Marc Chamberlin composed on 2022-06-25 15:21 (UTC-0700):
It is necessary to open an X session as a different/new user to determine whether or not the kdeinit5 issue has anything to do with user settings. That choice should be made via the GUI login greeter, whether it's SDDM, LightDM, GDM, XDM or something else available when running update-alternatives --config default-displaymanager.
Trouble is, I am not getting far enough to see the GUI login greeter. As soon as all the start up messages finish, the screen goes black, the cursor arrow is shown, and then the xbox message pops up telling me that kdeinit5 failed to start. I can then do the CTRL-ALT-F1 trick to break out and get to a simple login prompt. I can then log in to a simple text base terminal and use text commands, but there is no GUI except for things like the ncurses version of YaST2.
IIRC, this is behavior from an automatic login session failing to start. IOW, SDDM is being bypassed, so that you cannot choose to login to any other session type.
SDDM is the normal DM used with KDE installations. Did you try switching with update-alternatives --config default-displaymanager to something else (e.g. LightDM) to see if Plasma would start from it?
Yes, I tried changing the DM to LightDM and others, and got the exact same error, kdeinit5 failed to start.
Until whatever triggers automatic login gets disabled, or whatever is wrong to prevent kdeinit5 from loading, you're going to be stuck with it. Renaming /etc/sddm.conf and/or any files in /etc/sddm.conf.d/ to not end in .conf might be all that's needed. Without them the upstream defaults should give you a GUI login greeter.
Do you get the same error if you boot with a 3 appended to the linu line at the Grub menu striking the E key, then login and try:marc
WINDOWMANAGER=startplasma-x11 startx
If no joy as normal user, what about as root user, or as virgin user?
No joy with this approach either Felix, but with a slightly different behavior with root and newuser. When I login with either I get a brief flash of the xbox message about kdeinit5 not starting, followed by a blank screen with a spinning circle for awhile, then back to the screen with the xbox message.
Try instead: WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/bin/icewm startx Once in an IceWM session you should be able to disable automatic login either using YaST, or possibly systemsettings5 (if it doesn't require kdeinit5 to run). On boot to login prompt, you should be able to use text mode YaST to disable automatic login. Please show output from: ls -Gg /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ cat /etc/X11/*.conf cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50*conf -- Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion, based on faith, not based on science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata