[Wylug-help] redo/reset KDE - is this even possible

[Anne Wilson]

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On Saturday 29 Jan 2005 13:49, chris mackins wrote:
> Hi Alex
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> To briefly paint the picture, a couple weeks ago, I did a media update
> using Mandrake (10.1) through the GUI.  The result from that was that I
> lost a number of apps (Thunderbird/Firefox and also StarOffice7); my email
> seetings were lost as were all my browser bookmarks in Konqueror.  Worse,
> all my own work which I'd saved was also completely lost. Using a console,
> my shell script had changed from [chris at localhost]$ to this bash-2.05b$
>
Around 18 months ago some of us had a similar mis-hap when one mirror wasn't
fully up-to-date.  That was from an update, though, not from a media-update.
Since all media-update does is to read the list of available files I don't
see just how that could possibly have caused the problem.  I wonder,
therefore, if you were actually running an update when it happened.

It's no consolation to you now, but for future reference, package-update
should not remove any packages during installation of the updates.  If it
says it is going to, answer No because something is wrong.  What it does is
write the necessary files and continue to use the existing ones until next
time the file is read.  For some things that will mean next time X is started
(which you can force with Ctrl-Alt-Backspace).

> I tried a number of ways to try an recover but unfortunately nothing
> worked.
>
I can believe that, if it is similar to the problem I had 18 months ago when I
lost X through an update mis-hap.  Many of us hit tried to solve the problem
with single package downloads, but in the end it was easier and less
time-consuming to re-install.

Is your /home not on a separate partition?  If it is you should not have lost
any work at all.  If it isn't, I'd recommend backing up any work you have on
there and doing a complete re-install, with /home on a separate partition.

> Then yesterday I read that if you 'redo' KDE settings, this might recover
> lost files etc.  I'm not sure about the definition of 'redo'!! hence my
> post today.
>
>
> I can't see that creating a new user account would work here - as the
> apps/work were specific to my user account.

Nor can I.  but -

> Though somehow, someway, it
> does seem that the users' config is definately borked.
>
> > Lost in what way?
> >
> > Try creating a new user account, logging in, and seeing if it works from
> > there
> >
> >
> > Otherwise, It's impossible to tell whether you've deleted stuff or just
> > messed up a users' config
> >
What I think Alex is referring to can easily be cured.  In your home directory
there is a directory/folder called .kde - in other words it is a hidden
directory.  If you can't see it in Konqueror you will need to enable that in
the View menu.  Rename that to .kdeold and reboot.  Kde will create a new
copy of the folder.  You will have lost your settings, but you can explore
the .kdeold folder for the relevant files to put them back.

If Alex is on the right lines and it is just a user config issue, that should
cure it.

Anne
- --
Registered Linux User No.293302 (http://counter.li.org/)
Have you visited http://twiki.mdklinuxfaq.org yet?  Mandrake at all levels
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