Arch Linux

theonlyrealperson

Member

Registered: 2007-10-29

Posts: 7

White Screen of Death in KDE4

Greetings all, I'm trying to setup KDE4, but I'm running into that fun white screen. I can get into kdm all right, but when I try to log into kde it just goes straight to the white screen and mouse pointer. I can't get anywhere else. I installed KDE4 from Tardo's repositories http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=33536.

Searching the forums, I've seen a couple of older posts that KDE4 doesn't like glx or compositing, so I tried disabling one then the other, but to no avail. I also have E17 and Gnome, and both of those work fine. My hardware is a Nvidia 8600GT card, and I'm using 64bit Arch.

Any ideas? Here is my xorg.conf:

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 1.0  (buildmeister@builder26)  Thu Dec 13 18:55:42 PST 2007

# Auto-generated by Archie mkxcfg
# Auto-generated by Archie mkxcfg

Section "ServerLayout"

# Serial Mouse not detected
# USB Mouse not detected
    Identifier     "Xorg Configured"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "PS/2 Mouse" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"

# Additional fonts: Locale, Gimp, TTF...
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/75dpi"
#    FontPath     "/usr/share/lib/X11/fonts/latin2/100dpi"
# True type and type1 fonts are also handled via xftlib, see /etc/X11/XftConfig!
    RgbPath         "/usr/share/X11/rgb"
    ModulePath      "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
    FontPath        "/usr/local/share/fonts"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "ddc"  # ddc probing of monitor
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "bitmap" # bitmap-fonts
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "record"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "AllowMouseOpenFail" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "keyboard"
    Option         "CoreKeyboard"
    Option         "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option         "XkbModel" "generic"
    Option         "XkbLayout" ""
    Option         "XkbVariant" ""
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Serial Mouse"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "Microsoft"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
    Option         "Emulate3Timeout" "70"
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "PS/2 Mouse"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
    Option         "Emulate3Timeout" "70"
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "USB Mouse"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
    Option         "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    Option         "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
    Option         "Buttons" "5"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 110.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 150.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"

#    Option         "TripleBuffer" "true"                
    Identifier     "Card0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "All"
    BoardName      "All"
EndSection

Section "Screen"

#    Monitor    "Monitor0"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Card0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "RenderAccel" "true"
    Option         "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
    Option         "AddARGBVisuals" "True"
    Option         "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
#    Option         "backingstore" "true"
    Option         "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       1
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       4
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       8
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       15
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       16
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       32
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
     Option         "Composite" "Enable"
# Option           "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: White Screen of Death in KDE4

I sometime got a "black" screen -- mouse would move, you could click some key combos and hear a sound or two.  What I did was keep trying key-combos until something popped up.  That usually worked for me.

---

Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

theonlyrealperson

Member

Registered: 2007-10-29

Posts: 7

Re: White Screen of Death in KDE4

This looks more like the White Screen of Nothingness that some people would get when Compiz-Fusion first came out. I think that was a Xgl issue. I won't get any pop-up boxes or dialog boxes because there is something wrong at the xorg level...

schivmeister

Developer/TU

From: Singapore

Registered: 2007-05-17

Posts: 971

Website

Re: White Screen of Death in KDE4

Very misleading. The so-called screen of death refers to a state of process death, where the components of the computer do not respond. These are not screens of "death", processes are running fine, only the configuration is borked or there is a bug.

Go into your fallback environment of choice and install KDE stable.

---

I need real, proper pen and paper for this.

theonlyrealperson

Member

Registered: 2007-10-29

Posts: 7

Re: White Screen of Death in KDE4

Very misleading. The so-called screen of death refers to a state of process death, where the components of the computer do not respond. These are not screens of "death", processes are running fine, only the configuration is borked or there is a bug.

Go into your fallback environment of choice and install KDE stable.

I'm sorry if that's misleading - I have heard it called that before, so I used the term. Semantics aside, I'd rather fix the problem than go to KDE stable.