I decided to try to grab a copy of the working root partition from pingu7 and put it on another backup root partition on pingu9 (mounted on /root3). I copied it over using rsync from pingu7:

Code: Select all
rsync -axvDXH --delete --exclude /boot/grub2 / pingu8:/root3


I replaced /root3/etc/fstab with the proper fstab for /root3 and updated /boot/grub2/grub.cfg to load the correct vmlinuz and initrd: /boot/vmlinuz-6.6.116-desktop-1.mga9 and /boot/initrd-6.6.116-desktop-1.mga9.img

This "rsync" method worked for copying the working Mageia 9 installation on pingu7 to backup root partitions on the same machine (which can be booted successfully).

On booting to root3 it seems to hang after the usual BIOS error messages, with none of the usual startup messages and no desktop.

journalctl is attached (system.journal-root3.txt)


Please use code tags. ~Germ
Attachments
user-1772.journal-root1.txt
(50.98 KiB) Downloaded 140 times
system.journal-root1.txt
(39.73 KiB) Downloaded 135 times
system.journal-root3.txt
(14.26 KiB) Downloaded 154 times
Last edited by martin_ward on Jan 1st, '26, 16:42, edited 1 time in total.
martin_ward
 
Posts: 36
Joined: Jun 16th, '11, 11:52

Re: After update to Mageia 9, window manager fails

Postby doktor5000 » Jan 1st, '26, 01:50

Seems your update is not complete.
How often did you re-run the upgrade command (something like urpmi --auto-update --auto --force) and did you have the same set of repos configured / enabled as before the update ?
Are there any updates pending ?


martin_ward wrote:I see that plasmashell is not running so I tried running "/usr/bin/plasmashell --no-respawn":

Code: Select all
kf.plasma.quick: Applet preload policy set to 1
file:///usr/lib64/qt5/qml/org/kde/kirigami.2/templates/InlineMessage.qml:265:13: QML SelectableLabel: Binding loop detected for property "implicitWidth"
org.kde.plasma.containmentlayoutmanager: Error: cannot change the containment to AppletsLayout
QObject::connect: No such slot DesktopProtocol::_k_slotRedirection(KIO::Job *, QUrl)
/usr/bin/plasmashell: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib64/qt5/plugins/imageformats/kimg_heif.so: undefined symbol: heif_init



This is your issue.
That undefined symbol "heif_init" is contained in the main library in the lib64heif1 package (dependency of imagemagick), check if you have that installed and what version and that there are no updates pending :
Code: Select all
[doktor5000@Mageia9]─[00:45:45]─[~] symbol=heif_init; for f in /usr/lib*/*.so.*; do objdump -t -T $f | grep $symbol && echo $f; done
0000000000068120 g    DF .text  000000000000018b  Base        heif_init
/usr/lib64/libheif.so.1
0000000000068120 g    DF .text  000000000000018b  Base        heif_init
/usr/lib64/libheif.so.1.16.2
[✗]─[doktor5000@Mageia9]─[00:46:09]─[~] rpm -qf /usr/lib64/libheif.so.1 /usr/lib64/libheif.so.1.16.2
lib64heif1-1.16.2-1.2.mga9.tainted
lib64heif1-1.16.2-1.2.mga9.tainted
[doktor5000@Mageia9]─[00:46:12]─[~]
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Caution: Hot, bubbling magic inside. May explode or cook your kittens!
----
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Re: After update to Mageia 9, window manager fails

Postby martin_ward » Jan 1st, '26, 16:42

Thank you very much for your quick reply, which is a huge help!

It looks like the update was complete, but I had installed a version of libheif.so in /usr/local/lib.
Mageia 8 has libheif.so.1.10.0 and it seems that at some point I needed libheif.so.1.12.0 (or higher) in order to process iPhone photos. Mageia 9 has libheif.so.1.16.2, but it was finding the version in /usr/local/lib first, and version 1.12.0 does *not* have heif_init defined: hence the crash.

I deleted the old version of libheif from /isr/local/lib and have checked the other libraries for clashes.

The desktop now stays up properly while booting into Mageia 9, and I have backed up the working root partition.

Thanks again! You are a hero!
martin_ward
 
Posts: 36
Joined: Jun 16th, '11, 11:52


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