You do not mention anything about how full your partition is, as the backup facility in kaboom can use a lot of space. You need to check that, and if it is close to being full, clean some stuff out using the cleaning options at the end of smxi, as H2 explained, or move some stuff out of /home and put it in a data partition, get rid of stuff in the trash etc.

Also, post any error messages you are getting.
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it's not the graphics driver if the login screen appears, that is graphics driven.

You have to look elsewhere, first as we have all said, full partitions.

df -h
command shows you your partitions. There's is zero point in continuing this thread until you check and answer that point.
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Sorry guys, I knew the partition was very big vs. usage so I really didn't give that much thought. /dev/sda2 is the partition in question and I'll now go back and try to copy the error info for a separate post.

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 20G 4.0G 15G 22% /
tmpfs 506M 8.0K 506M 1% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 60K 10M 1% /dev
tmpfs 506M 4.0K 506M 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 12G 5.4G 6.5G 46% /media/disk1part1
/dev/sda2 45G 9.2G 33G 22% /media/disk1part2
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I don't see anything in dmesg that relates and the xorg logs look ok but that is 750+ lines...what are you looking for and where?
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Bit of a shot in the dark, but did kaboom run when you first started KDE4? As far as I remember, it should run automatically the first time you start kde4. If it did not run, check that it is installed.
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Sorry guys, I knew that the drive usage was low and didn't react to the suggestion:

df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 20G 4.0G 15G 22% /
tmpfs 506M 8.0K 506M 1% /lib/init/rw
tmpfs 10M 60K 10M 1% /dev
tmpfs 506M 4.0K 506M 1% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 12G 5.4G 6.5G 46% /media/disk1part1
/dev/sda2 45G 9.2G 33G 22% /media/disk1part2

sda2 is the partition in question.
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if it's not driver or disk use, it's some new bug, I remember seeing the kdm fails to start kde bug in sidux forums.

Don't follow these steps: forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=6294

but do try this: if you use nvidia drivers, change to nv: sgfxi -n
then try to start kdm. If it starts, it's an nvidia issue.

Then we have to collect driver data.

Also, before you do that, when the kdm thing fails to start kde, right after, copy the last 50 lines of /var/log/Xorg.0.log: cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
and see if you can find the actual error, it might be missing kbd or mouse driver in xorg. Try to install: apt-get xserver-xorg-input-kbd xserver-xorg-input-mouse
and see if they were missing before you do anything else.
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Very interesting: I did all the above, to no avail. I was haunted by an earlier post of h2's



Of course, duhh Paul. So I tried xfce...had to install it on this partition...and shazam! I am sending this from Iceweasel on xfce. So I think that nails it as a KDE bug. I could have gotten ahead of myself someplace in the upgrade process and befouled KDE but I did it via smxi and that is pretty stepwise.

No problem at this point, since KDE 4.x, I have been enjoying xfce . If anyone wants me to pursue the KDE bug, I will but I need some direction. Otherwise I'm a happy camper.

Thanks to all, especially h2, for all the patience and help.

Paul
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If you still want to try to get kde4 running, apart from the kaboom suggestion, (you still dont say if that ran OK) maybe check if kdebase-workspace is installed. I installed debian + kde4 with smxi on 2 machines and both times it failed to pick up kdebase-workspace. This did give me an error at the login screen. The thread is here
techpatterns.com/forums/about1326.html
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there was a package install kde desktop bug that was finally reported yesterday by someone and fixed, it failed to install kde-minimal when kde install was selected, this is now fixed.

This bug did NOT affect the kde 3 to 4 upgrade process, but it did affect a fresh new kde desktop install using the package install section.

In general, it's very helpful if something doesn't work in smxi to post a bug report, that way it gets fixed, I can't test every feature of smxi since most of them already are in my system.
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