Philos Blog

Yesterday my system didn't start KDE 4.2
I've got only a short message without any details:

Could not start kdeinit4. Check your installation

I had no clue what happens. The problem seemed to be related with my last update, but what should I check exactly?
First I needed a desktop environment. I have no problem working in the console, but checking the internet for information with lynx is not the best way
With zypper I deleted KDE and installed Gnome. Gnome "worked" and I could use Opera again
Unfortunately google didn't show promising results.I tried a lot and finally reinstalled KDE.
Happy I could get to kdm (kde login manager) but got another error:

Call to Inusertemp failed (temporary directories full ?) Check your installation.

Mostly this problem is associated with full partitions or permission problems (tmp directory)
In my case df showed that I had enough disk space and ls -sl that the permissions were fine.

I checked the kde start script for my error: /usr/bin/startkde

lnusertemp=`kde4-config --path exe --locate lnusertemp`
if test -z "$lnusertemp"; then
  # Startup error
  echo 'startkde: ERROR: Could not locate lnusertemp in '`kde4-config --path exe` 1>&2
fi

# Link "tmp" "socket" and "cache" resources to directory in /tmp
# Creates:
# - a directory /tmp/kde-$USER and links $KDEHOME/tmp-$HOSTNAME to it.
# - a directory /tmp/ksocket-$USER and links $KDEHOME/socket-$HOSTNAME to it.
# - a directory /var/tmp/kdecache-$USER and links $KDEHOME/cache-$HOSTNAME to it.
# Note: temporary locations can be overriden through the KDETMP and KDEVARTMP
# environment variables
for resource in tmp cache socket; do
    if ! "$lnusertemp" $resource >/dev/null; then
        echo 'startkde: Call to lnusertemp failed (temporary directories full?). Check your installation.'  1>&2
        test -n "$ksplash_pid" && kill "$ksplash_pid" 2>/dev/null
        xmessage -geometry 600x100 "Call to lnusertemp failed (temporary directories full?). Check your installation."
        exit 1
    fi
done

At that point I found a very good french blog
with whereis lnusertemp I located this program - and wondered that I found it on a very strange place but didn't do the most obvious... /opt/kde3/bin/lnusertemp
Unfortunately I didn't check the first part and started to test with strace - a really nice program - for strace lnusertemp tmp, strace lnusertemp socket strace lnusertemp cache for the error code 1, but I always got Code 0. Everything fine - that's not what you hope to get, when you're looking for an error...

Then finally I tried kde4-config --path exe --locate lnusertemp but didn't get any message..but I had just learnt about this little tool called strace
strace kde4-config --path exe --locate lnusertemp
Finally Code 1
Strace showed that kde4-config didn't look in /opt/kde3. I copied the file to a directory where the kde4-config checked for lnusertemp (thanks again strace )
Afterwards KDE started in version 4.1 but the upgrade to 4.2.3. worked without any problems.