Synaptic "dist-upgrade" Problems...

[Cuddles]

Someone, again, tell me how I get back into KDE???

I did a Synaptic "upgrade" within it, and had to "force-feed", multiple times, remove / install "frozen-bubble" - but finally got all "upgrade-able packages to get upgraded...

When I rebooted, I am stuck in the "textual login" screen, and cant seem to get my GUI, KDE, to come up...

As a side note, before rebooting and getting stuck in "textual" land, I did notice that the "dist-upgrade" within Synaptic, left my menus a little less than what they used to be... In particual, I have a good many Games, like Pingus, which does NOT show up in the menu anymore, but can be accessed through CLI, so the menu entry has dissappeared mysteriously now, plus a lot of other installed programs ( from the menu, that is )...

So, summary of needs:
( 1 ) Get back into KDE, and get the GUI Login back on boot-up...
( 2 ) Get my original programs that are installed already, back into the menus, where they used to be...

Any and all help, is greatly appreciated, in this concern,
Ms. Cuddles

[HomerCube]

I quite hope it's not your case, but the only time I dared dist-upgrade my Knoppix HD-installation, I messed it up by far too much to be able to fix it other than by a total reinstall. That's because, I suppose, Knoppix comes as a mix of stable, testing and unstable, plus a bunch of self-made packages (e.g. knx-alsa); so, having it fully rebuilt from different sources is quite likely to be as much destructive as it can.
Useless to say, but I haven't "dist-upgraded" my Knoppix since that any more...

[Markus]

( 1 ) Could be that KDE is broken (again). Also you have to upgrade KDM when upgrading KDE to 3.3.

( 2 ) Try running update-menus as user.

[Cuddles]

Y I K E S

I hope, in both cases, this isnt what has happened...

I used the synaptic "smart upgrader" option, but, how can I get into KDE... ( even if it isnt broke ) ???

I am sitting at the "boot" screen, with all the boot messages on it, last things it says are: "Starting K Desktop Manager: kdm" and then the "Login:" prompt...

I've tried to login as root and my user account, both get logged in, but never go any further than the textaul screen...

God I hope I didn't just hose the heck out of this system, its been going so well, for just a short time

[Markus]

Just go to VT (Ctrl-Alt-F2) and do: apt-get install kdm -s and see what happens.

[Cuddles]

( ctrl-alt-F2 )
Root login...
apt-get install kdm -s
( reports back the following )

"kdm is already the newest version"

Where do I go from this now ???

( ps - thanks for the help )

[Markus]

Where do I go from this now ???

Short answer: kanotix

Serious answer: I suppose you did apt-get update first?
Try doing startx or /etc/init.d kdm start and see if it throws back any errors.
Or you could do apt-get install gdm

[Cuddles]

startx

tried to start up, and then burped out some text, and returned to text screen...

Notable messages:

(EE) NVIDIA(0): Unable to set IgnoreDisplayDevives
(EE) NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the NVIDIA graphics device!
(EE) NVIDIA(0): *** Aborting ***
(EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration.

fatal server error:
no screens found

root prompt:#

Hmmmmm, let me guess, my NVidia is hosed??? ( considering I compiled the NVidia source into the kernel, a way back, this isnt good... )

Whats next??? Play in the XF86Config-4 file ????

Please dont say Kanotix ( I dont have it ), and please dont say re-install ( thats even worse )...

[Cuddles]

kdm start -=- went to black screen, like it was trying, then just came back to text screen, with prompt, no messages were given

[Markus]

Can't help much with NVidia since I don't have it. How about: mv XF86Config-4 XF86Config-4_OLD , boot the CD and copy over the file to hd. Don't know if it'll work, NV might have complained because it couldn't find X at all.