Arch Linux

hwkiller

Member

Registered: 2009-07-21

Posts: 56

KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

Hi all.  I have the latest version of VBox (3.2.12) on my windows installation (I dual-boot Arch and Vista), and I've been using it to toy around with Arch setups.

I decided to try KDE4, yet again (honestly, every time I try it, I get turned off from it within 20 minutes, but I keep coming back to try it. Odd?).

After installing Arch64, xorg, setting up user accounts, etc (standard desktop procedure), I -S'd kdebase.  Once it finished installing, I added "exec startkde" to my .xinitrc, and typed "startx."

Consistently, the splash screen appears, loads the first two icons, then freezes upon loading the "world" icon, dumps me back to console.  The one notable error was that the vboxmodule was not found.  I reinstalled the guest additions to no avail. 

At first I thought it was just an error with vbox and the new xorg 1.9, but OpenSUSE's KDE4 works fine (thank God for Arch by the way... I was turned off by SUSE very quickly).  I'm going to attempt yet another installation of it, but I reinstalled KDE as kdebase, kde, kde-meta, etc, and none worked. I reinstalled guest additions multiple times, tried as many tweaks as I could find, and nothing seemed to work. The one thing that *did* work was completely impractical: forcing kde to ignore compositing using "openglisunsafe = true" seemed to work, but the desktop was so slow that it was pointless to use.

I ran into this issue about 2 weeks ago, and deleted the Arch vbox since then. I only post this now because I realized that KDE works under SUSE, but not under Arch. I'll try again and dump the xorg logs for someone else to examine. Until then, any thoughts?

Last edited by hwkiller (2010-12-18 03:39:35)

soloport

Member

Registered: 2005-03-01

Posts: 442

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

Three things:
1) As root, edit /etc/inittab and uncomment KDE line toward the bottom (remove 'exec startkde' from your ~/.xinitrc file)
2) Instead of 'startx' use 'telinit 5' and 'telinit 3' to start/stop X
3) Look in ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc and ensure the following line is correct:

BEFORE
OpenGLIsUnsafe=false

AFTER
OpenGLIsUnsafe=true

Do 'telinit 5' to start X and KDE should work.

hwkiller

Member

Registered: 2009-07-21

Posts: 56

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

1) Tried it, no difference.
2) See above
3) Tried it, as I said in my post. It worked, but it was so incredibly slow that it wasn't usable. It was barely responsive once on the desktop.

hwkiller

Member

Registered: 2009-07-21

Posts: 56

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

Well, nvm... I don't understand. I reinstalled the same way as ever, and suddenly it works fine.

Fixed.

Psykar

Member

Registered: 2010-12-20

Posts: 3

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

This has me curious why yours suddenly worked?
I have the exact same thing - Virtual box running on win 7 x64 host, Arch 64 bit works fine with gnome, so long as I don't try starting compiz, and KDE doesn't launch unless I change the OpenGLIsUnsafe value.

VirtualBox settings have 3D acceleration set to enabled, with 128 MB of video memory.

The error that x.org throws upon lauching compiz in gnome or KDE with opengl on is the same
from /var/log/Xorg.0.log
http://pastebin.com/ue4A98vQ

VirtualBox additions are direct from the ISO, although I've tried PEUL & OSE from the repo's.
They are working - as resizing the window changes the resolution.

I've looked at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Vi … as_a_guest
and even edited it because the openGL section for guests was in the wrong place.

Also tried running from gdm or kdm and still no joy

Any differences to what you've tried hwkiller?

TomB17

Member

Registered: 2009-09-02

Posts: 102

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

3) Look in ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc and ensure the following line is correct:

BEFORE
OpenGLIsUnsafe=false

AFTER
OpenGLIsUnsafe=true

I've been battling this same issue for a three weeks.  This change did it for me.  Everything else is like a default install.

Thanks, soloport. 

soloport

Member

Registered: 2005-03-01

Posts: 442

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

1) Tried it, no difference.
2) See above
3) Tried it, as I said in my post. It worked, but it was so incredibly slow that it wasn't usable. It was barely responsive once on the desktop.

1) & 2) are unrelated to problem (was recommending a more common convention).
3) works if you have 2-3 week old KDE packages.  More recent KDE packages fix the problem.

Psykar

Member

Registered: 2010-12-20

Posts: 3

Re: KDE4 on Arch in VirtualBox not working [SOLVED]

OK this sounds totally silly, but after comparing to a clean Ubuntu 10.10 install which 3D accelleration did work on, the difference appeared to be xorg.conf - Ubuntu didn't have one.

So I renamed ArchLinux's one and now compiz works when logged in as root with gnome, no joy with KDE yet though...? the openglisunsafe=false does still work though.

Last edited by Psykar (2011-01-06 05:55:29)